AMD's RDNA 3 cards are now here, with some good improvements but also a few surprises. All of the talk about the innovative chiplet architecture effectively boils down to AMD saving money compared to a monolithic design, and perhaps giving up some performance in the process. We'd be very curious to see how fast the same design would have been if AMD had skipped chiplets, but chiplets is what we're getting.
AMD has delivered two rather different cards for the RX 7900 series launch. The halo card is the far more desirable option in my mind. Yes, it costs $100 extra, but that's only an 11% price increase. For the extra money, you get 17% higher performance and 20% more memory. Compare that to the RX 6000-series launch.
RX 6800 XT was ostensibly priced at $649 while the RX 6900 XT had the same memory and ultimately just 7% higher performance across our test suite, for $999. That's what we used to see: a big jump in price for the final, relatively small performance increase. Both Nvidia and now AMD have apparently ditched that approach this generation.
We can't help but think the past two years of GPU shortages has led some of the bean counters into thinking graphics cards should cost more. Street prices are likely to be over $1,000 for most of the 7900 series custom AIB designs, unless the supply is so good that it outstrips demand.
Speaking of, there are rumors circulating that AMD will have at least 200K cards for sale starting tomorrow, December 13. We're not sure how many RTX 4090 and 4080 cards were ready for those launches, but 200K seems far more ambitious than what we've seen from AMD in the past. That's probably because this feels like the most competitive AMD GPU we've seen in the consumer graphics market in quite some time. Too bad so many of us can't afford $899, never mind the $1,199+ that Nvidia's asking.
The 4-star review score incidentally applies to the RX 7900 XTX, as it's the better of the two cards. We rate the RX 7900 XT as a 3-star card, or maybe 3.5-star. The loss in performance just to save $100 on a card that costs nearly a grand (and possibly more after tax plus higher AIB model pricing) doesn't seem that great. Knock off another $100 or more and the 7900 XT becomes a different story.
If you're not in the market for a graphics card that costs twice as much as the current generation consoles, don't worry. Nvidia's RTX 4070 Ti is apparently right around the corner, and where there's a Ti, there's bound to be a vanilla RTX 4070 model as well. Hopefully those will start pushing prices down closer to $500. And if Nvidia doesn't go there soon, AMD almost certainly will with Navi 32 and "RX 7700" (or similar) cards some time in the first quarter of 2023.
Ultimately, the RX 7900 series helps to narrow the gap that Nvidia opened up with the RTX 4090 and 4080. If you want the fastest card possible, never mind price, power, or any other considerations, the RTX 4090 still reigns supreme. But for under a grand, right now the RX 7900 XTX delivers plenty to like and at least keeps pace with the more expensive RTX 4080. All you have to do is lose a good sized chunk of ray tracing performance, and hope that FSR2 can continue catching up to DLSS.
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