A Bulgarian retailer previously stated that AMD delayed the launch of the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT, and that the latter was priced at 500 Bulgarian Levs more than the 7900 XT. VideoCardz calculated that this meant the RX 9070 XT would retail at around $899, while the vanilla RX 9070 would be $749. Moreover, the original launch date of the first RX 9000 cards was claimed to be January 23. However, AMD Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions and Gaming Marketing Frank Azor has now clarified that an $899 starting price for the RX 9070 XT “was never part of the plan.”

AMD has yet to release official pricing for its upcoming RDNA 4 graphics cards, which are supposed to deliver performance on par with the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti. The first batch of Radeon 9000 graphics cards was conspicuous by the absence of details during AMD’s keynote, with the company saying it ran out of time to show them off on-stage at the event.

Rumors suggest that Team Red was caught off guard by the aggressive pricing that Intel and Nvidia introduced in the mid-range market, especially as the Intel Arc B580 launched at $249, while Team Green priced the RTX 5070 Ti and 5070 'MSRP cards' at $749 and $549, respectively. These rumors were quickly dispelled by AMD, though, through its posts on social media. Though we are still waiting for the actual pricing of its latest GPUs.

Nevertheless, it seems that there’s already a ready stock of AMD’s latest GPUs in various retailers and that they’re just waiting on the company to give the go signal and put them on the front-of-store shelves. This delay means that reviewers haven’t been able to release the details of these new GPUs, and that we can only rely on leaked specs to estimate how much these graphics cards will perform.

AMD hasn’t released any official statement about why they delayed the release of these graphics cards, but we hope it will allow retailers to stock up on RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 GPUs from the get-go and prevent shortages. That way, we don’t have to worry about finding a new GPU and dealing with scalpers selling these hard-to-find PC components at more than triple the MSRP.

Still, if you’re looking to upgrade your GPU, you should wait until the release of the Nvidia 5070 and 5070 Ti, which is rumored to be on February 20, and these AMD GPUs in March, before spending your hard-earned money. That way, you can check out multiple independent reviews of these cards and ensure that you’re getting the best hardware for your needs and budget.

AMD's Radeon RX 7000-series and the RDNA 3 architecture launched in late 2022, starting with the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT. Ove the next year and a half, numerous other cards have joined the series, powering some of the best graphics cards. You can see how the GPUs rank against other generations and competitors in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy, and we're now looking forward to the future RDNA 4 GPUs.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. AMD's full lineup of RDNA 3 cards consists of seven different models. We've tested and reviewed them all, from the fastest RX 7900 XTX down to the lowly RX 7600 and everything in between. Let's get to the details.

AMD RDNA 3 / Navi 3x at a Glance

• Up to 96 CUs / 12,288 shaders
• 50% better performance per watt than RDNA 2
• Double the ALU count per CU
• GPU chiplet architecture
• Up to 96MB of Infinity Cache

AMD RX 7000-series specifications

With all the AMD RDNA 3 GPUs now launched and available worldwide, here are the core specifications.

The previous generation RDNA 2 and RX 6000-series GPUs had four GPU designs spread out across a full dozen different graphics card models — and that's not counting integrated graphics solutions. AMD RDNA 3 trims things down somewhat, with three primary GPUs and seven different graphics card models (plus some integrated versions).

The three GPU designs are called Navi 31, Navi 32, and Navi 33, going from highest performance to lowest performance. The largest die has three different models, while the other two only have two models. But there are some significant differences in how AMD gets there.

AMD RDNA 3 uses GPU chiplets for the first time, at least on the top two configurations. Navi 31 and 32 each have a large GCD (Graphics Compute Die), with anywhere from three to six MCD (Memory Cache Die) chiplets. The smallest die, Navi 33, retains the traditional monolithic die.

Each MCD offers a 64-bit memory interface and 16MB of L3 cache. The MCDs link to the main GCD via AMD's Infinity Fabric, using what AMD calls the Infinity Fanout Bridge. It uses less power per bit than other external interfaces, though there's certainly a power penalty relative to monolithic designs. In effect, AMD saved money on the costs of manufacturing the MCDs on a prior generation process node, which in turn shrinks the size of the GCD.

While future designs could benefit from breaking up the GPU die into multiple chiplets, for this first generation of GPU chiplets it's basically a cost-saving measure. The Navi 33 die meanwhile still uses N6, a refinement of the N7 node used with RDNA 2, because it's small enough it wasn't worth the effort of breaking it into a GCD plus two MCDs.

Clock speeds haven't changed much from RDNA 2, though AMD has a two different clock domains this time — one for the shaders and one for the front-end. AMD's stated clock speeds are somewhat conservative this round, meaning you'll generally see higher clocks in most games. But there are games where you may not hit the boost clock, which is what we've listed — AMD also has a "Game Clock" that's even more conservative, but in practice it's not as meaningful.

The CUs and shader cores have received a big upgrade this generation, but curiously AMD doesn't directly call each of the potential ALU processors a shader. Instead, it lists a base value that's half of the effective rate. So as an example, the 6,144 GPU sahders in the RX 7900 XTX can at times behave more like 12,288 shaders. That's where the much higher compute comes from, more than doubling what was available with RDNA 2.

The top model has 61.4 teraflops of compute, and double that for FP16 workloads. Even the mid-tier 7800 XT has 37.3 teraflops of compute, which almost doubles what the RX 6800 XT offered. However, actual gaming performance doesn't scale directly in proportion to the theoretical compute. So, as an example, the RX 7800 XT ends up performing quite similarly to the RX 6900 XT.

Memory bandwidth on the 7900 XTX increased by over 50% relative to the RX 6950 XT. That's thanks to the move to a 50% wider interface, plus running the GDDR6 memory at 20 Gbps (versus 18 Gbps on the 6950). Effective memory bandwidth also improves thanks to the second generation Infinity Cache, which for most models decreased in size compared to RDNA 2. But that's mostly offset by higher throughput and other tweaks to the caching hierarchy.

AMD Radeon 7000 Performance

As we saw with the past two generations of AMD hardware, AMD targeted at least a 50% improvement in performance per watt with RDNA 3. While that might seem reasonably specific, it leaves plenty of wiggle room. For example, RDNA 2 delivered 50% better performance per watt than RDNA. Let's give some concrete examples of how that played out.

According to our GPU benchmarks hierarchy, the RX 6900 XT consumes 308W of power while delivering 130 fps at 1080p ultra, 106 fps at 1440p ultra, and 63 fps at 4K ultra. A lower-tier RX 6700 XT uses 215W and averages 96 fps, 71 fps, and 39 fps, while the RX 5700 XT consumes 214W while delivering 74 fps, 53 fps, and 29 fps at those same resolutions.

Do the math, and the 6900 XT provides a 22% to 50% improvement in performance per watt, while the 6700 XT only provides a 29% to 34% improvement. If we add in all the other RDNA and RDNA 2 GPUs as reference points, the potential spread for performance-per-watt improvements becomes even wider.

AMD has also discussed some architectural improvements. The ray tracing hardware improved, but not as much as we would have liked. The biggest change architecturally was the move to dual CUs with double the execution resources. AMD also added AI Accelerators that increase the throughput of FP16 and INT8 calculations — these share resources with the shader execution cores but optimize the data flow.

Now that all the RDNA 3 GPUs have launched, we can of course provide independent assessments of how they stack up — both in performance as well as performance per watt. The above charts show the overall results from our 19-game test suite. Below, we have tables of the individual test results. About half of the 6000-series GPUs are 'missing' because we don't have updated test results (yet), but we've provided enough data to put the 7000-series into context.

The top two GPUs, the 7900 XTX and 7900 XT, surpass the performance of anything offered by AMD's previous generation. That's chiefly thanks to both having more CUs, more VRAM, and more memory bandwidth than anything the prior gen offered. The 7900 XTX has 96 CUs and 24GB of memory with 960 GB/s of bandwidth; 7900 XT has 84 CUs and 20GB of memory with 800 GB/s of bandwidth. Compare that to the 6950 XT with 80 CUs, 16GB of memory, and 576 GB/s of bandwidth and it's easy to see why performance improved at the top.

Below that mark, things become less impressive. The 7900 GRE trades blows with the 6950 XT while the 7800 XT and 6800 XT land very close together. This shows the big concern with RDNA 3: Breaking off the memory controllers and cache to create GPU chiplets wasn't really about improving performance.

Similar CU counts end up delivering relatively similar performance, gen-on-gen. RX 7800 XT has 60 CUs and the 6800 XT has 72 CUs, so the older GPU had 20% more CUs. However, the new GPU also has higher clocks — 8% higher by specifications, but more like 5% in our test results. Overall, the 7800 XT ends up being about 5% faster, meaning the architectural improvements appear to only provide about a 10% improvement in overall performance.

Here you can see the performance per watt metrics from our full testing suite. AMD claims up to a 50% improvement in perf/W, and if you pick the right GPUs to compre, you can get there... but it requires some serious cherry-picking of results.

The 7800 XT versus 6800 XT for example shows a gen-on-gen performance per watt improvement of just 19–25 percent overall. The 7900 XT versus 6900 XT improvement ranges from 7% (at 1080p medium) to 25% (at 4K ultra). If you want more than a 50% improvement, you need to do something like compare the RX 6600 with the RX 7700 XT at 4K ultra. Except the RX 6600 was never intended to be a 4K gaming card, so that's a pretty questionable comparison.

It's not that the RDNA 3 architecture represents a step back from RDNA 2; it's that it doesn't provide the big step forward that many hoped to see. RDNA 2 had better performance per watt than Nvidia's competing RTX 30-series, at least in rasterization games, but it also had a process node advantage. Nvidia leapfrogged AMD on process nodes and efficiency this round with the RTX 40-series, generally providing around 30~60 percent higher performance per watt.

AMD RDNA 3 Architecture: GPU Chiplets

One of the biggest architectural updates for RDNA 3 is something we've already mentioned — the move to GPU chiplets. There are good reasons for moving to multiple chiplets, though the overall net benefit largely depends on implementation. For this first generation of consumer GPU chiplets, AMD mostly seems to be focused on reducing costs.

Previous GPU designs were monolithic, meaning everything needed for the GPU to function came from a single piece of silicon. Because of that, GPUs build in a lot of redundancy, and chips get sold in "harvested" configurations. Navi 21 was used in the 6950 XT, 6900 XT, 6800 XT, and 6800, with up to 80 compute units (CUs) or as few as 60 CUs.

Interestingly, the Navi 21 die also has eight 32-bit memory interfaces, but AMD didn't release any Navi 21 variants with fewer memory channels. The same mostly applies to Navi 22, Navi 23, and Navi 24 — memory and cache sizes seem to have been an all-or-nothing thing. Perhaps yields on the memory controller were just really good, as the only GPU that didn't use all the memory channels possible was Navi 22 in the RX 6700 (non-XT), with a 160-bit interface instead of the full 192-bit interface.

With Navi 31 and 32, AMD will pull all of the memory interface and Infinity Cache blocks out of the main die and move them into separate dies. Each MCD contains a 64-bit GDDR6 interface and a 16MB chunk of Infinity Cache. There were rumors that the MCDs had the option to use 3D chip stacking with another 16MB die on top of the main MCD, but if that rumor was true, AMD never implemented such a configuration. The MCDs link with the GCD via AMD's Infinity Fabric, which will see some updates to the previous variants used in Ryzen CPUs.

Breaking out the Infinity Cache and GDDR6 memory interface has some clear advantages. Transistor densities scale best with logic circuits, less so with cache, and analog interfaces (i.e., for memory controllers) scale the worst. The on-package Infinity Fabric links on both the GCD and MCDs still require some die space, but any faulty memory controllers or cache blocks will no longer be a problem — they just get tossed.

Meanwhile, the MCDs will be made on TSMC's existing N6 process, which costs less than the newer N5 node, and die size won't even be a serious concern. The MCDs are only 38mm^2, meaning a 300mm N6 wafer should have enough room for about 1,600 MCDs, give or take. There's no real difficulty in simply tossing every faulty chip rather than worrying about building in redundancies.

The GCDs for Navi 31 and Navi 32 in turn shrink quite a bit compared to the prior generation, and on the costlier N5 node, that could be very helpful. AMD can still get around 180 of the larger Navi 31 GCD per wafer or nearly 300 of the smaller Navi 32. And it can still use harvested chips with fewer compute units or even MCDs to create lower-tier products — which is why we have three cards based on the Navi 31 GCD, and two using the Navi 32 GCD.

Had AMD stuck with monolithic designs, it likely would have ended up with Navi 31 using closer to 550mm square and getting maybe 100 chips per wafer. Since N5 wafers likely cost more than twice as much as N6, this should be an easy net win from a cost perspective. It also gives AMD more flexibility with cache sizes, at least on the higher-tier products. The stacked cache is only on the MCDs, leaving the GCD free to dissipate heat into the cooling setup — that's something 3D V-cache struggled with on its CPUs.

AMD RDNA 3 Architecture: Core Enhancements

AMD will have plenty of other changes in the core architecture of RDNA 3. AMD has stated that it will have a rearchitected compute unit and optimized shader architecture, though the latter doesn't provide much in the way of detail.

The compute units were overhauled, and in an approach that looks similar to what Nvidia did with Ampere, RDNA 3 CUs to have twice as many FP32 execution units. This yields a massive boost to theoretical compute, as AMD went from 80 RDNA 2 CUs and up to 5,120 GPU shaders to a maximum of 96 RDNA 3 CUs with 6,144 GPU shaders that are each twice as powerful as their predecessors. Even if the real-world benefit doesn't scale directly with theoretical compute, this should improve performance.

AMD's Ray Accelerators continue to lag behind what Nvidia and even Intel offer (per GPU processing cluster). Sharing the texture units with the BVH traversal hardware may have been okay for the first round of ray tracing hardware, but the second generation needed to be better. And it is... but not by much.

Overall, the optimizations and improvements made with RDNA 3 did deliver higher performance, but AMD continues to prioritize pure GPU shader compute with ray tracing and AI hardware seemingly an afterthought.

AMD RDNA 3 Architecture: AI Accelerators

We asked during our interview with AMD's Sam Naffziger whether or not we'd see tensor cores or their equivalent in AMD's consumer GPUs. To quickly recap, tensor cores are compute cores optimized for raw throughput, with a far more limited instruction set than GPU shaders. Nvidia's RTX cards have tensor cores for DLSS and other machine learning applications. Intel has followed suit with the Arc architecture's XMX cores (Xe Matrix eXtensions) used for XeSS and other deep learning software.

AMD isn't averse to providing such hardware in its GPUs, and it has tensor cores in the Instinct MI250X and MI300 data center GPUs. That's where most applications that will truly benefit from tensor cores run right now, but while there's a potential use case on consumer hardware, AMD seems content to mostly skip adding extra AI hardware for now.

What AMD did provide with RDNA 3 is what it's calling an AI Accelerator with WMMA (Wave Matrix Multiply Accumulate) instructions. These appear to repurpose the existing FP16 execution resources, so the raw theoretical throughput doesn't change, but the efficiency of running a bunch of FP16 calculations improves. We've seen this in our Stable Diffusion testing.

AMD Radeon 7000 Power Requirements

Moore's Law has largely focused on improving optimal transistor densities by reducing transistor sizes. While we continue to see progress, we've long since passed the point of doubling transistor counts every two years. Along with that, we've also seen a dramatic slowdown in power efficiency improvements.

It used to be that you'd get smaller transistors running at higher clocks using lower voltages and thus less power. Today, we get vague statements about 30% less power at the same performance or 15% more performance at the same power. Do the math and you'll see that those two things are not equivalent.

No company is immune to the side effects, and all signs indicate increased power consumption from the next-gen GPUs. The PCIe 5.0 power interface and upcoming power supplies that support it can supply up to 600W over a single 16-pin connector, for example, portending a broader industry shift to higher-power GPUs. Nvidia's RTX 4090 bumped power draw to 450W for the base model, and some factory overclocked cards even went so far as to include dual 16-pin connectors. AMD opted to completely skip the 16-pin connector, which ended up being a great move as far as we're concerned.

AMD's RDNA 3 pushed TBP (Total Board Power) slightly higher than RDNA 2, but only at the top of the spectrum. RX 7900 XTX has a 355W TBP, compared to 335W for the 6950 XT and 300W on the 6900 XT. The 7900 XT drops that to 315W, while the lower tier implementations are typically lower or similar TBPs to their predecessors. Curiously, even the RX 7600 has a 165W TBP, so there are no budget or low-power parts.

AMD's Sam Naffziger talked about this with us. "It's really the fundamentals of physics that are driving this," Naffziger explained. "The demand for gaming and compute performance is, if anything, just accelerating, and at the same time, the underlying process technology is slowing down pretty dramatically — and the improvement rate. So the power levels are just going to keep going up. Now, we've got a multi-year roadmap of very significant efficiency improvements to offset that curve, but the trend is there."

AMD has been able to drive slightly higher clocks with RDNA 3 while remaining as efficient as RDNA 2. AMD has long discussed its strategy of 'cross-pollinating' CPU and GPU design teams, bringing the best tech from both sides of the house to each new CPU and GPU design. The new RDNA 3 GPU cores are supposed to be "intrinsically more power efficient," but a business decision still needs to be made.

"Performance is king," stated Naffziger, "but even if our designs are more power-efficient, that doesn't mean you don't push power levels up if the competition is doing the same thing. It's just that they'll have to push them a lot higher than we will."

AMD Radeon 7000 Release Dates

The first RDNA 3 and RX 7000-series GPUs arrived in December 2022 with the 7900 XTX and XT models. The RX 7600 was the second distinct RDNA 3 die with Navi 33, launching in May 2023. We didn't see the middle-tier RDNA 3 cards until September 2023 when the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT arrived. There was also a 7900 GRE in China in July 2023, which eventually arrived in the U.S. in February 2024, along with the RX 7600 XT that doubled the VRAM of the base non-XT card in January 2024.

There was likely a big delay in rolling out some of the RDNA 3 GPUs while AMD waited to clear out existing RDNA 2 inventory. Even nearly two years after the first cards launched, there are still RX 6000-series GPUs floating around the market offering decent value alternatives. RX 6700 XT and 6750 XT for example still generally outperform the newer RX 7600/7600 XT.

AMD Radeon 7000 Prices

How much do AMD's RX 7000-series graphics cards cost? The first models seemed to follow Nvidia's lead with higher price points than ever. The RX 7900 XTX launched at $999, with the step-down RX 7900 XT launching at $899. The latter wasn't a great value, and over time it has dropped $200 to just $699.

The budget RX 7600 meanwhile effectively took over the same price point — with extremely similar performance — as the existing RX 6650 XT. As noted above, RX 7800 XT and 7700 XT didn't come out until nine months after the Navi 31 parts, probably to allow the existing Navi 21 GPUs to clear out of the market. Pricing was similar to the existing street prices on the older GPUs as well, with $499 and $449 price points, but AMD did cut the RX 7700 XT price down to $399 six months after launch.

Some of the pricing still appears to have been impacted by the GPU-based cryptocurrency mining of the prior generation. Ethereum mining has ended, so GPUs aren't really being used much for cryptocurrency now (profits are in the toilet), but after seeing the prior generation GPUs often selling at twice their official MSRPs, AMD and Nvidia seem to have been overly greedy with the new prices. That also meant potential scalpers didn't really impact prices or availability, so there's at least a bit of a silver lining.

AMD's Radeon RX 7000 series, which offers some of the best graphics cards for desktops, currently includes just six models, down from 14 in the case of the Radeon RX 6000 family. But suppose a listing in the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) database (noticed by @harukaze5719) is correct. In that case, AMD may be prepping to fill in the gaps in the family with new mainstream and performance-mainstream graphics cards. However, there is a catch about this listing: they could be placeholders.

Three makers of graphics cards — namely Afox, Guangzhou Innovation Intelligent Technology, and Peladn — recently registered such graphics cards as Radeon RX 7400, RX Radeon 7500 XT, Radeon 7600 XT, Radeon RX 7650 XT, Radeon RX 7700, Radeon RX 7750 XT, Radeon RX 7800, and Radeon RX 7950 XT in the customs database of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

At least some of these entries could well be placeholders. Meanwhile, AMD has a massive gap between the Radeon RX 7600 and the Radeon RX 7700 XT (and the latter could be considered a viable mainstream graphics card); we would not rule out a graphics card that would sit between them. Also, AMD currently lacks entry-level products in the Radeon RX 7000 lineup, so we could envision something that will also sit below the Radeon RX 7600,

What is unclear is which graphics processors these presumable Radeon RX 7700, Radeon RX 7500 XT, and Radeon RX 7400 would use. While we could imagine that the RX 7700 would be powered by a cut-down Navi 32, while the RX 7500 XT would use a cut-down Navi 33, the Radeon RX 7400 could probably re-use something based on the RDNA 2 architecture to address the low-end of the market.

It is important to remember that while EEC filings often reveal products a company plans to release, they do not guarantee that these products will indeed be launched. The nature of the EEC customs database means that it is unclear whether these documents are filed directly by the graphics card manufacturers, by another company representing them, or by a retailer. Therefore, it is uncertain if all the listed product models will be available in the market and, if they are, when they will be released. There have been examples of products registered with the EEC never launched.

Lenovo has seemingly started offering AMD's Radeon RX 6600 LE graphics cards in its GeekPro 2023 entry-level gaming desktops, as noticed by ITHome.
AMD has never officially announced a product with such name, but as discovered by @Komachi_Ensaka, the Radeon RX 6600 LE is indeed listed in AMD's drivers alongside the RX 6600 and the RX 6600S, which are among the best entry-level graphics cards.

Those who are familiar with ATI's and then AMD's naming schemes know that the 'LE' moniker typically means "Lite Edition", which usually translates into severely cut-down specifications. IT Home has apparently learned that it is a customized version. The Radeon RX 6600 LE features an RDNA 2-based GPU with 1792 stream processor with up to 2495 MHz boost frequency as well as 8 GB of GDDR6 memory with a 128-bit interface. On paper, this product has similar specifications to that of AMD's original Radeon RX 6600, it even has 4 MHz higher boost clock. For now we do not know anything about Infinity Cache capacity of this graphics card.

The Lenovo Radeon RX 6600 LE is a rather compact graphics card with a dual-slot dual-fan cooling system with three heat pipes and a backplate. Potentially, this one could fit into Mini-ITX machines, though its exact dimensions are unknown. 

Why Lenovo decided to add an LE moniker to its Radeon RX 6600 graphics card is unknown. Perhaps, the company uses AMD's Navi 23 graphics processor in an unusual configuration for it (e.g., with a very low base clock, fewer texture units or cut-down Infinity Cache), or maybe it uses a severely cut-down Navi 22 GPU, which may be a particularly good overclocker. The latter could be the case as AMD reportedly discontinued production of Navi 23 earlier this year. For now, this is a small card with a mystery around it.

As for the system itself, the Lenovo GeekPro 2023 desktop comes with Intel's 10-core Core i5-13400F processor, 16 GB of DDR4-3200 memory, Lenovo's Radeon RX 6600 LE graphics card, and a 512 GB PCIe 4.0 SSD. The unit can be purchased for ¥6799 ($594 without VAT) from JD.com.

Now that AMD's Radeon RX 7000-series product lineup is complete and all RDNA 3-based graphics processors have been announced or released, it's reportedly time for the company's previous-generation graphics cards and GPUs to go. Apparently, AMD wasted no time and discontinued its Navi 23 graphics chip that powers Radeon RX 6600-series products, reports IT Home, citing a forum specializing in the video cards business.

"AMD factory has stopped production for a certain GPU," a claim at the specialized forum reads. "By present, shipments from all AIB brands have stopped with inventory being cleared. AMD has stopped production for the Radeon RX 6650 XT, and nearly all brands will have their inventory cleared by the end of September."

Keep in mind that while AMD has reasons to halt production of previous-generation GPUs now that its new Navi 33 graphics processor and Radeon RX 7600 graphics cards (which are among the best graphics cards around) are in full production, the company has never confirmed this officially, so take the information with a grain of salt.

AMD's Navi 23 GPU is comprised of 11 billion transistors, packs 2048 stream processors, 32MB of Infinity Cache, and has a 128-bit memory interface. The chip is used for AMD's Radeon RX 6600, RX 6600 XT, and RX 6650 XT graphics cards. While AMD has reportedly stopped production of only the full Radeon RX 6650 XT configuration, based on the fact that both Radeon RX 6600 and RX 6600 XT are not really widespread in the U.S. retail these days, it's reasonable to assume that production of Navi 23 GPUs and Radeon RX 6600-series graphic cards has been halted.

In fact, there is hardly any point for AMD to continue production of Navi 23. The company's RDNA 3-based Navi 33 GPU integrates 13.3 billion transistors, has 2048 SPs, and performs better than its direct predecessor. Meanwhile, it has a smaller die size (204 mm2 vs 237 mm2) and is made on TSMC's N6 process technology (as opposed to N7 in the case of Navi 23), so it may well be cheaper to produce.

AMD is reportedly prepping yet another 'GRE'-badged graphics card, but this time, it will belong to its outgoing Radeon RX 6000 series. Suppose the information from Hoang Anh Phu, a PC hardware leaker, is accurate. In that case, AMD's Radeon RX 6750 GRE carries the Navi 22 graphics processor from Radeon RX 6700, albeit with higher clocks, to compete with the best graphics cards.

AMD's Radeon RX 6750 GRE is essentially a version of the Radeon RX 6700 with 2,304 stream processors running at a high frequency (i.e., higher than 2,450 MHz recommended by AMD for the Radeon RX 6700) and featuring 10 GB of GDDR6 memory mated to the GPU using a 160-bit memory interface, the leaker asserts. For now, the actual Radeon RX 6700 GRE clocks are unknown, but if they are high enough, the product could offer an appreciable compute horsepower over the regular Radeon RX 6700.

The Radeon RX 6750 GRE likely has the same memory subsystem as the Radeon RX 6700. The Radeon RX 6700 XT has 12 GB of memory connected to the graphics processor using a 192-bit interface and features a peak bandwidth of 432 GB/s. By contrast, the Radeon RX 6700 features a peak DRAM bandwidth of 384 GB/s. It's uncertain if the Radeon RX 6750 GRE will have faster memory.

Boosting GPU performance while cutting down memory bus may seem a bit illogical, but this is not something we have not seen before. ATI Technologies, which is now known as AMD's Radeon Technologies Group, had Radeon 9500 Pro and Radeon 9500 XT back in 2002; the former featured eight-pixel shader pipelines and a 128-bit memory interface, whereas the latter boasted a 256-bit memory bus albeit only four-pixel shader pipelines.

We have no idea about the price or availability timeframe of AMD's alleged Radeon RX 6750 GRE. In fact, given that we are dealing with unofficial information, we would take it with a grain of salt in general. Furthermore, the Radeon RX 6750 GRE may be released in select countries for system integrators, so it will be hard to get it in retail.

AMD recently launched the Radeon RX 7800 XT and 7700 XT at Gamescom to compete with the best graphics cards. Scott Herkelman, senior vice president and general manager of the Graphics Business Unit at AMD, made a surprising statement, revealing that no more new RDNA 3 ASICs will come after the RX 7800 XT and 7700 XT. Herkelman didn't discard new graphics cards based on existing ASIC.

This news will be sad for some who were expecting AMD to release a vanilla RX 7800 and 7700 (non-XT) and an entry-level RX 7500 series product stack to compete with Nvidia's potential GeForce RTX 4050. But alas, it appears AMD is content with sticking to just six SKUs for this season and doesn't see a big enough reason to launch more models. Instead, AMD may have to rely on its previous-generation Radeon RX 6000 series product stack to fill the gaps where its current RX 7000 series lineup cannot compete.

The current AMD Radeon RX 7000 series GPU lineup comprises six desktop SKUs, including the Radeon RX 7900 GRE. For comparison, the Radeon RX 6000 series had double the amount of SKUs. Herkelman stated in the short interview that AMD may launch different versions, but the graphics cards aren't a new ASIC. However, he didn't provide any insight on the mobile side. Thus far, the Radon 7000M series only has the Radeon RX 7600M XT and Radeon RX 7600M.

AMD's decision to release only six SKUs for the RDNA3 generation isn't that surprising, given how disappointing the last year of GPU launches has been. If you've read our previous coverage, you'll know that we have been underwhelmed by most of Nvidia and AMD's latest GPU releases. The dominant issue with today's GPUs is the amount of performance you are getting for the money, which is about the same as the last generation (with some exceptions). As a result, there's minimal incentive to upgrade if you already have a previous-generation card.

To recap, AMD's full RDNA3 lineup now includes the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, RX 7900 XT, RX 7900 GRE (regional availability), RX 7600, and the new mid-range RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT. The RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT launched in December of last year for $999 and $899, respectively, as competitors to Nvidia's RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti. Five months later, AMD released the RX 7600 for $269 to compete with Nvidia's RTX 4060. Then, out of nowhere, AMD released the RX 7900 GRE for $649 a month ago, a cut-down version of the 7900 XT focused on the Chinese market — with GRE standing for Golden Rabbit Edition.

Then, of course, AMD finally unveiled the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT yesterday for $499 and $449, respectively, to compete with the RTX 4060 Ti (8GB and 16GB) and the RTX 4070.

AMD launched its RDNA 3 architecture and RX 7000-series GPUs last December. It followed the top-tier Navi 31 by skipping the middle ground and releasing the budget-mainstream RX 7600 with the Navi 33 GPU. Now it's finally time to fill in the gap with the announcement of Navi 32 and the Radeon RX 7800 XT and Radeon RX 7700 XT. They're set to compete with the best graphics cards when they arrive on September 6, 2023.

As usual, the existence of and pending launch of these new GPUs has been about as secret as the color of the sky. The first rumblings of the basic specs for the RDNA 3 GPU lineup appeared last September. Yes, one year before the Navi 32 announcement, we had an estimated die size of 200 mm^2 for the GCD (Graphics Compute Die), with it linked to three or four MCDs (Memory Cache Dies). While we don't have an official die size just yet, we do have all of the other details. Let's go ahead and start with the specs table, comparing the new GPUs to the previous generation.

The Navi 32 story and the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT are basically as expected. While the GPU shader counts are theoretically lower than before, keep in mind that each shader is now able to do twice as many FP32 (or FP16) operations per clock, which results in a substantial boost to theoretical performance. The RX 7800 XT has 37 teraflops of graphics compute, 80% more than the previous generation RX 6800 XT. Similarly, the RX 7700 XT offers 35 teraflops of FP32 compute, an even larger 167% increase over the RX 6700 XT.

It's an interesting mishmash of specifications, in other words. Both new cards use the same Navi 32 GCD, which has up to 60 Compute Units (CUs) and four MCD links available. The 7800 XT uses the full die and all four MCDs, while the 7700 XT disables six of the CUs and one of the MCDs.

Raw memory bandwidth improves slightly, gen over gen, thanks to higher VRAM clocks. The 7800 XT has 22% more bandwidth than the 6800 XT, and the 7700 XT offers 12.5% more bandwidth than the 6700 XT (and the same bandwidth as the 6750 XT). However, it's important to note that the Infinity Cache sizes are quite a bit smaller, which means the effective bandwidth might not actually be better and could potentially be worse. Also, putting the L3 cache on separate chips linked via an Infinity Fabric introduces some additional latency.

If you just look at the specs, the improvements look quite good, maybe even great. However, as we've seen with the other RDNA 3 GPUs, specifications aren't everything. The RX 7600 as an example offers twice the compute performance of the RX 6650 XT in theory; in practice, gaming performance has changed very little. Similarly, RX 7900 XTX offers 159% more compute than RX 6950 XT, but real-world performance only shows up to a 40% improvement — that's at 4K, with a 30% increase at 1440p. If that pattern holds, the RX 7800 XT will probably land somewhere around the existing RX 6900 XT level, and the RX 7700 XT will likely fall closer to the RX 6800.

We don't just have to guess at performance, either. AMD provided some internal benchmarks comparing the two upcoming GPUs with some existing Nvidia parts. And unlike Nvidia, AMD isn't being delusional and suggesting that $400 to $500 cards are "designed for 1080p" so all of their benchmarks are at 1440p. The usual caveats apply, naturally, but we have our own benchmarks of the Nvidia cards and previous generation AMD cards, so we can at least make some comparisons on some of the games.

For example, in Red Dead Redemption 2, the RX 6900 XT in our testing is 8% faster than the RTX 4070 at 1440p and max settings. Likewise, the RX 6800 in our testing is 18% faster than the RTX 4060 Ti (8GB). In Watch Dogs Legion, the 6900 XT beats the RTX 4070 by 18% and the RX 6800 beats the RTX 4060 Ti by 23%. So far, the 7800 XT and 7700 XT look like near-perfect stand-ins for the previous generation GPUs.

We have two more games where our testing at least overlaps AMD's, at least in name (we don't have precise details on the settings and test sequences AMD uses, so our results may not be 100% comparable). Forza Horizon 5 has the 7800 XT leading the RTX 4070 by just 2%, and the same 2% applies to the 7700 XT and 4060 Ti. In our testing, without ray tracing (because it's not in the main game, unless things have changed), the 6900 XT is 10% faster than the RTX 4070 and the RX 6800 beats the 4060 Ti by 16%.

And last but not least, for Spider-Man: Miles Morales (this time with RT set to very high), AMD puts the 7800 XT 12% behind the 4070 and the 7700 XT is tied with the 4060 Ti. Our testing has the 6900 XT trailing the 4070 by 13%, while the RX 6800 ends up 1% ahead of the RTX 4060 Ti.

Given what we've seen so far, then, it's a reasonably safe bet that the new RX 7800 XT will come very close to matching the previous gen RX 6900 XT, and the new RX 7700 XT will come very close to matching the RX 6800. Maybe things will swing 5 to 10 percent or so in either direction, depending on the game. But overall, that's how the new and previous-gen GPUs appear to match up.

It's not just about performance, naturally, as the new RDNA 3 architecture adds a lot of other features. It has improved video encoding/decoding support with AV1 support — not drastically improved quality based on our previous testing, but at least for AV1 and HEVC it's pretty good. You also get DisplayPort 2.1 UHB13.5 support (54 Gbps) video outputs, in case you want to upgrade to a new high-refresh rate 4K monitor.

AMD also provides more VRAM and raw VRAM bandwidth than its direct competition with the 7800 XT and 7700 XT. You get a 256-bit interface and 16GB on the 7800 XT, and a 192-bit interface and 12GB on the 7700 XT. The RTX 4070 basically matches the 7700 XT, while the 4060 Ti only comes with a 128-bit interface and 8GB — or you can double the VRAM for an extra $100, but the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB has only niche practical use and we generally don't recommend it.

Besides those aspects, there's power efficiency. Here things aren't quite as clear cut as you might expect. RDNA 2 was manufactured using TSMC's N7 process node, while RDNA 3 uses TSMC N5 for the GCD and N6 for the MCDs. That should result in a reduction in power use, but the linking of the GCD and MCDs via an Infinity Fabric does likely result in higher power use per bit.

Anyway, the RX 7800 XT has a TBP (Total Board Power) rating of 263W, which is definitely lower than the RX 6900 XT's 300W rating. The RX 7700 XT meanwhile has a TBP of 245W, which is slightly higher than the RX 6700 XT's 230W rating, but just below the RX 6800's 250W TBP. Depending on where performance and power use ultimately land, we're looking at potentially minor gains in efficiency for the 7800 XT and maybe equivalent efficiency from the 7700 XT.

Finally, there's pricing. And we've said elsewhere that pricing on this generation of GPUs has been disappointing on virtually every level. Blame it on the pandemic and supply chain disruption. Blame it on cryptocurrency mining and AI, or just blame AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. Regardless of whom you want to blame, the bottom line is that the value proposition for most of the latest-generation GPUs isn't all that great.

AMD's RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT basically continue that pattern. If the RX 7800 XT basically matches the performance of the RX 6900 XT, that means it will be maybe 6–8 percent faster than the RX 6800 XT. With a suggested price of $499, you're potentially getting very slightly better performance, new features, and a bit less power for the same price — we'll have our own test results come September 6. The RX 7700 XT at $449 matches the RX 6800 that still goes for $449 — albeit with less VRAM, though you'd still get the architectural upgrades, and performance would likely be about the same.

There were many complaints about the too-high pricing of the RX 7600 at launch, and AMD dropped the price another $20 before the official launch. Street pricing meanwhile has fallen an additional $20. That mostly brings the RX 7600 retail pricing down to where it needs to be, though if you don't need AV1 support, you can still make the argument that the RX 6650 XT offers a better value.

We'd suggest AMD make a slightly larger correction this time and drop the pricing of the 7800 XT and 7700 XT by $50 or more. Sure, they're going up against Nvidia's $599 and $399 parts, and maybe even the $499 4060 Ti 16GB... but Nvidia's GPUs are overpriced. Also, Nvidia has more features and is the market leader, so AMD can't hope to gain market share merely by attempting to sort of match Nvidia's pricing.

But do note the bottom of the slide: "Price in USD. Subject to change." Make it happen, AMD, and stop with the pricing shenanigans! I get the need to try and keep pricing under wraps until the official announcement (all of the slides were leaked to a few places in advance of the Gamescom livestream), but AMD should know as well as anyone that these prices look just as bad as Nvidia's.

Besides the new GPUs, AMD had some other news to discuss. HYPR-RX is now available, which is basically a one-switch feature that enables Anti-Lag / Anti-Lag+, RSR / FSR, and Radeon Boost (dynamic resolution scaling). These features have all existed before, but they couldn't all work at the same time. Now, with HYPR-RX, you can get all three. That's assuming you're okay with RSR being automatically enabled (if you're running at less than your monitor's native resolution).

Possibly more exciting is the announcement that FSR 3 is coming soon, with "Fluid Motion Frames" technology and Anti-Lag+. Basically, this is AMD's Frame Generation alternative to Nvidia's DLSS 3. Like Nvidia, AMD is apparently requiring that games support the latency-reducing Anti-Lag+ in order to enable FSR 3 (that's our reading of the slides). But unlike Nvidia, FSR 3 will work on all GPU vendors — though Anti-Lag+ is AMD exclusive, so games would also need to implement Nvidia Reflex and... well, Intel doesn't have an equivalent yet.

We suspect the end result will be similar to DLSS 3, providing higher frames to monitor rates but also introducing additional input lag. Input will still be tied to the fully rendered frames while the generated frames will be detached from user input. If our suspicions prove correct, then a 50–100 percent boost in performance will likely feel more like 10–20 percent faster.

AMD has announced twelve games that have committed to FSR 3 support, some of which are already available (but not with FSR 3) while other upcoming games will add the feature shortly. There are also sixteen (at present) partners that have committed to supporting FSR 3.

More importantly, AMD says it has figured out how to make FSR 3 Fluid Motion Frames work at the driver level, providing the potential to (approximately) double your FPS for any and all games. It's not clear how well that will work or look, and that would be limited to AMD GPU owners, but if you want to smooth out the frames on a high refresh rate monitor, it should be a cool extra.

The full slide deck follows, which has a few more bits of information for the interested.

US retailer Best Buy appears to have spilled some Radeon RX 7700 XT details ahead of AMD’s expected official launch. Twitter tech detective momomo_us unearthed a listing on the retailer’s website that apparently shares images and specs for a Gigabyte GV-R77XTGAMING OC-12GD. Except, it has more than a few issues.

All indications are that AMD will reveal Navi 32 GPUs with the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT in the next few days at Gamescom. Until the official reveal, we need to exercise caution with retail listings like this one at Best Buy. It looks as though someone cloned an existing Gigabyte RTX 4070 listing, updated some of the items, but missed a few pieces.

Some of the specs appear to be in line with expectations, but there are notable gaffes, like mentioning the product’s GPU is an “Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070,” and one of the images clearly showing Gigabyte Radeon RX 7900 XT packaging. The price is also most certainly a holdover from a different GPU, probably an RTX 4070 Ti given that it's $879 — more than an RTX 4070, and also more than the typical RX 7900 XT. Oops.

But the name at least looks correct: GIGABYTE - Radeon RX 7700XT GAMING OC 12GB GDDR6 PCI Express 4.0 Graphics Card. And we can laugh at the perhaps 7900 XT pricing: It was $999.99 and has now been slashed to $879.99. Interestingly, you can add this product to the shopping cart today, with delivery by Aug 25 touted, and it qualifies for the Starfield game bundle.

While most of the listing details are quite suspect due to the mishmash of references to other SKUs we mentioned above, we are at least on some more solid ground with the Gigabyte codename. The GV-R77XTGAMING OC-12GD name indicates this is a Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming model with 12GB of VRAM and a factory overclock. That's the expected configuration and has been for some time.

AMD should debut both the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT graphics cards shortly. We expect the 7800 XT to have a 256-bit interface and 16GB, while the 7700 XT looks to have a 192-bit interface and 12GB VRAM. The GDDR6 memory could run at anywhere from 18 to 20 Gbps, based on other RDNA 3 GPUs, though we don't know exactly where it will land on the cards yet. We also don't have clock speeds, but the RDNA 3 GPUs here will probably run in the 2.5 GHz (boost clock) range.

Little or nothing has been seen with regard to Radeon RX 7800 and/or 7700 non-XT graphics cards. There would probably be room for them in the market, but we might again see AMD ignore this type of gap filling or make these models OEM exclusive. There is also a chance of more Golden Rabbit Editions (GRE) models from this generation, or using the previous gen to fill the gaps and go toe-to-toe with Nvidia rivals at the widest range of price points.

AMD has a special event on Friday at Gamescom 2023. It was previously confirmed we would get more Radeon RX 7000 cards revealed at the event, but no specific models have been officially mentioned. It's a reasonably safe bet that it will be RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT, but check back in a couple of days for the full details.

We may soon have a new contender to rival the best graphics cards. The latest rumor in China is that AMD is reportedly preparing a Radeon RX 6750 GRE with the pricing of a GeForce RTX 4060 and the performance of a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti.

The Radeon RX 7900 GRE was only the tip of the iceberg for AMD's Green Rabbit Edition (GRE) series of graphics cards. According to one Weibo user, AMD purportedly is readying to launch another GRE graphics card, except this time, the chipmaker borrowing an RDNA 2 SKU rather than using one of its latest RDNA 3 silicon. The hearsay points to a Radeon RX 6750 GRE, which could be a beefed-up version of the existing Radeon RX 6750 XT.

The tech blogger allegedly confirmed the Radeon RX 6750 GRE with the boss of Yeston, a popular manufacturer with little presence outside the Asia-Pacific region. During their conversation, Yeston was reportedly the only authorized AMD AIB partner to produce the Radeon RX 6750 GRE. The leaker didn't reveal the specifications of the Radeon RX 6750 GRE. Our only information so far is that the RDNA 2 graphics card delivers similar performance to Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, which retails for $399. However, the Weibo blogger claims the Radeon RX 6750 GRE will have the same $299 MSRP as the GeForce RTX 4060.

The Radeon RX 6750 XT already uses the full Navi 22 silicon, which has 2,560 Stream Processors (SPs). Assuming that the Radeon RX 6750 GRE is an upgraded variant of the Radeon RX 6750 XT, it'll likely have to come with higher clock speeds or switch to another silicon, such as Navi 21, to obtain more SPs. One plausible theory is that AMD could recycle defective Navi 21 dies that don't meet the requirements of a Radeon RX 6800 or Radeon RX 6800 XT while keeping the same number of SPs as the Radeon RX 6750 XT but upgrade the memory subsystem.

For now, it's hard to speculate which route AMD will go. With the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, the Navi 31-based SKU was fundamentally a lower-specced Radeon RX 7900 XT with fewer SPs and memory, lower clock speeds, and a narrower memory interface. The thing with the Radeon RX 6750 XT is that it's already the highest-tier Navi 21 model. Weakening the Radeon RX 6750 GRE would destroy its ability to compete with the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti.

The Radeon RX 7900 GRE is only available at retail in China. Nonetheless, the graphics card is available outside the Chinese market via prebuilt systems. We're inclined to think that the Radeon RX 6750 GRE may follow a similar route. There's no word when the Radeon RX 6750 GRE will launch. AMD will announce new "enthusiast-grade" Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards at Gamescom 2023 between August 23 and 27. We wouldn't be surprised if AMD included the Radeon RX 6750 GRE as a side dish in its announcement.

AMD's Radeon RX 7000-series product line-up is still missing mainstream graphics cards that that offer decent gaming performance without breaking the bank. It looks like the company is going to close this gap next week, when it could launch new Radeon RX GPUs at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany.

"Please join the @AMDRadeon team at Gamescom next week for our next major product announcements," said Scott Herkelman, senior vice president and general manager graphics business unit at AMD. Echoing his colleague's sentiments, Frank Azor, AMD's gaming solutions chief, added that AMD would be unveiling 'exciting news' during the event.

It is about time for AMD to introduce its next-generation mainstream cards since the company has been addressing the high-midrange market with its RX 6800/6900-series GPUs based on the RDNA 2 architecture since last year. While the company launched the high-end RX 7900 XTX and XT in December (which are among the best graphics cards available) and later introduced the budget-friendly RX 7600 in May, there is still no sign of the anticipated Navi 32 GPU and the Radeon RX 7700 and 7800-series boards to rival Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4070-series.

This delay is presumably due to the lingering inventory of AMD's Radeon RX 6800/6900 GPUs, which could potentially match the performance of these awaited new models. AMD's chief executive already said that the company will update the Radeon RX 7000-series line-up with new models for gamers this quarter. Gamescom is a good place to reveal the new products given that the trade show attracts hundreds of thousands of attendees among gamers and industry professionals and has a wide global recognition. 

For now, we can only speculate about exact performance of the new Radeon RX 7700 and Radeon RX 7800-series graphics cards and how they stack up against predecessors and competitors (even though there are some preliminary details about it), but one thing we can be almost sure about is that they are going to cost more than $269 (MSRP of the Radeon RX 7600) and $649 (MSRP of the Radeon RX 7900 GRE).

Sometimes, graphics cards break down. Experienced repairmen can quickly identify the issue and either fix it or send the board to a bin, but some problems require an ingenious fix. KrisFix from GPUFix.de is a GPU repair specialist, and he recently encountered a malfunctioning graphics card that required him to drill two holes in the PCB and restore a trace.

This time around KrisFix got an MSI Radeon RX 6900 XT (which is still one of the best graphics cards despite being nearly three years old) with a rare problem where the fans and LEDs work, but there is no picture. The engineer claims that, so far, he has observed this behavior on six or seven graphics cards out of hundreds he has fixed. The source of the problem was a broken trace between the GPU and a memory chip, which in some cases led to the complete malfunctioning of a GPU. 

Modern high-end video cards are highly complex devices using printed circuit boards with 15 layers. Fixing a broken trace that resides deep inside the PCB is a challenge, to say the least, and the broken trace is located on the layer deep underneath the surface, eliminating almost any possibility of fixing it in a reasonable amount of time. Instead, KrisFix had to rebuild it using a wire by drilling two holes in the graphics card, solder a tiny wire to a pin on the memory soldering pad, solder it to a pin on the GPU soldering pad, and solder the DRAM chip and the GPU back.

Drilling a hole in an enthusiast-grade graphics card, such as MSI's Radeon RX 6900 XT, is a precise and delicate process that KrisFix prefers to do by hand. This whole process requires extreme precision and the use of a microscope to solder the hole, solder wires, resolder damaged capacitors, and restore broken traces on top of the PCB that got scratched during the process. 

The procedure performed by KrisFix is certainly an extraordinary one, and we assume that the stability of the board's operation was sound. However, the video report does not touch upon whether the manipulation of the memory trace length affects performance. Both GDDR5 and GDDR6 standards support read and write training sequences to ensure signal integrity, compensate for signal variabilities, and optimize timings. Timings were certainly affected by the trace length, though it is unclear how and how this affects performance in real-world games. 

While repairmen are not in the business of drilling holes in graphics boards because this tends to damage them, in some cases, drilling holes can actually give life to a video card that is seemingly gone.

We have already reported that AMD's Radeon RX 7900 GRE graphics card uses the company's Navi 31 GPU in a smaller package. This compact package could cram AMD's top-of-the-range graphics processor into laptops, hardware leaker Golden Pig Upgrade asserts. Meanwhile, the ultra-high-end mobile graphics solution could offer more stream processors than the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, one of the best graphics cards. Yet, a grain of salt is recommended since this is a leak.

AMD's Radeon RX 7900 GRE has 5120 stream processors and a 256-bit memory interface enabled by four active memory controller die (full Navi 31 uses six MCDs and a 384-bit interface). Meanwhile, the compact version of the Navi 31 GPU with a 256-bit memory bus could be used to build an ultimate graphics solution for gaming laptops, as the unit certainly packs quite a punch.

The leaker asserts that the alleged Radeon RX 7900M XT could feature more active stream processors but admits that they do not know the exact number. Furthermore, the leaker claims that the unit is delayed for some reason. 

AMD's Radeon RX 7000M family of laptop GPUs currently includes four models based on the Navi 33 graphics processor, the smallest GPU in the RDNA 3 lineup. It is reasonable to expect AMD to use its Navi 32 silicon with up to 3840 stream processors for mid-range and high-end mobile GPUs as it is going to offer tangible performance advantages over AMD's Radeon RX 6800M and 6850M XT products featuring Navi 22 GPU with 2560 stream processors enabled. Cramming a top-of-the-range graphics processor into laptops is something that AMD has not done in years. Still, since gaming laptops and compact desktops are gaining popularity, the company cannot ignore this market segment. That said, the company might use a cut-down Navi 31 to address advanced gaming machines.

 Meanwhile, a big question is whether AMD's multi-chiplet Navi 31 graphics processor is a good fit for mobile PCs. On the one hand, an underclocked undervolted Big Navi GPU with some of its 6144 stream processors disabled could be very energy efficient. On the other hand, a multi-chiplet design is, by definition, less energy efficient than a monolithic design in most cases. 

For now, we have no idea about the combination of stream processor count, frequency range, and power envelope that AMD is looking at to hit its notebook performance targets. Furthermore, since the information comes from an unofficial source, we have to take it with a grain of salt and keep in mind that even if AMD has plans to address a certain market segment, plans sometimes change.

We don't blame you if you've never heard of the Radeon RX 580 2048SP. It is a China-exclusive SKU, after all, and far from being able to compete with the best graphics cards. However, a Chinese manufacturer has breathed new life into the five-year-old Radeon RX 580 2048SP.

AMD China released the Radeon RX 580 2048SP in 2018, so the Polaris 20-based graphics card is a bit long in the tooth. While the Radeon RX 580 2048SP sounds cool because of the model name, it was, in essence, a rebranded Radeon RX 570 8GB with a moderately higher boost clock. The Radeon RX 580 2048SP may seem like a dud, but it sells pretty well in the Chinese market, so manufacturers still love it after all these years.

Kinology, a Chinese vendor, has given the Radeon RX 580 2048SP a new twist. Kinology isn't an official AMD partner. Like many other Chinese companies, it's likely just a local outfit that relabel and resells OEM graphics cards. Kinology (via realVictor_M) has released a particular Radeon RX 580 2048SP with an upgraded memory subsystem to 16GB of GDDR5. For comparison, the regular Radeon RX 580 2048SP is only available with 4GB and 8GB configurations. Kinology's model has triple or twice as much memory, depending on which SKU you compare it to.

Although Kinology gave the Radeon RX 580 2048SP more memory, the company used slower GDDR5 memory chips. The vanilla Radeon RX 580 2048SP uses 7 Gbps GDDR5, which across a 256-bit interface, provides 224 GB/s of memory bandwidth. In contrast, the Kinology Radeon RX 580 2048SP employs 6 Gbps chips, limiting the bandwidth to 192 GB/s. It has more memory, but the bandwidth takes a 14% hit.

Besides the memory, the Kinology Radeon RX 580 2048SP has nothing else to offer. It still uses the 14nm Polaris 20 silicon with 2048 shaders that boosts 1,206 MHz, so it's somewhat lower than AMD's reference 1,284 MHz boost clock. From a performance standpoint, the Radeon RX 580 2048SP is slower than the GeForce GTX 1060. The Kinology model is 170W, 20W higher than the regular model, probably due to the added memory chips. The Kinology Radeon RX 580 2048SP still employs a single 6-pin PCIe power connector.

The Kinology Radeon RX 580 2048SP sells for $83 on JD.com, which isn't a bad price. The faster Radeon RX 580 starts at $129 in the U.S. market, so the Kinology Radeon RX 580 2048SP's price tag gets a pass.

Whether the Radeon RX 7900 GRE deserves a spot on the list of best graphics cards remains to be seen. With the latest Navi 31-based graphics card starting to be globally available, it may not be long before we see how it stacks up to AMD's other RDNA 3 offerings.

The Radeon RX 7900 GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition) retails for $649 in the Chinese market. However, the graphics card is slowly becoming available outside China via system integrators. German retailer MemoryPC has as many as six different prebuilt gaming systems powered by the latest Radeon RX 7900 GRE. Pricing varies between $1,098.25 to $1,922.76, including value-added tax (VAT) and free shipping.

The cheapest prebuilt system revolves around the Ryzen 5 5600, 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, and an Adata Legend 710 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD. Meanwhile, the high-end systems feature the Ryzen 7 5800X3D or the Core i9-12900K, two of the best CPUs for gaming. The former has 32GB of DDR4-3600 with a WD Black SN850X 1TB SSD, while the latter comes with 32GB of DDR5-5600 and a WD Blue SN570 1TB drive. As for the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, MemoryPC is utilizing the XFX-branded MBA (Made by AMD) reference design for its gaming PCs.

The Radeon RX 7900 GRE has also made its way over to Australia. PLE Computers is currently selling a prebuilt PC for a whopping $2,277.54. The price tag is a bit excessive for what's inside the gaming system, but computer hardware is typically more expensive in Australia.

The Australian gaming PC comprises the Ryzen 7 7700 paired with 32 GB of DDR5-5600 and a 2 TB Crucial P3 Plus SSD. Like MemoryPC, PLE Computers has used the XFX Radeon RX 7900 GRE for the prebuilt machine. Besides XFX's reference model, Sapphire and PowerColor have announced their Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE and Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE, respectively so there are at least two more custom options for system integrators. Unlike the MBA model, the custom SKUs will likely carry a slight premium due to their aggressive design and factory overclock.

Thus far, we haven't seen any U.S. system integrators offering Radeon RX 7900 GRE-based gaming PCs. For the impatient, you can always buy the retail Radeon RX 7900 GRE off one of the Chinese online retail platforms, such as JD.com, but you'll end up paying more than the $649 due to customs duty and shipping. Give it some time, and we'll probably be able to purchase the Radeon RX 7900 GRE through a third-party merchant at Newegg or eBay, like countless other hardware.

The Radeon RX 7800 XT has yet to launch officially. However, according to PowerColor's latest misstep, the upcoming RDNA 3 graphics card has what it takes to be one of the best graphics cards. The vendor (via All The Watts!) has accidentally listed the Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT ahead of AMD's announcement.

The information on the Radeon RX 7800 XT comes from one of AMD's trusted partners. The product page could be a placeholder, so throw a pinch of salt over the specifications. In fact, PowerColor has placed a small disclaimer at the bottom of the product page.

"The entire information provided herein are for reference only. PowerColor reserves the right to modify or revise the content at anytime without prior notice," wrote the vendor on the Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT's product page.

The Radeon RX 7800 XT reportedly features 3,840 stream processors, equal to 60 RDNA 3 compute units, and an equal number of ray accelerators. The silicon inside the Radeon RX 7800 XT remains to be confirmed. However, early speculation is that the Radeon RX 7800 series would leverage a new Navi 32 silicon. Unfortunately, the PowerColor leak doesn't corroborate or dispel the speculation.

Assuming that PowerColor's specifications are accurate, the Radeon RX 7800 XT may feature 16% fewer stream processors than the existing Radeon RX 6800 XT. However, the former is on the latest RDNA 3 microarchitecture that offers improved performance. Comparing to the widely available Radeon RX 7900 XT, the Radeon RX 7800 XT has 25% less stream processors.

Radeon RX 7800 XT Specifications

The Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT (RX 7800 XT 16G-E/OC) operates with a 2,210 MHz game clock and a 2,520 MHz boost clock in the default standard and silent mode. In OC mode, the game and boost clock speeds scale up to 2,255 MHz and 2,565 MHz, respectively. It doesn't make much sense to compare clock speeds now since the Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT comes with a factory overclock. As it looks now, custom Radeon RX 7800 XT clocks just as well as the custom Radeon RX 7900 XT that are on the market.

PowerColor's listing reveals that the Radeon RX 7800 XT has a similar memory subsystem as the Radeon RX 7900 GRE that recently came out of the oven. The 16GB of GDDR6 memory checks in at 18 Gbps with a 256-bit bus. As a result, the Radeon RX 7800 XT sports a maximum memory bandwidth of 576 GB/s, the same as the Radeon RX 7900 GRE.

The Radeon RX 7800 XT is almost identical to the Radeon RX 6800 XT in terms of the memory design. The biggest difference maker is the faster 18 Gbps memory, giving the Radeon RX 7800 XT a 12.5% higher memory bandwidth over the current Radeon RX 6800 XT.

Surprisingly, PowerColor didn't share the TDP for the Radeon RX 7800 XT. The graphics card depends on two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, with PowerColor, recommending an 800W power supply unit as the minimum. Based on the power connector layout, the Radeon RX 7800 XT probably has a TDP between 250W and 300W. The previous Radeon RX 6800 XT (300W) also has dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

The display outputs, on the other hand, mostly stayed the same. At least from PowerColor, the Radeon RX 7800 XT features three DisplayPort 2.1 outputs and one HDMI 2.1 port. The caveat is that you can only use two DisplayPort 2.1 outputs simultaneously.

In the company's quarterly earnings call, AMD recently confirmed that "new enthusiast-class" graphics cards based on RDNA 3 will launch in Q3. That means the Radeon RX 7800 XT should hit the retail market between August and September. Given PowerColor's slipup, we wouldn't be surprised if the new RDNA 3 landed this month.

The first AMD Radeon RX 7000-series RDNA 3 graphics card has appeared in the Steam Hardware Survey. We’d like to characterize this event as a rocket capsule splashing down into the ocean, but sadly for AMD, its flagship only created a tiny plop. In Steam’s July 2023 data, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX made its debut in the most popular PC video card charts at position 93.

While we know that the Steam Hardware Survey doesn’t give us any definitive data, sometimes it provides a useful guide to trends in the PC gaming market. We've been waiting on tenterhooks for the first AMD RX 7000-series GPU to appear since they first launched last December. AMD hasn’t made it easy for itself, as it released its most expensive ‘halo’ models first and only just followed up with the affordable mass-market Radeon RX 7600 this May.

It's natural for the most expensive graphics cards to sell in smaller numbers than budget, mainstream, or even high-end products. Still, the positioning of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX is 56 places behind the potent GeForce RTX 4090 (position 37). AMD’s new survey entrant currently rubs shoulders with the likes of the GTX 950 and GTX 750, which were popular in their time (2012–2016) but are now largely retired from Steam gamer rigs in 2023.

It is no secret that the Steam Hardware Survey graphics cards charts have been dominated by Nvidia for several years. AMD’s top placing at the time of writing is with its integrated “AMD Radeon Graphics” in position 12, which could be one of multiple iGPUs. There's no discrete GPU entry from AMD until we scroll down to position 23, where the venerable Radeon RX 580 is hanging on with 1.07% share of Steam user eyeballs in July 2023.

It is hard to predict when AMD might make a top-10 gaming GPU again. However, one thing the red team can take solace in is that there are no RTX 40-series Ada Lovelace GPUs in the top 10 yet, either. The green team’s best placed RTX 40-series part is the GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU at position 26, and if you want to see an Ada desktop GPU in the rankings you have to scroll down to position 34, where the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti resides with a slowly growing Steam user share of 0.65%.

It's also curious that the RX 7900 XTX doesn't show up on the Steam API pages. Normally, those are more granular and will separate out GPUs with more than a 0.01% survey share. (Note: Don't look at the Vulkan figures, as every GPU gets double counted for some reason — the percentages add up to roughly 190% instead of ~95%.) The main video card page and the API page don't always fully line up, either: The RTX 4060 Laptop GPU sits at position 24 on the DX12 list, instead of position 26.

Overall, Nvidia's RTX 40-series still only accounts for about 3.4% of the total, while the previous generation RTX 30-series continues to hold steady at nearly 30%. Also, in case you're wondering, Intel Arc GPUs have yet to make an appearance on any of the Steam HW GPU lists.

CPUs, a Different Story

Elsewhere in the Steam Hardware survey, AMD is having a much smoother and satisfying ride. According to the latest results, the popularity of AMD Ryzen CPUs has grown well this year to 33.19% of the Steam user-base this July. (Again, don't pay attention to the March data, which appears to have been broken.) AMD’s gains appear to have plateaued this summer, but one third of gaming CPUs still represents a healthy chunk of the market.

Unfortunately, there's no granular data on what precise CPUs people are using. Clock speeds have largely overlapped going back to the early 2010s, plus the mix of mobile and desktop parts creates some confusion as well. The survey does show that 6-core CPUs remain the most popular option, followed by 4-core and then 8-core solutions. 10-, 12-, 14-, and 16-core options combined account for just under 12% of the market, while 24-core chips (Core i9-13900K plus a few Threadripper models) account for 0.77% of surveyed PCs.

At ChinaJoy 2023, AMD showcased a new, limited edition version of its midrange Radeon RX 7600, a GPU just short of making the list of best graphics cards. While it's unclear if the card will ever make it out of Chinese shores, it brings vibrancy to the PC hardware ecosystem (and the GPU market in particular) that's been somewhat lacking. In PC gaming hardware, "serious black" is the name of the design game. With Party Animals, however, Sapphire was serious enough about the partnership to let that color scheme go.

The playfully yellow card has the Party Animals personality splashed all over it, and the card even includes an exclusive skin for a Party Animals companion character, Nemo (the Part Animals rendition of a Corgi). But it's still a refreshing piece of hardware in a sea of black, white, and red color combinations available in the mainstream consumer market. If you don't get heart attacks from seeing the little dog paws sticking to your GPU, that is.

This piece of GPU and marketing engineering go hand in hand. Sapphire (via ITHome) showed it knows its target market by choosing a mainstream graphics card from a performance and price ($299) perspective. Party Animals being a Unity game, it'd be a waste to market an RX 7900 XT, no matter how wild that party would get. It's not the top of our performers in our GPU hierarchy, but it is a product in particular (and more high-volume) price/performance band.

As the multi-billion dollar gaming market expands, more and more humans will be hardware consumers, and some of those would be interested in graphics accelerators that didn't look like industrial pieces of machinery or military-stealth-based designs. There may be a market for these more eclectic colors, with all the Pantone fever periodically washing across the market.

Unfortunately, for now, it seems that more colorful and less serious hardware releases are almost the exclusive benefit of the Asian market in general, and China especially. Due to the culture and age of their target market, these products also usually present a more graphically-intensive design, with anime and manga characters frequently represented. The Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 Party Animals is one such card with a more subdued color scheme. It'd almost be a shame if it didn't reach our side of the globe.

Although AMD's Radeon RX 7900 GRE was expected to be a product available exclusively in China, yesterday AMD published its recommended prices for the U.S., which means that the product could be coming to North America, too. As it turns out, the Radeon RX 7900 Golden Rabbit Edition can be obtained in Germany, but (for now?) only inside a gaming PC assembled by Memory PC. 

For now, Memory PC is AMD's exclusive partner for selling the Radeon RX 7900 GRE in Germany. Still, the board is only available as part of its AMD Ryzen and Intel Core-based gaming desktops, not separately. At this point, it is unclear whether the Radeon RX 7900 GRE will be available separately in Germany over time. Still, at least for now, it is exclusively available in PCs from only one maker. 

AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE is based on the Navi 31 GPU with 5120 stream processors enabled and running at 1.27 GHz – 2.245 GHz, a GPU configuration that is very similar to that of the Radeon RX 7900 XT and offers compute performance of 26 – 46 FP32 TFLOPS, down from 32 – 51.6 FP32 TFLOPS in case of the RX 7900 XT, which is one of the best graphics cards available today. This cut-down GPU draws considerably less power and is rated for a 260W TDP, enabling AMD's partners to offer more compact add-in boards based on this design.

Meanwhile, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE comes with a significantly cut-down memory subsystem as it only has four active memory controller dies (MCDs) and therefore comes with 64MB of Infinity Cache as well as 16GB of 18 GT/s GDDR6 memory connected to the GPU using a 256-bit memory interface. As a result, the Infinity Cache bandwidth of the RX 7900 GRE is reduced to 2.25 GB/s, whereas the memory bandwidth is reduced to 576 MB/s).

Regarding performance, we can expect Radeon RX 7900 GRE to be very close to the Radeon RX 7900 XT in workloads that depend on compute horsepower. However, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE's performance may be considerably lower in games and settings demanding high memory bandwidth. Essentially, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE will likely lag behind the Radeon RX 7900 XT in scenarios involving high resolutions and/or advanced antialiasing algorithms. 

Meanwhile, at $649, AMD's Radeon RX 7900 GRE can be a good choice for those with a  display featuring a 2560x1440 or lower resolution.

Recent rumors about a new AMD Radeon 7000 series GPU were correct. AMD launched the Radeon RX 7900 GRE graphics card at the ChinaJoy expo earlier today. Contrary to some talk that the new 'Golden Rabbit Edition' might be a China exclusive, it looks like this 16GB RDNA 3 GPU will be offered worldwide. Moreover, an AMD slide included USD pricing, so we know you should be able to grab one of these GPUs for about $649 shortly.

AMD aims the new Radeon RX 7900 GRE at 1440p resolution in "today's and tomorrow's games at maximum settings." The product pages and slides shared at ChinaJoy are designed to back up this assertion. For example, it says demanding titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Forspoken (with Raytracing) and Deadspace (with Raytracing) can all run at an average of 72fps or better with max settings at the 1440p resolution.

In its promotional slides, AMD painted the Radeon RX 7900 GRE as the successor to the RX 6800 XT. A gen-to-gen comparison is provided in the slide below.

It is an interesting comparison, and if you haven't noticed it yet, the new GPU is a little more cut down than the rumors suggested. The critical difference between the pre-launch rumor and actuality is that the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE has 80 CUs for 5120 SPs. Rumorville has indicated that 5376 SPs would be present, just like with the RX 7900 XT. AMD seems to have sought to establish a more evident difference between the pair. Check out the chart below for a comparative grasp of the newest RX 7900 variant next to its two siblings. Other cuts to the GRE are made in the memory section and the cache.

With the China-based launch, you might not be surprised that Chinese tech media have been the first to get their hands on the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE. You can nose through Chinese language reviews on sites like EXPReview today, but your browser translator probably won't translate the graphics and charts. If you check carefully, these third-party results will be an interesting counterpoint to AMD's in-house testing figures. Before purchasing, waiting for a review here or on another site you trust is probably best. One thing that is quickly evident through the tests is that the RX 7900 GRE outperforms the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, though it is about $50 more expensive.

While we wait for some more upper-midrange cards from AMD, like the Radeon RX 7700 and RX 7800, getting another RX 7900 family member is welcome today. AMD is effectively filling a gap with the Radeon RX 7900 GRE release, which helps us gauge what it might be thinking with the Radeon RX 7700 and RX 7800 models. Just over a week ago, we heard that the Radeon RX 7700 and RX 7800 may be priced at $449 and $549, respectively. That seems to work with the new GRE at its $649 price point. Which, if any of these, will earn a place in our definitive Best Graphics Cards for Gaming in 2023 roundup? We shall have to wait and see.

Partner Product Pages Start to Go Live

You may have spied PowerColor and Sapphire (and XFX) reps on stage with AMD at ChinaJoy. As we were writing, pages for partner designs are now active.

Specifically, PowerColor's Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE 16GB GDDR6 is now on-site. PowerColor says this triple 100mm fan design features a septet of 6mm heat pipes, a large copper base, and an 11+2+1 phase power supply design for smooth running. Other niceties of the Red Devil include its reinforced metal backplate, dual-BIOS, and quality PCB. RGB lighting is present too.

VideoCardz also spotted a Sapphire listing now on Chinese retailer JD.com. You can see an image of the Nitro+ SKU and its key specs in the gallery above. China prices aren't usually closely related to US prices, and let's hope so, as the Sapphire is listed at 5,499 RMB (~$770) at the time of writing.

We may have a new contender for the best graphics cards very soon. AMD is reportedly launching the Radeon RX 7900 GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition), a cutdown version of the Radeon RX 7900 XT, in the Chinese market. Two rumored launch dates are making the rounds: July 28 (via momomo_us) and August 3.

In Chinese culture, 2023 is the year of the rabbit, which is likely where the Golden Rabbit Edition moniker originated. It isn't the first time AMD has released an exclusive Radeon graphics card for the Chinese market. Back in 2020, AMD resuscitated Polaris and launched the Radeon RX 590 GME, a refreshed Radeon RX 580 with higher clock speeds, in China.

Being a Radeon RX 7900-tier SKU, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE likely features the same Navi 31 silicon AMD has used for the Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX models. As a result, the GRE variant seemingly retains the 5376-shader configuration, but will likely have the same clock speeds as the Radeon RX 7900 XT. As rumor has it, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE allegedly received a substantial cutback in the memory subsystem.

The Radeon RX 7900 GRE purportedly has 16GB of GDDR6 memory, making it the first RDNA 3 graphics card to arrive with such a configuration. It has 4GB and 8GB less memory than the Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX, respectively. The downgrade doesn't stop there. The GRE model seemingly has a memory interface reduced to 256-bit, instead of the 320-bit bus on the Radeon RX 7900 XT or the 384-bit one on the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

Fortunately, AMD didn't skimp out on the GDDR6 memory chips. They still operate at 20 Gbps, but the narrower memory interface restricts the Radeon RX 7900 GRE's memory bandwidth to 640 GB/s, 20% lower than the Radeon RX 7900 XT and 33% below the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. The card should still have 80MB of Infinity Cache, like the Radeon RX 7900 XT.

Sapphire's Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE has emerged with two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, suggesting that the GRE variant will probably have a similar 300W TDP as the Radeon RX 7900 XT. If so, a 700W power supply from a reputable brand should suffice to power the new RDNA 3 graphics card.

It's uncertain if July 28 or August 3 is the lift on review embargos or the actual market launch date. Either way, it shouldn't be long before we learn more about the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, such as the performance and pricing, since we already know it's a China-exclusive SKU.

AMD's partners are beginning to roll-out the company's Radeon RX 7900 GRE graphics cards that will be available exclusively in China and will offer a cheaper alternative to the Radeon RX 7900 XT. @wxnod has just published pictures of Sapphire's Radeon RX 7900 GRE, whereas ScrubWiki revealed its specifications, which are quite surprising.

 As it turns out, China-exclusive Radeon RX 7900 GRE is based on the Navi 31 GPU with 5376 stream processors enabled and running at 1.50 GHz – 2.40 GHz, which is the same configuration as that of the Radeon RX 7900 XT. There is one important difference though. The Radeon RX 7900 GRE disables one more memory controller die (MCD) and therefore comes with 16GB of GDDR6 memory along with a 256-bit memory interface. 

As a result, AMD's Radeon RX 7900 GRE can boast the same 32 FP32 TFLOPS – 51.6 FP32 TFLOPS (base – boost) compute horsepower as the Radeon RX 7900 XT, yet it only has 64MB of Infinity Cache (with bandwidth reduced to 2.56 GB/s) as well as 16GB of memory (with bandwidth reduced to 640 MB/s).

It remains to be seen how AMD's Radeon RX 7900 GRE performs in real-world applications, but it is logical to presume that its performance will be similar to that of the Radeon RX 7900 XT in cases where compute horsepower matters and will be noticeably lower in cases where memory bandwidth is required. In general, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE should be significantly behind the Radeon RX 7900 XT in high resolutions and/or in cases where sophisticated antialiasing algorithms are enabled.

When it comes to Sapphire's Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 GRE, this graphics board features two eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors and is rated for around 300W thermal graphics power (TGP). To cool down the rather hot Navi 31 GRE GPU, Sapphire uses a rather large 2.5-wide triple-fan cooling system, which is considerably thinner than the company uses on its Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XT.

Perhaps the most intriguing part about AMD's Radeon RX 7900 GRE is its price. It should naturally be cheaper compared to the Radeon RX 7900 XT, but for now we can only wonder how much cheaper it is.

Renowned hardware leaker All_The_Watts!! has published alleged benchmark results of AMD's upcoming performance-mainstream RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7700 and Radeon RX 7800 graphics cards in 3DMark Time Spy. The performance numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, but for what it is worth, both products show performance in line with that of their would-be competitors.  

*Leaked data

If the numbers are to be believed, AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 7700 scores 15,465 points in 3DMark Time Spy, which puts it comfortably ahead of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (which scores 12,836 on average, but achieves 15,000 on higher-end machines) and AMD's own Radeon RX 6700 XT (which hits 11,970 on average and can get to 15,087 in a high-performance PC).

As for AMD's alleged Radeon RX 7800, it scores 18,197 points on an unknown testbed. Assuming that we are dealing with a high-end machine, then the graphics card cannot even beat the Radeon RX 6800 (which scores 14,503 on average, but reaches 20,239 on a high-performance system). 

Based on the latest rumors, AMD will use its Navi 32 graphics processor with up to 3840 stream processors (60 compute units) for both Radeon RX 7700 and Radeon RX 7800-series products. Of course, exact specifications of these products are unknown since they are expected to be released in late August and many things could change.

It should be kept in mind that even if we are dealing with performance numbers obtained on pre-production samples of AMD's Radeon RX 7700 and Radeon RX 7800 graphics cards, we do not know configurations of testbeds and we have no idea how well optimized AMD's current drivers for these GPUs are. That said, it is plausible that AMD's final versions of Radeon RX 7700 and Radeon RX 7800 will be faster than the current samples. We'll of course have to wait for our own testing of AMD's upcoming performance mainstream Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards to find out if they'll earn spots on our best graphics card list.

Acer is plunging head-on into the graphics card market, so don't be surprised if you start seeing the best graphics cards come from the brand. Having voiced interest in producing Nvidia and AMD graphics cards at Computex 2023, Acer launched its first AMD Radeon graphics card in the mold of a custom Radeon RX 7600.

The Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600 utilizes the same BiFrost cooler as the Arc A770 or Arc A750 models. The blower-style cooling solution consists of a vapor chamber to transfer heat to the heatsink, where two different-sized cooling fans will dissipate the heat into your case. The blower-style fan is 70mm big and in the center of the graphics card, whereas the bigger 92mm axial fan is more to the rear. The design looks a bit wacky, but it does its job. The cooler adequately keeps the Arc A770, a 225W GPU, cool, so it shouldn't have any problems with the Radeon RX 7600, which has a 60W lower TDP.

The Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600 has a dual-slot design, measuring 10.5 x 4.6 inches (267 x 117.75 mm). The dimensions are identical to the Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770, meaning Acer likely recycled the entire cooler for the Radeon RX 7600. Acer's custom model is significantly longer than AMD's reference Radeon RX 7600, which has a footprint of 8.1 x 4.5 inches (205 x 115 mm). Therefore, the Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600 may be a problem for small-form-factor (SFF) cases that are tight on spacing.

Acer Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600 Specifications

The Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600 respects AMD's reference Radeon RX 7600 specifications. The graphics card runs with a 2,250 MHz game clock and a 2,655 MHz boost clock. Despite identical clock speeds, Acer rates the Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600 with a 170W TDP, 5W higher than the reference model.

On the other hand, the Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600 OC arrives with a small factory overclock. Acer pushed the graphics card's game clock to 2,320 MHz and the boost clock to 2,725 MHz, a mere 3% improvement that probably won't be noticeable in real-world usage. This SKU has a 180W TDP, 15W more than the vanilla Radeon RX 7600.

Neither custom models stray too far from the Radeon RX 7600's 165W TDP, so the power connector design and requirements remain the same. A single 8-pin PCIe power connector power the Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600, and a 550W power supply is the minimum capacity recommended for stable operation.

Although the Radeon RX 7600 supports the DisplayPort 2.1 standard, AMD gives its AIB partners complete freedom to fiddle with the connector concerning their designs. Acer opted to implement DisplayPort 1.4 on the Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600. The graphics card offers one HDMI 2.1 port and three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs. The latter may be an issue if you plan to use the graphics card for higher resolutions and refresh rates. Now, we don't expect you to game at 8K with the Radeon RX 7600 because only a madman would do so. Maybe some of you would use it for a productivity PC.

Acer has launched the Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600 and Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600 OC in Taiwan for $274 and $290, respectively. It's unknown if the U.S. MSRP will differ. Custom Radeon RX 7600 graphics cards span from $257 to $339, so Acer's models are in the middle of the price spectrum.

GPD has announced pricing of its GPD G1 external graphics solution based on AMD's Radeon RX 7600M XT GPU. Traditionally, eGFX solutions are not cheap and the G1 is no different, coming in at between $655 - $795 (via NotebookCheck). Meanwhile, it is small, has an Oculink and USB4 connections and is compatible with virtually all modern systems with Thunderbolt 3/4 or USB 4 connectors. Compatibility also extends to GPD's upcoming Win Max 2 miniature laptop.

GPD's G1 comes with AMD's RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7600M XT mobile graphics processor. The Radeon RX 7600M XT comes with 2048 stream processors, 32MB Infinity Cache, 8GB of GDDR6 memory, and promises to offer up to 21.4 FP32 TFLOPS. This performance is comparable with desktop cards such as Nvidia's RTX 3060 Ti or Radeon RX 6800 XT, which are among the best graphics cards available. Performance of modern graphics solutions heavily depends on cooling, so it remains to be seen how fast the G1 will be when gaming.

In addition, the enclosure has multiple ports, including two DisplayPort 1.4a, one HDMI 2.1, an SD 4.0 card reader, three USB 3.2 Type-A, one Oculink (SFF-8612) connector, and one USB 4 (Type-C) port. The unit packs an internal 240W GaN power supply, so it is relatively small — at 225 x 111 x 29.8 mm — but is quite heavy at 0.92 kilograms.

GPD G1's connectivity options remain its most intriguing feature. It incorporates a USB4 interface, which is of course highly prevalent due to its compatibility with a broad range of existing PCs equipped with Thunderbolt or USB4 ports. Interestingly, it also includes an Oculink connector, which is uncommon on laptops. Notably, when linked via an Oculink cable, the GPD G1 deactivates USB Type-A ports and the SD slot, as the Oculink is intended solely to support the PCIe protocol. Conversely, since USB4 provides superior bandwidth and additional functionalities, the majority of GPD G1 users are expected to leverage this connection. 

Another wrinkle about Oculink is that it is a cabling solution that supports four PCIe 3.0 lanes and offers a maximum bandwidth of 32 GT/s, comparable to that of Thunderbolt 3/4 and USB 4. However, it uses SFF-8612 and SFF-8611 connectors that are not commonly found on PCs, especially in the mobile PC space.

GPD plans to start offering its G1 eGPU solution for $655 via Indiegogo. The product is expected to be available starting from July 17 2023.

Remember that crowdfunding a project is not a guarantee of receiving a finished product. Backing a crowdfunded project is akin to an investment; you believe in the project and want it to succeed. You are not purchasing a retail product.

In retail, the unit will cost $795. Interestingly, owners of the Win Max 2 will have to buy their Oculink cable separately for $42. 

AMD has released a new graphics driver which fixes high idle power issues observed by Radeon RX 7000 users. AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 23.7.1, which supports graphics cards from the Radeon RX 400 Series and newer, addresses an unusual high-power usage case in Windows, but at this stage we aren't sure if it has covered all incidences.

We first reported on the headlining high idle power on RDNA 3 cards issue last December. In our story about a fix for RX 7900 XT(X) power consumption - particularly addressing video playback efficiency on these powerful cards - we welcomed the driver update. However, that driver release came with AMD's first admission that “high idle power has situationally been observed when using select high resolution and high refresh rate displays.” It turns out his bug affects the whole RX 7000 family, which has only recently grown beyond the high-end with the release of the Radeon RX 7600.

The release notes features a bullet point which provides the scope of the idle power fix provided by the Adrenalin Edition 23.7.1 driver. We are sure this fix will be warmly welcomed by users of AMD's newest architecture, as it should reduce the amount of wasted electricity.

Other RDNA 3 architecture bug fixes in this latest Radeon driver include one which causes suboptimal performance or occasional stuttering in VR games and applications. An RX 7900 XTX specific fix has also been implemented to eliminate intermittent corruption when playing WWE 2K23.

The last two fixes are for a wider audience. A crashing and driver timeout issue which annoyed DaVinci Resolve Studio users has been quashed. Lastly, intermittent corruption observed when switching windows while playing Nioh 2 has been fixed. AMD mentions this Nioh 2 bug affected multiple Radeon products including the RX 6800 XT.

There is only one new feature mentioned by the official Adrenalin Edition 23.7.1 release notes. AMD has implemented support for additional Vulkan extensions. If any of your favorite games / apps use the Vulkan API you may appreciate these additions.

AMD's list of remaining known issues outguns the list of fixes, but at least we know the red team developers are working on these specific annoying wrinkles.

Lastly, we must note that AMD has temporarily disabled the 'Factory Reset' driver install feature. Back in March, we reported on the bricked Windows installs that this driver install option was precipitating. There is a workaround for now; AMD recommends users run its AMD Cleanup Utility if they want / need to start afresh.

We reviewed our first AMD Radeon RX 7600 graphics card only a month ago. At the time, we noted that AMD and its AIB partners had dropped the official MSRP of 'standard' models from $299 to $269. Today, we can see that these cards have a new starting price of $249 on Amazon. We think a combination of this GPU, having had a month to 'bed in' to the market, and the imminent release of the GeForce RTX 4060 (non-Ti), which will vie for a spot on the list of best graphics cards, will have significantly influenced the price drop.

The best-priced Radeon RX 7600 model we see on Amazon today is from MSI. We haven't had an MSI 'Mech' product in the labs for a while, but it is well known that this is a value line with cheaper / lighter cooling assemblies than other MSI models like the Gaming X and Suprim lines.

The MSI Radeon RX 7600 Mech 2x Classic is a dual-fan card, like the reference model, and leverages the following cooling technologies: Torx Fan 3.0, Zero Frozr, Core Pipe, and Thermal Padding. It is good to see a protective 'brushed' backplate at a price, but it is probably plastic (not metal) if inherited from other Mech models. Amazon's listing says the GPU clock speed is 2,695 GHz, but it will be 2,695 MHz. The AMD reference model we reviewed had a GPU boost clock speed of 2,625 MHz, just 2.6% slower than the MSI.

The RX 7600 Mech 2x has a code for Resident Evil 4, a nice bonus. However, it will take a month until Amazon delivers, which is a long wait time.

Faster delivery of a below MSRP Radeon RX 7600 graphics card can be had for a little bit more cash at the time of writing. We note an XFX Speedster SWFT210 Radeon RX 7600 graphics card is currently listed at $257.99 on Amazon, with a delivery date in the first week of July. RE4 is also free with this model. However, for faster GPU thirst satisfaction, you must pay MSRP (i.e., $269) for a card with rapid delivery.

In the intro, we put these improved prices in the perspective of the impending launch of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060. We know that the green team's most budget-minded card so far is supposed to debut at $299, but there may already be some pressure on that pricing decision.

Checking the 1080p Rasterization Ultra gaming scores of the RX 7600 from our review, the AMD RDNA 3 card was 14.4% faster than the RTX 3060. According to Nvidia's newest tease of RTX 4060 performance, the new card will be just 20% faster than its predecessor "without frame gen" technologies turned on. This hints at only a slight 1080p Rasterization Ultra performance benefit to the RTX 4060 over the recently launched Radeon RX 7600. However, the RTX 4060 cards will be asking a ~$50 premium at launch for that slight advantage.

We will, of course, have a better picture of the GeForce RTX 4060 performance and, thus, more precise comparisons with the Radeon RX 7600 later in the week. We will also be updating our extensive GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy 2023 data, covering 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, so you can see where the cards end up sitting at your regular monitor resolution.

Right now on Amazon US, there are some highly attractive deals on the AMD Radeon flagship graphics cards. An AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX can be had for as little as $881.99 using an instant discount coupon. This graphics card, based on the AMD RDNA 3 architecture, ranks highly in our list of the best graphics cards and sits very close to the top of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy.

The hard to resist headlining offer is on the XFX Speedster MERC310 AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX Black. If you click through, you can see this model is listed at 5% off, nominally $979.99 on the XFX store on Amazon. However, a quick click of the $98 discount coupon (you may need to click on the list of available options) brings down the price to $881.99. Customers get free delivery and can apply for the free Resident Evil 4 code as well.

If you want other options, a little more cash can instead get you a Sapphire model. On the Sapphire Technology Store on Amazon you can see listed a Sapphire 11322-02-20G Pulse AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX. The base price reads $999.99, but a quick coupon click delivers a $100 discount, bringing the total to just under $900. That's $20 more than the XFX card, but both of these may sell out.

The Sapphire card also qualifies for Prime shipping, which means you can get it in one or two days. The XFX seems to only allow slower shipping, with an ETA of next week. There's also a free code for Resident Evil 4 with the purchase of this GPU.

Both of the graphics cards above come with a factory overclock, though you can tweak them further if you like. The XFX GPU has a default boost clock of 2,615 MHz, while the Sapphire has a boost clock of is 2,525 MHz. The reference boost clock for AMD's GPU is 2,500 MHz.

Bang-for-the-Buck Considerations

We maintain a performance and street pricing table in our Best GPUs for Gaming feature. However, discount coupons are tricky to keep an eye on, as they come and go. Let's consider the average 4K FPS figures achieved by some top-end GPUs vs their street price for this exercise.

• AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX: 4K FPS average of 56.3FPS, best online price of $882, FPS/$ is 0.0638.
  
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090: 4K FPS average of 84.8FPS, best Amazon price of $1,599, FPS/$ is 0.0530.
  
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti: 4K FPS average of 50.0FPS, best Amazon price of $799, FPS/$ is 0.0626.

While there's news swirling around Nvidia's upcoming RTX 4060 (non-Ti) debuting at some silly pricing in Europe — as high as €499 ($550) for an Asus ROG Strix model — we're seeing established top-tier cards with impressive discounts right now. Moreover, previous gen gems like the Radeon RX 6800 XT can now be found for as little as $467 in the US.

The best values will inevitably be on lower priced GPUs, but with the current discounts, the RX 7900 XTX moves up the ladder. If you've been looking at AMD's halo 7000-series GPU, the latest discounts might be the best we'll see in the near term.

AMD's latest Radeon RX 7600 was just a hairline from making the list of best graphics cards — a price cut to bring it closer to the RX 6650 XT would help. So when challenged by a Twitter user to compare the Radeon RX 7600 to its rivals, Sasa Marinkovic, senior director of gaming marketing at AMD, tweeted a chart where the Radeon RX 7600 dominates the GeForce RTX 3060. However, the cheeky comparison was against the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB, a cut-down version of the original, rather than the far more common GeForce RTX 3060 (12GB).

Marinkovic's chart showed that the Radeon RX 7600 delivered, on average, up to 34% faster performance than the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB at 1080p (1920x1080) and maximum settings. The Radeon RX 7600 was up to 61% in some titles, such as Borderlands 3. While we don't think AMD's results are inaccurate, we believe the chipmaker should have made the comparison with the 12GB RTX 3060 and not a hampered variant that no sane person would buy.

Besides the difference in memory capacity (8GB vs. 12GB), the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB has a narrower memory interface. Nvidia reduced the original 192-bit bus to 128-bit on the 8GB model, so the memory bandwidth took a substantial hit. The trimmed-down memory interface diminished the bandwidth by 33% on the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB.

The GeForce RTX 3060 8GB was basically a stealth release, similar to the GeForce RTX 3080 12GB, except it was a considerably less desirable graphics card. While we never had the opportunity to get the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB in our lab for testing, multiple publications have corroborated that it's approximately 15% slower than the regular GeForce RTX 3060 with 12GB of memory.

That means the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB lands about midway between the 12GB card and the GeForce RTX 3050. That in itself isn't the problem. The real deal killer is that the 3060 8GB launched at the same price as the 12GB card. These days, it's about $20 cheaper, but it's still not a popular card. The RTX 3060 12GB starts at $279, RTX 3060 8GB at $259, and RTX 3050 at $219.

The Radeon RX 7600 is faster than the GeForce RTX 3060, but only in rasterization performance. Nvidia still has an edge in ray tracing performance. By our benchmarks, the Radeon RX 7600 offers 17% higher rasterization performance than the GeForce RTX 3060 at 1080p with ultra settings. However, the Radeon RX 7600 is up to 22% slower in ray tracing performance. The only reason AMD used the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB for comparison was to make the Radeon RX 7600 look better. Logically, a 34% delta looks way more compelling than 17%.

It's also worth pointing out that AMD doesn't factor in DLSS performance. While FSR 2.0 can often deliver similar performance gains for AMD GPUs, we've seen numerous cases (most recently in Diablo IV and Lord of the Rings: Gollum) where FSR 2.0 results in far blurrier images than DLSS. DLSS support is also more widespread than FSR 2.0 support.

There were many doubts about the Radeon RX 7600 before the graphics card's launch. Many users were concerned about whether the Radeon RX 7600 could offer a worthwhile performance improvement over the existing Radeon RX 6650 XT. The Navi 33-based graphics card ended up beating its predecessor by an insignificant margin, with a higher price and similar power draw. That explains why AMD hasn't posted any data comparing the Radeon RX 7600 to the Radeon RX 6650 XT.

The Radeon RX 6650 XT is why the Radeon RX 7600 doesn't have a seat around the best graphics card table. The Radeon RX 7600 launched at $269, and with custom Radeon RX 6650 XT models retailing for as low as $229, it's hard to justify the $40 difference when the Radeon RX 7600 offers a minimal performance uplift. You do get AV1 encoding support, but it's not a particularly exciting package.

As we said in our review, the RX 7600 isn't a terrible graphics card by any stretch, but it costs more than similarly performing AMD GPUs that were already available. As long as supplies and pricing of the RX 6600-class GPUs dominate the value graphics card sector, the 7600 will have a tough time attracting potential buyers.

If you are in the market for a new AMD Radeon GPU or Ryzen CPU, now might be the best time to make the plunge. AMD has launched a new game bundle that gives gamers a free copy of Resident Evil 4 when purchasing a qualifying Radeon RX 6000 or RX 7000 series desktop GPU or a laptop equipped with the same generation GPUs. You can also get a $50 discount on the Ryzen 9 7900X3D. 

On top of this, AMD is also extending its Star Wars Jedi: Survivor CPU bundle to June 30th, giving you the opportunity to get two free AAA games with the purchase of a qualifying Ryzen CPU and Radeon GPU.

As an extension of the company's current CPU deals, AMD is also offering a $50 discount on its Ryzen 9 7900X3D 12-core CPU, with game-enhancing 3D-VCache technology. If you take full advantage of AMD's game bundles and CPU discounts present right now, you can get up to $180 in value with the two games, in conjunction with the 7900X3D discount.

The Jedi: Survivor bundle will come with AMD's entire lineup of current Ryzen 7000 and 7000 X3D CPUs, including the Ryzen 5 7600 series, 7700 series, 7900 series, as well as the 3D-VCache equipped 7800X3D, 7900X3D, and 7950X3D. 

To get in on AMD's new Resident Evil 4 bundle you will need to buy one of AMD's qualifying desktop GPUs, or gaming laptops equipped with a qualified mobile GPU. Qualified products include the following: RX 6600S, RX 6650 XT, RX 6700M, RX 6700, RX 6700 XT, RX 6750 XT, RX 6800, RX 6800S, RX 6850M XT, RX 6800 XT, RX 6900 XT, RX 6950 XT, RX 7600, RX 7600M XT, RX 7600S, RX 7700S, RX 7900 XT, and RX 7900 XTX.

The Resident Evil 4 version in AMD's new bundle, is the latest remake of the 2005 game that recently came out in March 2023. The game is a story-driven survivor-horror action game that takes you on a wild adventure to save the president's kidnapped daughter from a secluded European village full of unusual locals.

All of AMD's current bundles and discounts will be live for the next 25 to 26 days. The Ryzen 9 7900X3D and Resident Evil 4 GPU bundle will be available until July 1st. The Star Wars Jedi: Survivor CPU bundle will be available until June 30th.

Right now at Newegg, users can purchase the MSI Mech Radeon RX 6750 XT GPU for one of its best prices to date. It usually goes for around $389 but right now it’s marked down to $329. It includes a $10 rebate card that will take the price down to $319.

This graphics card lands as a mid to upper-mid-range GPU performance-wise in our GPU hierarchy tests. We tested cards in this series along with newly released GPUs (for example, RTX 4090, etc) as well as legacy graphics cards (GTX 980, etc). Most other RX 6750 XT 12GB graphics cards cost around $400 so this deal is quite worth a look compared to others like it on the market.

The MSI Mech Radeon RX 6750 XT GPU first debuted in May of 2022. It’s part of the AMD Radeon RX 6000 series and comes with two fans for cooling. It uses 12GB of GDDR6 and is PCIe 4.0 compatible.

Users can expect performance speeds around 2512 MHz with 2618 MHz being reachable with boost clock enabled. There are three DisplayPort 1.4 ports available as well as one HDMI 2.1 port. The MSI Mech Radeon RX 6750 XT GPU can output a maximum resolution of 7680 x 4320px.

Visit the MSI Mech Radeon RX 6750 XT GPU product page at Newegg for more details and purchase options. Don’t forget to use the $10 rebate card to redeem the full offer. It’s not clear for how long the discount will be made available.

AMD's new Radeon RX 7600 officially launches today, starting at $269. If you're interested in buying one, we've compiled a list of all the AIB partner cards that are currently available. This launch has turned out to be very different from other AMD (and Nvidia) launches, with almost none of the RX 7600 models appearing in advance on AIB partner websites, making it difficult to figure out what cards are coming out and when. Many graphics card manufacturers are also revealing just a single RX 7600 SKU for now, suggesting this was a rushed launch.

The RX 7600 is now available at Amazon, Newegg, Best Buy, and other retailers. All the usual brands are present, including Gigabyte, Sapphire, XFX, PowerColor, MSI, Asus, and ASRock — though some models may already be sold out. We've updated our listings and links for your convenience.

There are plenty of cards starting at AMD's base $269.99 MSRP. The most expensive model we've seen so far comes from Asus, with the ROG Strix card priced at $339.99. Considering this is a midrange GPU and there are plenty of faster options available for under $350 (like the RX 6700 XT), we wouldn't suggest buying a higher cost card unless you really go in for the excessive RGB bling.

To quickly recap, the RX 7600 is AMD's new mainstream GPU for the sub-$300 price bracket, offering RX 6650 XT-like performance based on our testing. The RX 7600 features the RDNA 3 architecture, 2048 cores, 32 CUs, 64 AI cores, 32 Ray Accelerators, a boost clock of 2625MHz, 32MB of Infinity Cache, and 288 GBps of memory bandwidth operating on a 128-bit wide bus. It also has AV1 encoding/decoding hardware support and DisplayPort 2.1 outputs.

Here's the shortlist, in alphabetical order, but we have pictures and further descriptions below:

• $269: ASRock RX 7600 Challenger (Newegg)
• $289: ASRock RX 7600 Phantom Gaming OC (Newegg)
• $289: ASRock RX 7600 Steel Legend (Newegg)
• $279: Asus RX 7600 Dual OC (Amazon, Newegg)
• $339: Asus RX 7600 ROG Strix OC (Newegg)
• $269: Gigabyte RX 7600 Gaming OC 8G (Newegg, $279 at Best Buy)
• $269: MSI RX 7600 Mech 2X OC (Newegg, $304 at Amazon)
• $269: PowerColor RX 7600 Fighter (Amazon, Newegg)
• $289: PowerColor RX 7600 Hellhound (Newegg, $457 at Amazon)
• $269: Sapphire RX 7600 Pulse (Amazon, Newegg)
• $269: XFX RX 7600 QICK308 (Newegg, $279 at Best Buy)
• $269: XFX RX 7600 SWFT210 (Best Buy, Newegg)

ASRock Radeon RX 7600

ASRock has three RX 7600 models out on the market right now, including two triple-fan SKUs and a dual-fan SKU. The triple-fan models are rather large for this GPU, and appear to be the same base design but with a different shroud on the Steel Legend variant. They're 305mm long with a 2.4-slot thickness and cost $20 extra, though they come factory overclocked. The dual-fan version stays with a compact design like most other RX 7600 models.

$269: ASRock RX 7600 Challenger (Newegg)
$289: ASRock RX 7600 Phantom Gaming OC (Newegg)
$289: ASRock RX 7600 Steel Legend (Newegg)

Asus Radeon RX 7600

Asus currently has two variants of the RX 7600, both dual-fan solutions. The base model Dual OC is a no-frills design, while the ROG Strix has RGB lighting and costs $70 more. It's currently out of stock at Newegg.

$279: Asus RX 7600 Dual OC (Amazon, Newegg)
$339: Asus RX 7600 ROG Strix OC (Newegg)

Gigabyte Radeon RX 7600

For now, Gigabyte only has one RX 7600 SKU available to see on its website, a factory overclocked triple-fan Gaming card, with black and silver accents — similar to that of Gigabyte's other "Gaming" branded graphics cards.

$269: Gigabyte RX 7600 Gaming OC 8G (Newegg, $279 at Best Buy)

MSI Radeon RX 7600

Currently, MSI also has one RX 7600 SKU available, the RX 7600 Mech 2X. It's a relatively compact two-slot dual-fan graphics card with a black and silver theme.

$269: MSI RX 7600 Mech 2X OC (Newegg, $304 at Amazon)

PowerColor Radeon RX 7600

PowerColor has two RX 7600 models available. The base model Fighter features a compact dual-fan design with no RGB lighting or extras. The Hellhound meanwhile has a 2695 MHz boost clock and comes with blue LED fans with a 2.2-slot width. (It's currently backordered on Newegg, while the Amazon price is a seriously inflated third-party seller.)

$269: PowerColor RX 7600 Fighter (Amazon, Newegg)
$289: PowerColor RX 7600 Hellhound (Newegg, $457 at Amazon)

Sapphire RX 7600

Like Gigabyte and MSI, Sapphire has only prepared one 7600 SKU at this time, the RX 7600 Pulse with two fans and a red and black paint scheme. It's running reference clocks as well.

$269: Sapphire RX 7600 Pulse (Amazon, Newegg)

XFX Radeon RX 7600

Rounding out the list, XFX has two RX 7600 graphics cards, the triple-fan QICK308 and dual-fan SWFT210. The numbers (308 and 210) refer to the length of the card, if you're wondering. Both cards have stealthy matte black finishes that would go well with any computer build.

$269: XFX RX 7600 QICK308 (Newegg, $279 at Best Buy)
$269: XFX RX 7600 SWFT210 (Best Buy, Newegg)

The Radeon RX 7600 will reportedly arrive on May 25 to rival the best graphics cards. Much of the RDNA 3 graphics card's specifications have leaked; however, Argentine news outlet HD Tecnología has shared a specification table to help fill out some blanks. While the specifications look accurate, some salt is recommended when digesting the information.

By now, it's pretty much an open secret that AMD will use the Navi 33 silicon to power the Radeon RX 7600. Navi 33, manufactured at TSMC with the 6nm process node, is the same silicon inside some of AMD's mobile RDNA 3 graphics cards, such as the Radeon RX 7600M or Radeon RX 7700S. In addition, it's a relatively small die measuring 204 mm², making it 14% smaller than Navi 23 inside the Radeon RX 6600. Nonetheless, Navi 33 houses roughly 20% more transistors than Navi 23.

Like its predecessor, the Radeon RX 7600 supports the PCIe 4.0 standard. While there's a PCIe 4.0 x16 connector on the graphics card, it's limited to x8 electrically. Leaked renders have revealed the reference Radeon RX 7600 with a compact design that measures less than 21cm, turning the graphics card into a solid option for compact systems.

The Radeon RX 7600 will leverage the full Navi 33 die. Therefore, the graphics card will have 32 Compute Units or 2,048 Stream Processors. By comparison, that's 14% more than the Radeon RX 6600. That also includes 14% more Ray Accelerators on the Radeon RX 7600. RDNA 2 didn't have AI accelerators, so there's no comparison in that aspect.

Regarding clock speeds, the reference Radeon RX 7600 has a 2,250 MHz game clock and a 2,625 MHz boost clock. That's a 10% and 5% increase, respectively, over the Radeon RX 6600. Remember that single-precision (FP32) and half-precision (FP16) numbers are horrible metrics for measuring gaming performance. To have a general idea of the generation-over-generation uplift, the Radeon RX 7600 delivers close to 3X higher FP32 and FP16 performance than the Radeon RX 6600. 

Leaked generic benchmarks have proven that the Radeon RX 7600 was up to 34% faster than the Radeon RX 6600. However, the same Radeon RX 7600 only delivered between 5% to 16% higher performance than the Radeon RX 6650 XT. The Radeon RX 7600 should perform similarly to the GeForce RTX 4060 in rasterization performance but a few steps behind Nvidia's graphics card when it comes to ray tracing. Nonetheless, waiting for our review to corroborate the numbers would be best.

AMD Radeon RX 7600 Specifications

*Specifications are unconfirmed.

Regarding memory, the Radeon RX 7600 maintains the usage of GDDR6 memory and the 128-bit memory interface used on the Radeon RX 6600. However, AMD outfitted the Radeon RX 7600 with 18 Gbps memory chips instead of the 14 Gbps variant on the Radeon RX 6600. The Radeon RX 7600 outputs a maximum theoretical memory bandwidth of up to 288 GB/s, 29% more than the Radeon RX 6600.

The Radeon RX 7600 and Radeon RX 6600 have the same 32MB of Infinity Cache, but the one on the Radeon RX 7600 is a 2nd Gen that reportedly offers higher gaming performance. As a result, the effective memory bandwidth on the Radeon RX 7600, when factoring in the Infinity Cache, is only 16% higher than the Radeon RX 6600.

The Radeon RX 7600 reportedly has a 165W TBP, representing a 25% increase over the Radeon RX 6600. It's a noticeable increase but shouldn't affect the power design of the graphics card. A single 8-pin PCIe power connector is sufficient for external power, even in the case of heavy-overclocked factory models.

Apparently, the only thing we don't know about the Radeon RX 7600 is the MSRP. Canada Computers & Electronics had previously listed a couple of custom Radeon Rx 7600 graphics cards but quickly took down the listings. However, the Canadian retailer had the Gigabyte Radeon RX 76600 8GB Gaming OC, XFX Speedster SWFT 210 AMD Radeon RX 7600 Core, and XFX Speedster QICK 308 AMD Radeon RX 7600 Black up for $315, $311, and $304, respectively. Although Canadian pricing for hardware is typically higher, the price tags are very close to the GeForce RTX 4060's $299 MSRP. Therefore, it's plausible that AMD could launch the Radeon RX 7600 at the same MSRP as its competitor, while custom models carry a small premium.

Neither the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti nor the Radeon RX 7600 is out yet, so it's too early to tell whether they have what it takes to fight for a spot on the list of best graphics cards. However, the upcoming graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD are already in reviewers' hands. Therefore, some benchmarks are already floating around before the reviews are published.

VideoCardz has collected different results from numerous reviewers for the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB and the Radeon RX 7600. The publication calculated the average of the collected data. However, before we approach the leaked benchmarks, it should be pointed out that the reviewers were using pre-launch GeForce drivers for the press. As a result, performance will likely vary when Nvidia and AMD release a public driver.

Generic benchmarks, like 3DMark, don't always tell the entire story. So, please treat the results with some caution. Furthermore, the news outlet didn't specify whether the graphics cards were reference models or custom models with factory overclocks. The results include the old-school Fire Strike benchmark with different settings and some of the more recent benchmarks like Time Spy and Speed Way.

GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, Radeon RX 7600 Benchmarks

The results revealed that the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti was clearly superior to the Radeon RX 7600. The AD104 graphics card outperformed its Navi 33 rival by 25% in Time Spy, 24% in Time Spy Extreme, and 63% in Speed Way. On the other hand, the Radeon RX 7600 was slower than the last-generation GeForce RTX 3060 Ti.

However, the Radeon RX 7600 did outperform the GeForce RTX 3060. The former exhibited 22% and 24% higher Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme scores, respectively. The GeForce RTX 3060 defeated the Radeon RX 7600 by 11% in Speed Way.

Compared to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, the Radeon RX 7600 achieved 7%, 11%, and 16% higher scores in Time Spy, Time Spy Extreme, and Speed Way, respectively.

The Fire Strike results reinforced what we saw with the previous benchmarks. The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti was faster than the Radeon RX 7600. Although, on this occasion, the margins weren't as significant. Nvidia's graphics card posted 9% higher scores than Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme, respectively. Meanwhile, the delta in Fire Strike Ultra was only 3%.

The Radeon RX 7600 got its revenge on the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti in Fire Strike. The AMD graphics card was 5% faster in Fire Strike and 1% faster in Fire Strike Extreme. Meanwhile, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti only beat the Radeon RX 7600 by 2% in Fire Strike Ultra.

As expected, the performance difference between the Radeon RX 7600 and Radeon RX 6650 XT was lower. However, the former scored 5% higher in Fire Strike and Fire Strike Ultra and up to 8% in Fire Strike Extreme.

It's evident that the Radeon RX 7600 is no match for the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. The direct rival for the Radeon RX 7600 should be the GeForce RTX 4060, which won't be available until July, so we may have to sit tight for a while before we see benchmarks for Nvidia's graphics card. It'll be interesting to see which graphics card offers better pure performance and how much DLSS and FSR will weigh in the fight.

Given the rumored specifications, it's uncertain whether AMD's Radeon RX 7600 can compete with the best graphics cards. But, at least, the looming graphics card will arrive in a compact form factor, according to new renders courtesy of VideoCardz.

Apparently, AMD has taken great interest in the Radeon RX 7600, reportedly producing a reference design for the Navi 33-based graphics card. Whether the chipmaker's partners are on board with the MBA (made by AMD) design is unknown. But one thing's for sure, the Radeon RX 7600 MBA may be one of the most compact reference graphics cards from AMD's oven.

The Radeon RX 7600 MBA comes in a standard dual-slot design with two cooling fans. The graphics card features a no-frills exterior with zero RGB lighting and a black shroud. The Radeon RX 7600 MBA, as short as it looks, comes with a matching backplate. As a result, the only show of colors on the graphics card comes in the shape of the four small, triangular shapes on the backplate.

The graphics card's dimensions remain a mystery, but VideoCardz claims it's shorter than 21cm. It's not mini-ITX caliber, but it's very close. Your typical mini-ITX graphics card is around 17cm long. Nonetheless, the Radeon RX 7600 MBA will easily fit nicely into small-form-factor (SFF) systems.

The Radeon RX 7600 comes with a standard PCIe 4.0 x16 connector, limited to x8 operation electrically. Sticking with such a connection on graphics cards in this category is common practice. For example, the previous Radeon RX 6600 and even Nvidia's recently announced GeForce RTX 4060 and GeForce RTX 4060 Ti utilize the same interface.

The Radeon RX 7600 will take advantage of AMD's Navi 33 silicon, which is rumored to use a different process node than the Navi 31 die that powers the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT. TSMC manufactures Navi 31 for AMD on the foundry's 5nm process node. On the contrary, Navi 33 reportedly hails from the 6nm process node.

The Radeon RX 7600 likely arrives with 2,048 Stream Processors (SPs) with 8GB of GDDR6 memory and a 128-bit memory interface. The specifications alone tell us that the Radeon RX 7600 is far from a gaming monster. However, the graphics card should suffice for 1080p gaming. It'll be interesting to see how much faster than Radeon RX 7600 is compared to the Radeon RX 6650 XT.

The leaked renders show the Radeon RX 7600 with a single 8-pin power connector, so it's not a power-demanding graphics card. As for video outputs, the Radeon RX 7600 appears to offer three DisplayPort 2.1 outputs and one HDMI 2.1 port.

Despite all the leaks and rumors, the MSRP for the Radeon RX 7600 is still a mystery. Nvidia launched the GeForce RTX 4060 for $299, so AMD must match the pricing or go lower to be competitive unless the Radeon RX 7600 blows the competition away. The Radeon RX 7600 is rumored to hit the market on May 25, just one day behind Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, so it won't be long before we see how the Navi 33-powered graphics card stacks up against its rivals.

Sapphire added a new Radeon RX 7900 XT, one of the best graphics cards, to the company's lineup. The Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L arrives with a somewhat revamped exterior and cooling system.

The Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L features a similar design to the Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X available in the U.S. market. However, there are some significant changes with the former. The Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L lacks the Vapor-X moniker, meaning the graphics card doesn't leverage Sapphire's vapor chamber to cool the GPU and memory. Instead, the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L utilizes a standard copper base plate. As a result, it doesn't provide the same thermal performance, but it's cheaper, so Sapphire can reduce the overall product cost.

The different cooling system doesn't affect the dimensions of the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L. It's still a 3.5-slot monster that measures 320 mm long, just like the flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X.

Sapphire has also cut some corners with the RGB design. For example, the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L only has one RGB strip on the shroud, whereas the Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X has two. However, it doesn't affect the appeal of the graphics card since the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L still looks very attractive, even without the extra RGB lighting.

The Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L has the same 2,450 MHz boost clock speed as the Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT. The new cut-down variant offers marginally lower performance than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X. The margin isn't that significant, though, since the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L only has a 4% lower boost clock than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X.

The variation in the cooler and clock speeds are the only aspects that separate the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L from Sapphire's other models. The graphics card still depends on three 8-pin PCIe power connectors for external power and offers three DisplayPort 2.1 outputs and one HDMI 2.1 port for connecting displays.

Sapphire's cost-cutting measures allow the vendor to bring the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L's pricing down to the $899 MSRP. Chinese news outlet Expreview spotted the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L for $898.88 on JD.com. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X sells for $970.23 in China. That's a $71.35 difference, which essentially tells us that it's what the extra RGB strip and vapor chamber cost.

The very first details about AMD's new mainstream Radeon RX 7600 graphics card first emerged last week when several stores in Asia began to offer the product both in retail and on the marketplace. VideoCardz today published a GPU-Z screenshot that reaffirms the general specifications of the device and uncovers some additional bits of info. As with all leaks, take the information with a grain of salt.

AMD's Radeon RX 7600 is based on the company's Navi 32 XL graphics processor with 32 compute units or 2048 stream processors mated with 128 texture units and 32 raster operating units that can burst from the default 2250 MHz game clock all the way to 2655 MHz, at least according to the GPU-z screenshot. The GPU has a 128-bit GDDR6 memory interface that offers a bandwidth of 288GB/s as well as a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface to connect to the host. As for the card, it carries 8GB of memory.

In real-world scenarios, AMD's Radeon RX 7600 is said to be able to overclock itself to 2.85 GHz, which translates into 23.3 FP32 TFLOPS, which is in line with compute throughput of Radeon RX 6900 XT, one of the best graphics cards around. Meanwhile, compute throughput of AMD's RDNA 3 architecture-based GPUs does not directly transform into real-world gaming performance, so we do not expect the Radeon RX 7600 to beat the previous-generation flagship offering.  

VideoCardz stresses that the GPU-z software currently does not officially support the retail Radeon RX 7600 graphics cards. Meanwhile, it does support and can recognize AMD's Navi 33 GPU as it has to correctly recognize Radeon RX 7700/7600 mobile series. Thus, while the software might fail to identify the card, it still manages to display the accurate GPU specifications, the website concludes.

We would still add that since the information comes from unofficial channels, one should take it with precaution. Yet, keeping in mind that AMD and its partners are rumored to start selling their Radeon RX 7600 products next week, the probability that the current leaks are wildly inaccurate is extremely low.

Authentic-looking product renders of a Sapphire-branded Radeon RX 7600 have leaked. Meanwhile, a French tech site claims to know the Euro pricing for AMD's upcoming RDNA 3 architecture mainstream contender.

VideoCardz shared Sapphire product photos, showcasing box art and some views of one of its Pulse series Radeon RX 7600 graphics cards. France's CowCotLand followed up with a tasty price rumor, asserting that the Radeon RX 7600 will land on the continent at 349 Euros ($379) on May 25.

From the box images, it is clear that the Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 comes with 8GB of VRAM, which aligns with previous leaks and rumors. Zooming into the picture of the box wrap, we also note that this model will feature "32 AMD RDNA 3 Compute Units" and 32MB of AMD infinity Cache to help compensate for the stingy memory bus. The section of the box art looks like it might be the source for yesterday's leaked RX 7600 specs news.

Elsewhere in the images shared by VideoCardz, we can see that the Sapphire graphics card is a traditional dual-fan-cooled GPU with a single 8-pin power connector. This should be ample for a GPU expected to pull somewhere in the region of 130W, much like its predecessor, the Radeon RX 6600.

Besides the power consumption of the desktop Radeon RX 7600 and the resulting higher base/boost clocks, we expected specs to coincide with the RX 7600M GPU, which went official back at CES 2023 in January. However, it now looks like the desktop RX 7600 has 32 CUs and 2,048 CUs, which echo the spec of the Radeon RX 7600M XT. 

In other words, the desktop version of the RX 7600 has about 15% more shader processors than the mobile version. Moreover, the move from RDNA 2 to RDNA 3 architectures is trumpeted as providing a roughly 25% performance uplift.

Euro Pricing Rumors

RX 7600 desktop graphics card listings were spotted three days earlier in Singapore. The local price converted to approximately $410. CotCowLand claims that the Radeon RX 7600 will be priced at €349 in France. The site doesn't provide any documentary, link, or screenshot evidence of this pricing, so it's best to add a lump of salt. 

A €349 price converts to $380 at today's exchange rates. Taking away French VAT (20%) gives us a $304. This could indicate that the AMD Radeon RX 7600 launch price will be set at $299 stateside.

Finally, this latest pricing rumor and the Singaporean one point the finger at a launch/release date of Thursday, May 25 or thereabouts.

GPD has started a crowdfunding campaign to design and build the world's first external graphics processing system with AMD's Radeon RX 7600M XT GPU inside with OCuLink and USB4 interfaces to connect to its host, reports Notebookcheck. The unit promises to be one of the industry's smallest eGFX solutions if it gets developed and hits the market.

Standing at dimensions of 225 x 111 x 29.8 mm, the GPD G1 claims to be the world's smallest external GPU with laptop dock features. The unit packs AMD's Radeon RX 7600M XT notebook GPU with 2048 stream processors, 32MB Infinity Cache, 8GB of GDDR6 memory, and promises to offer up to 21.4 FP32 TFLOPS, which is in line with performance of desktop Radeon RX 6650 XT or Radeon RX 6700, according to Droix.co.uk, though only independent tests will reveal its actual capabilities. 

The unit offers a range of ports, including two DisplayPort 1.4a, one HDMI 2.1, an SD 4.0 card reader, three USB 3.2 Type-A, one OCuLink (SFF-8612) connector, and one USB 4 (Type-C) port. The box packs a tiny 240W GaN power supply, so it is as small as it is with no extra power bricks and weighs only 0.92 kilograms.

Perhaps the most mysterious part about the GPD G1 are its interfaces. On the one hand, it has a USB4 interface that is ubiquitous since it is compatible with loads of PCs that are already in use and have Thunderbolt or USB4 ports. Meanwhile, it also has an OCuLink connector, which offers similar capabilities, but is barely found on any laptops. In fact, when connected using an OCuLink cable, the GPD G1 even disables USB Type-A ports and the SD slot since OCuLink is only meant to support the PCIe protocol. Meanwhile, USB4 both provides higher bandwidth and better features, so most of GPD G1 users will likely take advantage of this connection.

The OCuLink is a cable interface for four PCIe 3.0 lanes and has a maximum bandwidth of 32 GT/s, which is in line with Thunderbolt 3/4 and USB 4. Meanwhile, unlike the said interfaces, OCuLink uses SFF-8612 and SFF-8611 connectors that are not widely adopted in the PC space in general and mobile PC space in particular.

GPD may not be exactly a household brand, but Shenzhen GPD Technology Co. is a company that is widely known for ultraportable gaming notebooks. Such machines can rarely pack truly high graphics oomph and in most cases need the help of external graphics processors to run the latest games. To address its upcoming miniature Win Max 2023 PC (which itself requires funds to be developed), the company is now running an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to develop and build the world's first external graphics processing box with an OCuLink and a USB4 interface.

Droix.co.uk plans to sell the GPD G1 eGPU dock for around $700/£645 not including any taxes, so the part is not going to be cheap. Meanwhile, it seems that the only way to get a discount is by funding the development of the handheld gaming PC. 

Remember that crowdfunding a project is not a guarantee of receiving a finished product. Backing a crowdfunded project is akin to an investment; you believe in the project and want it to succeed. You are not purchasing a retail product.

Renowned leaker momomo_us took to Twitter to share a screenshot of what may very well be the production specs for AMD's upcoming RX 7600, the company's foray into the midrange GPU pricing segment. As seen by TechPowerUp!, the typeface and general design of the screenshot looks in-line with what we'd expect from marketing materials straight out of AMD; nevertheless, take the news with a healthy dose of salt for now.

According to the leak, the RX 7600 will pack in 32 RDNA3 Compute Units, working out to 2,048 Stream Processors - that's the same as last generation's RX 6600 XT, but more than the card it supposedly replaces, the RX 6600, which shipped with only 1,792 SPs. It seems that AMD's bet on this segment's performance increase is based on the architectural improvements of RDNA3. Paired with increased computing resources; AMD could have opted to increase the chip's Infinity Cache compared to its previous-gen RX 6600 series, but it seems the company chose to stick with the 32 MB cache pool. There's no guarantee, but keeping the 32 MB Infinity Cache may mean that AMD will keep the 128-bit bus as well.

Gigabyte recently listed a number of RX 7600 cards with the Eurasian Economic Commission (ECC), a step usually taken within a few weeks of release. The card has already been listed in Singapore (with a stocking date for May 26th) for around $410, but we expect that to be a placeholder price with the usual mark-up for an as-yet unreleased product. It's expected that the RX 7600 will offer around 25% better performance than AMD's RX 6600. Today's market isn't the same as those before it, and with the slump in consumer spending, it'd be wise for AMD to bring its cards towards a more attractive price-point.

Although the Radeon RX 7900 series has already launched, AMD's Radeon RX 6800 continues to be one of the best graphics cards in the retail market. Sasa Marinkovic, senior director of gaming marketing at AMD, wants to make sure that consumers don't forget that, sharing a chart showing the Radeon RX 6800's dominance over the GeForce RTX 3070.

Both the Radeon RX 6800 and GeForce RTX 3070 are last-generation products dating back to late 2020. Back then, it didn't make much sense to compare the two cards because they belonged to different tiers due to their MSRPs. The Radeon RX 6800 hit the market with a $579 MSRP, whereas the GeForce RTX 3070 launched with a $499 MSRP. Of course, neither graphics card retailed at their respective MSRP during 2020–2022.

Things have thankfully settled down since the end of Ethereum mining. The cheapest Radeon RX 6800 has dropped to $479, while the GeForce RTX 3070 now starts at $456, making them direct rivals.

While Nvidia has now launched the GeForce RTX 4070 to replace the GeForce RTX 3070, AMD hasn't released a successor to the Radeon RX 6800. The GeForce RTX 4070 also enters the market at $599, 20% higher than its predecessor's MSRP while offering GeForce RTX 3080-level performance at lower power requirements. That means pitting the GeForce RTX 4070 against the Radeon RX 6800 sort of misses the point, especially when we expect RTX 4060 Ti to arrive before the end of the month.

A better comparison will be between the upcoming Radeon RX 7700 (XT) and GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, or between RTX 4070 and whatever equivalently priced GPU AMD wants to ship. But let's go ahead with AMD's comparisons for now.

Although the chart claims that the Radeon RX 6800 delivers faster ray tracing (RT) and rasterization performance, Marinkovic later clarified that it was an error. The above performance figures only apply to rasterization performance. Oops.

In Marinkovic's comparison across 32 games, the Radeon RX 6800 was, on average, 13.4% faster than the GeForce RTX 3070. The performance delta varies between -2% and +31%. The GeForce RTX 3070 only outperformed the Radeon RX 6800 in Metro Exodus, Grand Theft Auto V, and Dota 2, though the performance difference was basically a tie. The tweeted image also highlights how the Radeon RX 6800 offers twice as much onboard memory as the GeForce RTX 3070, a selling point that AMD has been very vocal about.

AMD tested the two graphics cards at a native 1440p (2560x1440) resolution. However, the chipmaker didn't clarify which graphics settings it had used for the tests, which is an important piece of data. Nevertheless, AMD's claims generally align with our own results so there doesn't seem to be any funny business going on.

In our test suite across nine games (data from our updated GPU benchmarks hierarchy, using a 13900K), the Radeon RX 6800 delivered 14.3% higher rasterization performance than the GeForce RTX 3070 at 1440p with Ultra settings. However, the scale tips in the GeForce RTX 3070's favor when it comes to ray tracing performance. That's probably the reason why AMD omitted that comparison. The GeForce RTX 3070 offered 17.2% and 14.9% higher ray tracing performance in our 1080p and 1440p tests, respectively, across six demanding ray tracing games.

Neither AMD's numbers nor our own testing results include upscaling technologies like DLSS and FSR 2, which could further muddy the waters. Perhaps more importantly, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su confirmed a week ago that AMD's mainstream Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards will launch before July. She didn't explicitly state which lineup, so there's no guarantee that we'll se an RX 7800 or 7700 by then, but the Radeon RX 7600 is expected to arrive within the next month.

If you're mostly concerned with rasterization performance, yes, the Radeon RX 6800 can beat the RTX 3070. The RTX 4070 can also beat the 3070 in rasterization performance, by around 30%, which means it's also beats the RX 6800 by around 13%. Factor in ray tracing and DLSS and the gap would only grow. But really, no one should be purchasing a last-generation graphics card for $480 right now when potential replacements are right around the corner.

When AMD's chief executive Lisa Su said last week that the company was on track to release its mainstream Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards this quarter, she never said exactly when this would happen. But it appears that AMD's Radeon RX 7600-series graphics cards may be closer than we think as boards are already being listed in Asia. Soon, the RX 7600 will face off against the best graphics cards.

Right now, someone in Singapore is selling Sapphire's Radeon RX 7600 Pulse 8GB GDDR6 graphics card for S$545 (around $410, though it is unclear whether the price includes taxes) on Carousell, an online marketplace, as discovered by @Komachi_Ensaka. The advertisement claims that the stock arrives on May 26, 2023, which suggests that the seller expects to have multiple boards in a little more than a couple of weeks from now.

VideoCardz has received images of Sapphire's Radeon RX 7600 Pulse 8GB GDDR6 graphics board on a store shelf. The package reveals that the GPU features 32 RDNA 3 compute units (2048 stream processors) and 32MB of Infinity Cache. There is no word about the availability date of the product, but the card will reportedly cost $249, which contradicts to information from Carousell — but that could just be an attempt to capitalize on early demand.

In any case, the picture itself points to the fact that Sapphire, which is one of AMD's closest partners, has already started to ship its boards to retailers and it is only a matter of time before these parts are available worldwide.

AMD's Radeon RX 7600-series graphics cards are expected to be based on the Navi 33 GPU. It's hard to estimate performance of the vanilla Radeon RX 7600 and compare it to that of Nvidia's yet-to-be-released GeForce RTX 4060-series graphics boards, but we certainly expect these product families to compete against each other. Based on what we've seen from the RX 7900 XT versus the RX 6900 XT, if the RX 7600 sees a similar improvement in performance, it would only be around 25% faster than the existing RX 6600. We'll find out in the next month or so it seems.

We're dealing with unofficial information about Radeon RX 7600 availability date and contradictory information when it comes to its pricing, so obviously take all of this with a grain of salt. Still, it's evident that at least some of Sapphire's retail partners have already gotten their Radeon RX 7600 products, so it's logical to expect boards to hit the market rather sooner than later.

A Reddit user has acquired a pre-production Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card meant to be used only for AMD's internal testing. The enthusiast acquired the card on the second-hand market with a huge discount (via VideoCardz). The board looks like a reference AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX board, but it may have some features not available on the retail version or lack certain capabilities that are typically enabled on the commercial version of the board.

"Bought a [Radeon RX] 7900 XTX that says 'internal testing only,'" wrote the user who calls himself 'clumsyhotdog.' "Is there anything I should be aware of?"

The user did not clarify where they bought the card, but it is reasonable to think it was at an internet auction. The buyer indicated that the board was sold as used with a $300 - $400 discount compared to the price of a retail reference Radeon RX 7900 XTX, one of the best graphics cards available today.

"Bought as used," clumsyhotdog wrote. "Price was quite cheap. […] Like $300 - $400 difference." 

Bought a 7900 xtx that says internal testing only. Is there anything I should be aware of? from r/PcBuild

Before graphics cards reach retail, they undergo extensive internal testing. Such samples may require special drivers and might not be supported by official drivers. As such, they might have higher or lower performance than the retail versions and may even come enabled with capabilities not supported by commercial products.  

For example, AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX only supports DisplayPort 2.1 with UHBR 13.5 outputs, whereas the Radeon Pro W7900 and Radeon Pro W7800, which are based on the same GPU, feature DP 2.1 with UHBR 20 output and can drive 8Kp60 with 12bpc HDR displays without using compression. A pre-production Radeon RX 7900 XTX could come with UHBR 20 enabled, allowing testing of the capability.

In general, it is not recommended to use pre-production hardware as such graphics boards might suffer from various teething problems, may not support certain features, and may not work with official drivers. That said, some hardware enthusiasts would probably love to try out pre-production hardware to find more details about AMD's internal test hardware.

Nvidia just launched its fourth Ada Lovelace GPU, the GeForce RTX 4070, which finally brings the latest generation hardware down into the realm of affordability for many gamers. It's still $599, but that's better than the $799 and higher we've of the earlier RTX 40-series GPUs. AMD for its part has no direct current contender, opting instead to encourage price reductions on its existing line of RDNA 2 GPUs like the RX 6950 XT.

The RTX 4070 is now on our list of the best graphics cards, and the RX 6950 XT and other Navi 21 variants have been there on and off over the past couple of years. Today, both rank in the upper portion of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. But there's more to this than gaming performance, so let's put them both in a cage and see which one can emerge victorious from the Thunderdome.

For this GPU face off, we'll look at how the two cards stack up in terms of performance, price, features and tech, drivers and software, and power and efficiency. Then we'll declare a winner, because this isn't soccer and ties aren't allowed. Those categories are listed in order of decreasing importance, in our view at least, so we'll start with the critical aspects and move on down the list from there.

Performance: RTX 4070 vs RX 6950 XT

Graphics cards and GPUs are used for many tasks, including video editing, AI, streaming, and more. Still, gaming is the major reason most people are looking for a new graphics card. While $599 isn't necessarily an extreme amount of money to spend, it's also more than the latest generation consoles and people buying high-end cards expect top-notch performance. We ran the RTX 4070 and RX 6950 XT through our 15-game test suite, including testing at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, to see which comes out on top.

These are high-end cards, so focusing on the 1440p performance makes the most sense — they're more than fast enough for 1080p but at the same time not usually potent enough for 4K at maxed out settings. Across our suite of games, the two GPUs trade blows. AMD's RX 6950 XT clearly wins in the rasterization performance bracket, with Total War: Warhammer 3 being the only game to give the RTX 4070 a win at 1440p. There are also outliers like Borderlands 3 where AMD has a massive 35% lead (it's an AMD promoted game, naturally). Overall, the RX 6950 XT comes out 14% ahead of the RTX 4070 in rasterization, and that grows to 17% at 4K (but shrinks to 8% at 1080p).

The reverse takes place when we turn to the ray tracing benchmarks. There, the RTX 4070 leads by 21% on average at 1440p… except neither GPU really provides a great gaming experience at 1440p native with ray tracing. Dropping to 1080p actually increases the leads by a few percent, while at 4K the lead shrinks to 20%.

But while we just said 1440p with ray tracing isn't a great experience, we need to talk about DLSS and FSR2 upscaling. Both generally provide similar gains at a given resolution, at least in fps, but DLSS continues to get more support than FSR2. At present, AMD lists 120 games with FSR2 support (79 are currently available), while Nvidia lists 280 games with DLSS 2 upscaling support. Of those, 46 of the games support both DLSS2 and FSR2.

Nvidia also has another 33 games with DLSS 3 support, and while we don't think Frame Generation is a universally perfect solution and is being heavily used for marketing purposes, it's still potentially useful. We generally find the performance increase in terms of frames delivered to the screen doesn't usually correspond directly with how much faster a game feels, but a 50% boost to fps typically feels 10–20 percent smoother.

Overall, roughly three times as many games support DLSS 2 as FSR 2 — and note that all of the DXR games and six of the nine rasterization games in our test suite support DLSS, while FSR2 is only supported in two of the DXR games and three of the rasterization games. In each of those games Nvidia's RTX 4070 will get about a 30–50 percent boost to performance, using Quality mode upscaling. That means a game will typically run significantly faster than AMD's RX 6950 XT if a game only supports DLSS and not FSR2

The same is true for games that support only FSR2 but not DLSS. But exclusive DLSS support is about seven times more likely than exclusive FSR2 support. Currently 234 games support DLSS and not FSR2, while only 33 support FSR2 but not DLSS — though many of the games on both lists are relatively unknown.

Is it fair to compare upscaled to native performance? That's debatable, but we think upscaling is here to stay, and frankly the performance gains of even Quality mode upscaling easily outweigh the potential loss of visual fidelity.

Outside of gaming performance, the Nvidia RTX 4070 offers substantially better support for AI workloads, plus it's substantially faster at AI projects like Stable Diffusion where both GPUs can at least run the task. In our most recent testing, the RTX 4070 was nearly twice as fast as the RX 6950 XT in Stable Diffusion 512x512 images, and over three times as fast for 768x768 image generation. That doesn't even account for being unable to get AI Text Generation and many other AI projects working on AMD GPUs (at least not without recoding portions of the project).

Winner: Nvidia RTX 4070

While both cards are plenty fast for most games, it's in the games that tend to be more demanding that Nvidia pulls ahead. This will be a controversial pick, as the RX 6950 XT is almost always faster in rasterization games. It's typically about 15% faster on average, but that's often in games hitting well over 60 fps. In the games where it's slower, however (like nearly all the DXR games), the RTX 4070 with DLSS will typically deliver over 60 fps while the 6950 XT (even if FSR2 support is available) will come up short of that mark.

We're surprised by how many gamers still look down on upscaling as a sort of crutch. Personally, I almost always enable Quality mode (whether DLSS2 or FSR2 or even XeSS), just because I like to run at 1440p and 4K and it makes the experience noticeably better. Both the 4070 and 6950 XT are quite fast, as they should be for high-end parts, but if we have to pick a winner, Nvidia gets the edge in overall performance. Again, that's factoring in ray tracing games, DLSS upscaling, and AI workloads. If you have no interest in any of those, AMD's RX 6950 XT comes out ahead, but those are three pretty major topics in the GPU world these days.

Price: RTX 4070 vs RX 6950 XT

It almost feels nice to have a latest generation graphics card priced below $800. Almost. After the 4090, 4080, and 4070 Ti, and without much help from AMD's 7900-series cards, people are still waiting for mainstream and budget upgrades. Depending on your definition of mainstream, $599 might even apply. But either way, right now, there are numerous RTX 4070 cards available for purchase online starting at $599. They're not the fanciest models with extra overclocking, but they'll get the job done.

AMD hasn't officially dropped the price of the RX 6950 XT to $599, at least as far as we're aware — the AMD store lists the reference card at $699 (and it's out of stock). But Newegg, Amazon, and others have regularly had RX 6950 XT cards priced in the $599–$699 range for several months, basically since the RX 7900 XT launched. Will such cards continue to exist, now that the RTX 4070 launch is over? Perhaps until they're all sold, or until a lower tier RX 7800- or 7700-series card comes along with similar performance (and hopefully at a better price).

And that's the problem. One card has an official $599 MSRP and should remain at that price point going forward, the other got a price promotion to hit $599 and those cards seem to have disappeared now. The best we can find is $619 at present. Sure, it's "only" $20 extra, but it's also for roughly equivalent performance across our gaming suite, and again we favor Nvidia's GPU across a larger suite of testing that factors in DLSS and AI.

If you can find an RX 6950 XT for the same price as an RTX 4070, it's worth considering, but that's not a decisive win. And in fact, since you'll also use about 100–150 watts more power while gaming with the RX 6950 XT, depending on how much you play games, the ongoing cost of owning the RX 6950 XT could also be higher.

Winner: Nvidia RTX 4070

This one is a close call, but officially sanctioned pricing beats temporary sale pricing, assuming similar performance. Mostly Nvidia wins by virtue of having a latest generation graphics card actually designed for the $599 price point. AMD will hopefully have something better to compete with the 4070 in the coming months.

Features and Technology: RTX 4070 vs RX 6950 XT

Nvidia has a habit of promoting new technologies with every generation of graphics cards. In some cases, the new technology truly enables things that weren't really possible before — ray tracing and higher performance AI/deep learning are good examples of this. Others end up feeling more like marketing and only see limited use. Does anyone remember VXAO and VXGI, which were part of the Nvidia Pascal marketing?

Our perception over the years is that Nvidia is often the first mover on technologies. It was first with G-Sync, first with ray tracing, first with DLSS upscaling, first with Reflex, and first with noise cancelation, for example. AMD often follows with "open" solutions that aim to do the same things as Nvidia's proprietary tech. Sometimes, those open solutions win out — FreeSync is far more available than G-Sync these days, and G-Sync Compatible basically felt like Nvidia recognizing the open solution was sufficient and perhaps better.

There are exceptions to the above as well, like AMD moving to DisplayPort 2.1 with 54Gbps bandwidth while Nvidia stuck with DisplayPort 1.4a. AMD also tends to offer more VRAM at similar price points— the RX 6950 XT (and other Navi 21 GPUs) come with 16GB, while the RTX 4070 only has 12GB. More VRAM isn't always necessary, but having more memory should never be a bad thing (everything else being equal). Infinity Cache was also an AMD move that Nvidia has now effectively mimicked with its larger L2 cache — and it's one of those things that benefits every game.

Even if every attempt at a new technology doesn't end up being used everywhere, Nvidia has been doing more over the past few generations. Ray tracing hardware and features have increased substantially since the RTX 20-series, and the tensor core hardware powering DLSS and AI applications is proving particularly useful these days. Now it has DLSS 3 and Frame Generation, and the uptake for DLSS 3 has been much faster than previous versions. One of the benefits of DLSS 3 is that it also requires the games to support Nvidia Reflex, so owners of other Nvidia GPUs also benefit.

It's not just gaming technology, either. We don't know if the RTX 40-series support for FP8 calculations on the tensor cores will prove important in the future. The AV1 video encoding/decoding support on the other hand is already taking off. AMD and Intel offer AV1 encoding support as well, on their latest generation GPUs, but the 6950 XT is a previous generation part.

A lot of this is because Nvidia has been the dominant player in the GPU space for a long time. It currently has about 75–80 percent GPU market share, which means it's better able to push proprietary technologies. If you don't have an Nvidia GPU, that might suck, but unfortunately it's something Nvidia can get away with.

Winner: Nvidia RTX 4070

Nvidia has newer and better technologies and features, with the lack of DisplayPort 2.1 support being the only major strike against it. Except that's only available with RX 7000-series cards, which means at best AMD's 6950 XT ties the RTX 4070 in connectivity; everywhere else, it's a couple years behind the state of the art for GPUs. It's not that the RX 6950 XT is bad, but it doesn't offer anything tangible over the RTX 4070 other than 4GB more VRAM. That's something, but it's not enough to overcome the improved RT, DLSS, AI, AV1, and the other architectural upgrades available with Ada Lovelace GPUs.

Drivers and Software: RTX 4070 vs RX 6950 XT

AMD and Nvidia release regular driver updates for their GPUs. The number of driver releases from both companies has been quite high over the past year, easily numbering in the dozens. In the past, some have complained about poor drivers from AMD or Nvidia, but having tested GPUs from both companies, it's hard to see much difference. Just about every major game release in the past year has seen Game Ready drivers from both companies — and even Intel is getting in on the action now.

We previously noted that Nvidia drivers were usually WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) certified, while AMD tended to only do that on maybe a quarter of its drivers. AMD seems to have changed its processes in order to get WHQL certification now, or at least the past several drivers have all been WHQL certified. Not that it really matters, as Microsoft rarely does much in order to test quality other than checking that basic Windows functionality isn't broken. Bugs do slip through the cracks — like AMD's high idle power draw with the past few drivers, if you want an example.

One area where AMD and Nvidia differ quite a bit is in their driver user interfaces. Nvidia splits its GeForce driver options into two applications. Nvidia Control Panel handles the GPU settings, such as resolution, texture filtering, vertical sync, low latency mode, power management, and more. The control panel also handles display configuration settings, such as color, rotation, and multi-display setups. Nvidia GeForce Experience handles game settings, driver updates, and includes game streaming and recording features. To access the GeForce Experience features, you have to log in with an Nvidia user account and solve a captcha or provide a 2FA code.

AMD takes a more streamlined approach with its Radeon Settings app serving as a one-stop-solution for all your Radeon GPU settings and features. It handles driver updates, graphics and video settings, and supports game performance profiles. There's built-in broadcasting software to stream and record your gameplay, overclocking options, and performance metrics logging.

Winner: Tie

Other categories might be close, but this one we simply don't see any truly defining differences. Both AMD and Nvidia deliver generally equivalent experiences, even if there are some nuances in how they're done. You can generally expect at least one or more new drivers from both companies each month, which is more than enough for our needs.

Power Consumption / Efficiency: RTX 4070 vs RX 6950 XT

Performance, features, technologies, and drivers might be relatively close, and you can certainly argue against our reasoning. However, when it comes to power efficiency and consumption, it's no contest. AMD's RX 6950 XT was the mid-cycle refresh of the top-tier Navi 21 GPU, and to boost performance AMD had to give it more power and higher clocks. The reference design has a 335W TBP (Total Board Power), but many of the third-party cards push much higher. The MSI RX 6950 XT for example would hit 440W! Sapphire's RX 6950 XT wasn't quite so aggressive and 'only' averaged 378W in our gaming test.

That might not sound bad when you think of the RTX 4090 and its 450W rated power consumption, but the RTX 4070 only has a 200W TBP. However, we also collect power measurements across all of our gaming benchmarks now, which means we have even more data. The ASRock RX 6950 XT Formula we used for testing (we don't have a reference 6950) was far closer to the reference TBP. It actually came in under the rated TBP, averaging 305.4W across 60 different gaming tests — even if you just stick with the 4K ultra results, it averaged 326.4W.

The RTX 4070 in contrast averaged just 183.4W of power use, even while providing slightly higher performance on average. In fact, we can convert both GPUs to an overall fps/W metric. The RTX 4070 got 0.460 fps/W across all 60 tests, and 0.208 fps/W in just the 4K ultra tests. The RX 6950 XT in contrast got just 0.265 fps/W across all 60 tests, and 0.123 fps/W at 4K ultra. That means the RTX 4070 was 74% more efficient overall, and 69% more efficient at 4K — and that's not including DLSS, which would only skew things more in favor of Nvidia's GPU, as we discussed in the performance section.

Winner: Nvidia RTX 4070

Nvidia's previous generation RTX 30-series cards weren't known for being particularly power efficient. In fact, in many cases AMD's RX 6000-series cards were able to surpass them. That's a big swing from just two generations prior, where Nvidia held a massive lead. Now, thanks to using a newer architecture and manufacturing process, things swing the other way. RDNA 3 cards look like they're pretty efficient as well, but the highest performance RDNA 2 GPU ends up being far less efficient than a middle-tier Ada Lovelace offering.

Verdict: RTX 4070 vs RX 6950 XT

Hopefully this doesn't come as much of a surprise. Putting a new GPU up against a previous generation card will rarely favor the older designs. New features combined with process improvements for the lithography mean that the only real selling point for older hardware tends to be pricing. And right now, even after hacking $500 off the launch price, the RX 6950 XT still tends to cost more than the new RTX 4070. We'd say the same if you were looking at an RTX 3090 or 3080 as well (unless you could get a 3090 with 24GB of memory for $600).

That's not to say that the RX 6950 XT is a bad card. It's plenty fast for most people, and if you already own the card — or one of the other Navi 21-based cards from the RX 6800/6900-series — you should be okay skipping this generation. But if you're in the market for an upgrade and are eying these two cards that nominally cost the same $600, there are plenty of good reasons to go with Nvidia's new RTX 4070.

Our overall score say 5 to 1 for the RTX 4070 against the RX 6950 XT, but it's really not that lopsided of a victory. Performance is close and favors AMD if you don't include ray tracing and DLSS. Pricing is close as well, about $20 separating the least expensive 6950 XT from the cheapest 4070. But the features and technology along with power efficiency all heavily favor the RTX 4070.

We'll have to see what AMD has to offer with a future RX 7800 or 7700 series card that's designed to compete directly with the RTX 4070. How much VRAM will it have, how will it perform, and how much power will it require? We don't know and it might be another couple of months before we find out. But for now, in the $600 price bracket, in our view the RTX 4070 is the best option available.

Overall Winner: Nvidia RTX 4070

Just a couple of days ago, AMD's chief executive Lisa Su said that the company was on track to expand its portfolio of Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards into the mainstream segment. ASRock recently filed a listing with the Eurasian Economic Commission for three of its Radeon RX 7600-based graphics cards, as discovered by @harukaze5719. 

As it turns out, these are the Navi 32-based Radeon RX 7600-branded graphics boards coming from ASRock: 

• ASRock Radeon RX 7600 8GB Challenger OC (RX7600 CL 8GO)
• ASRock Radeon RX 7600 8GB Phantom Gaming OC  (RX7600 PG 8GO)
• ASRock Radeon RX 7600 8GB Steel Legend OC (RX7600 SL 8GO) 

Earlier this week, it was reported that AMD was prepping Radeon RX 7700 XT, 7600 XT, and 7500 XT cards based on the Navi 32 silicon for desktop computers, but vanilla (non-XT) versions were never mentioned. As it turns out, ASRock intends to offer three factory-overclocked versions of these cards targeting users with different budgets and requirements. It will be interesting to see whether these RDNA 3-powered boards land on our list of the best graphics cards. 

Factory overclocked ASRock Radeon RX 7600-series products may point to the use of non-reference designs, so it remains to be seen which interesting capabilities these graphics boards bring compared to AMD's standard versions. 

In addition, the same listing mentions ASRock's Arc A380 6GB low-profile graphics card (A380 LP 6G), a product that will probably be aimed at entry-level compact desktops that require a discrete graphics card or as an upgrade for a mediocre integrated GPU.  

Remember that although EEC filings may disclose products a company intends to release, they should not be taken as confirmation that these products will launch. In addition, these filings do not indicate when the products will be available for purchase, as companies may make arrangements with the EEC customs database shortly before or long before the launch.

YouTuber and graphics card modder Paulo Gomes has upgraded yet another graphics card with more video memory, this time using an AMD Power Color Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Dragon. The card was modified from 6GB of memory to 12GB of capacity with faster 2GB 16Gbps memory chips.

The memory mod for this card was more simple compared to the RTX 3060 8GB to 12GB mod we covered recently from the same modder. The mod itself involved swapping the original six memory modules for six new modules with double the capacity, as well as editing the BIOS of the AMD card to support the new modules.

To replace the memory modules, Gomes used a heat gun to warm up the connection points between the memory ICs and the PCB, so the memory modules could be safely removed without damaging the components. Afterward, he prepped the PCB for the new 2GB modules with a special glue that will keep the modules in place and then installed the new modules on the card.

Since the RX 5600 XT does not ship with a 12GB configuration, a BIOS mod is required for support. The modder used a hex editor to manipulate the proper values that will allow the BIOS to recognize the faster 2GB ICs, then flashed the BIOS to the card. BIOS modding is still possible with some AMD GPUs, though it's not something you can do on modern Nvidia GPUs.

The 5600 XT with the new modules exhibited a massive increase in performance, at least in specific tests. For example, the Unigine Superposition test Gomes used included a benchmark run at 10K resolution to fully saturate the 12GB memory config. The original 8GB config scored 191 points with this benchmarking configuration, while the modified card scored 412 points in the same config. Of course, most games won't see this same performance increase, but the extra VRAM could still be helpful in games that use more than 6GB of video memory — assuming the GPU itself isn't the bottleneck, which is becoming increasingly unlikely.

The implications of this mod are much more applicable to AMD GPUs since the BIOS can be modified in the way Gomes demonstrated. In theory, this allows all AMD Radeon graphics cards to be upgraded with more video memory since there are no editing restrictions on AMD BIOS's as far as we're aware. This is a far cry from modern Nvidia GPUs, which do not allow BIOS modding of any sort.

Of course, the tools and skill required to carry out this sort of mod are a different matter. Most of use can look on in appreciation, but if you want a card with 12GB or 24GB, it's going to be far easier to simply put your money into one of the best graphics cards rather than trying to upgrade a three years old RX 5600 XT.

AMD has introduced only two RDNA 3-based graphics cards so far, and both are aimed at demanding enthusiasts with deep pockets. While it is obvious that AMD intends to expand its Radeon RX 7000-series with new models, it is unclear what exactly the company is prepping and when. But a newly uncovered AMD ROCm 5.6 pull request noticed by a Reddit user may shed some light on AMD's intentions.  

As it turns out, AMD is prepping a bunch of new Radeon RX 7000-series products, including Radeon RX 7950 XTX, 7950 XT, 7800 XT, 7700 XT, 7600 XT, and 7500 XT for desktop computers as well as Radeon RX 7600M XT, 7600M, 7700S, and 7600S for laptops. Several things strike the eye with this list.

• AMD Radeon™ RX 7950 XTX | RDNA3 | gfx1100
• AMD Radeon™ RX 7950 XT | RDNA3 | gfx1100
• AMD Radeon™ RX 7900 XTX | RDNA3 | gfx1100
• AMD Radeon™ RX 7900 XT | RDNA3 | gfx1100
• AMD Radeon™ RX 7800 XT | RDNA3 | gfx1101
• AMD Radeon™ RX 7700 XT | RDNA3 | gfx1102
• AMD Radeon™ RX 7600 XT | RDNA3 | gfx1102
• AMD Radeon™ RX 7500 XT | RDNA3 | gfx1102
• AMD Radeon™ RX 7600M XT | RDNA3 | gfx1102
• AMD Radeon™ RX 7600M | RDNA3 | gfx1102
• AMD Radeon™ RX 7700S | RDNA3 | gfx1102
• AMD Radeon™ RX 7600S | RDNA3 | gfx1102

First, it contains the never-before-mentioned Radeon RX 7950 XTX and Radeon RX 7950 XT based on the Navi 31 (gfx1100) graphics processor. Of course, the company already offers Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT (which are among the best graphics cards available today), so the 7950 models may be either refreshed versions due at least a couple of quarters down the road or placeholders for potential products should AMD feel that that it needs them. Besides higher clocks, we're not sure what AMD could do to warrant the model number bump. (Well, it could double down on the stacked cache on the MCD as one potential option.)

The pull request also includes Radeon RX 7800 XT based on gfx1101. We assume that's a Navi 32 GPU, but it could be something else. There's no sign of a vanilla Radeon RX 7800 as yet, and so far this is the only gfx1101 GPU. That's a bit odd, but let's move on for now. The list indicates that Navi 33 (or gfx1102) will power everything from the performance-mainstream Radeon RX 7700 XT down to the entry-level Radeon RX 7500 XT. But again, there are no mentions of non-XT versions.

To put it into context, AMD used Navi 22 exclusively for its Radeon RX 6700-series desktop graphics cards, plus the Radeon RX 6700M and Radeon RX 6800M laptop GPUs. Apparently, Navi 32 will be used in only select products. That or AMD has other plans that aren't yet clear. Navi 23 meanwhile was used in the RX 6600-series (RX 6600, RX 6600 XT, and RX 6650 XT), along with mobile variants. Navi 33 is rumored to be a monolithic die, and it looks like its use will cover both entry-level (RX 7500) through mainstream (RX 7600/7700) parts.

AMD has yet to comment on the list of graphics cards in the ROCm 5.6 list. Meanwhile, it should be noted that while the list indicates AMD's intentions to release certain products, it does not mean that they are coming overnight. Furthermore, their specifications remain a mystery for now — it's a safe bet that each step down the list (at least on the desktop parts) will come with reduced GPU shader counts, but we don't know clocks, memory bus width, or cache sizes.

The memory bus in particular is going to be a contentious issue. AMD has made a lot of noise about how Nvidia is shipping "limited" GPUs with less than 16GB of memory, while AMD has the RX 6800 through RX 6950 XT that all come with 16GB, plus the newer RX 7900 XTX/XT with 24GB/20GB of VRAM. The 7900 series parts have 320-bit and 384-bit interfaces provided by five or six MCDs — check our RDNA 3 deep dive for additional information on the chiplet architecture. If Navi 32 has a 256-bit interface, it will likely top out at 16GB for consumer cards, but more likely than not we'll see Navi 33 with 192-bit or even 128-bit interfaces. Those would top out at 12GB and 8GB, respectively, unless AMD decides to put VRAM on both sides of the PCB.

Anyway, we'll know more for certain in the coming months. There are still plenty of RX 6000-series cards in stock, which is likely why AMD hasn't pushed out lower tier RX 7000-series GPUs yet. If RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT are coming soon, it could mean AMD has finally managed to clear out most of its RDNA 2 inventory.

Silent PC enthusiast and redditor revocases has been showing off a very interesting AMD Radeon RX 6400 modification (h/t FanlessTech). The modification work meant chucking away the stock active cooler, precisely machining a 3 mm copper cold plate and mount (covering both GPU and memory), and then fixing on an Arctic Accelero S1 passive cooler (discontinued). In testing, the project was a resounding success, with the GPU running at just a smidgeon over 50 degrees Celsius under load – but we have to ask, is this passive solution overkill?

Passive PC systems have a strong following, as silence is golden. However, to cool higher performance PC components a passive cooler might sometimes start to dominate your build. We have seen this with some recent implementations of passive coolers and cases. To be fair, we wouldn’t put revocases' RX 6400 mod into this category, though.

The Radeon RX 6400 is a 54W graphics card, so doesn’t present a strenuous challenge for passive cooling technology. Instead we could say the low TGP makes the card a comfortable target for a modest passive cooling adaptation. In revocases’ shared images you can see that the passively cooled (ex)low-profile Radeon ran at a more than comfortable average GPU temperature of 54 degrees Celsius (hot spot 60) when under full load. Sadly, off-the-peg choices for passive GPU coolers are incredibly limited or we would suggest using a smaller one.

In the images, the RX 6400 PCB is absolutely dwarfed by the Arctic Accelero S1, and might look somewhat silly outside of the context of  a PC. However, in November last year we reported on the Intel Arc A380 (>75W) being cooled by the same Arctic Accelero S1. In the visual context of a complete passive build that card looked reasonable – it was installed next to a Noctua NH-P1 cooled CPU.

Considering things from another angle, a commercially produced passive card like the Palit GeForce GTX 1650 KalmX looks well proportioned at 138 x 178 x 38 mm, and the GPU will peek at around 80 degrees Celsius under load. The Palit isn’t a great amount smaller than the Arctic Accelero S1 cooler at 138 x 215 x 33 mm (but you have to add the card which will add further bulk).

We hope that the great efficiency gains touted for the latest AMD and Nvidia graphics architectures means that some more compact passive commercially available graphics cards hit the market. Graphics card makers could be attracted by the passive premium that silent PC enthusiasts might pay for something more performant than the likes of the RX 6400, Arc A380, or GTX 1650.

AMD’s exclusive board partners are readying their Radeon RX 7600 designs for Computex, according to Igor’s Lab. That means AIBs like ASRock, PowerColor, Sapphire, and XFX should be expected to show their RX 7600 designs at the world’s biggest PC tech show, which kicks off at the end May. However, it is strange to see AMD release its desktop GPUs out of order like this, as we are still waiting for RX 7800 (XT) and RX 7700 (XT) designs – where are they?

Igor's Lab contends that the Radeon RX 7600 cards from the above-named closest partners of AMD will be finished and ready for Computex, just a few weeks away. Interestingly, he adds that those board partners who also support Nvidia GPUs (e.g., Asus, Gigabyte, MSI) have decided to wait and see how well the RX 7600 desktop GPUs sell before dipping their toes in the market.

Igor hints that the Radeon RX 7700 XT has been left on the back burner for now as AMD (and/or its partners) foresee a shift in mid-range pricing. The idea appears to be to launch the lower tier RX 7600 and see how it fares, then price gap up to the RX 7700 XT. For now, Igor’s Lab doesn’t mention the RX 7800 (XT).

We hope the Radeon RX 7600 can bring a new level of affordability to the latest-gen graphics cards. It is expected to be much more economical to produce than the flagship RDNA 3 graphics cards we have seen thus far, those with their chiplet-based designs and lashings of VRAM, etc. The Radeon RX 7600 will be a small (Navi 33?) According to the latest information, GPU has 28 Compute Units (1,792 SPs) and a modest 8GB of VRAM. It is widely expected to be very much the same as the Radeon RX 7600M but with the benefit of desktop power/thermals for much more impressive clocks and, therefore, performance.

If the rumors are correct, the new RX 7600 desktop graphics card aims to compete with the GeForce RTX 4060, not the RTX 4060 Ti or the known quantity of the RTX 4070.

While on the topic of mid-range green team desktop graphics cards, in the same report, Igor’s Lab says that the RTX 4060 Ti will also debut at Computex. With the slow RX 4070 market and Nvidia reportedly slowing GPU supplies for this SKU, the source indicates that the initial supply of RTX 4060 Ti cards will be lower than the RTX 4070.

Igor sees strong polarization of the desktop GPU market. He explains this observation by noting that the GeForce RTX 4090 was a strong seller among enthusiasts who absolutely must have a flagship graphics card. Meanwhile, consumers of traditional mid-range graphics card buyers have seen Nvidia’s pitches, and many are keeping their powder dry with hope for the new entry-level offerings.

Of course, there are steady sales of some options in the current Ada Lovelace product stack, but the overall downward pricing pressure continues. The sweetest spots for Nvidia sales so far are said to be the RTX 4090 for halo buyers and the RTX 4070 Ti for pragmatic performance enthusiasts.

Last, but not least, remember to add a pinch of salt to the above morsels from Igor, but don’t let the salt douse your excitement for Computex.

A Chinese computer shop, discovered by @Olrak29 apparently had plenty of malfunctioning Polaris based AMD Radeon RX 500-series graphics cards in its possession and decided to make keychains from them. The keychains — which retail for ~$5 — look a little too large for a pocket, but they will hang hang great in your office or from your gaming rig. If used as a keychain, their size is almost a guarantee that your keys will not get lost. 

It is hard to tell how these keychains are made. It certainly looks like they are cut out from a graphics card, then processed to remove metallic parts, painted, and marked with the AMD Radeon RX 500 Series logotype. Yet, it is entirely possible that the GPU and memory are removed from a broken graphics card, then glued to a PCB that already carries the Radeon RX 500 Series ornament. 

Launched in Q2 2016, AMD's Polaris microarchitecture represents the 4th iteration of the company's GCN architecture introduced in late 2011. Polaris GPUs were never meant to be AMD's offerings that would compete against Nvidia's top-of-the-range gaming solutions (e.g., the GeForce GTX 1080 or GTX 1080 Ti), but were aimed at high-volume mass market. 

With MSRPs ranging from $109 to $239 per graphics card, these GPUs were instrumental to increase AMD's discrete desktop GPU sales from 8.88 million units in 2015 to 13.49 million units in 2016 and 15.89 million units in 2015, according to data from Jon Peddie Research. Hence, while they hardly were the best graphics boards of their time, they were certainly among the best graphics cards at their price points.

By now, AMD's Polaris GPUs and Radeon RX 400 and RX 500-series graphics cards are morally outdated and are good enough for office PCs in the best case scenario. Meanwhile, they are plenty of malfunction graphics cards made in 2016 – 2017. That said, we are not surprised to see that some of those GPUs and boards are turned into keychains.