AMD RX 7900 XT Review

1. Introduction2. Meet the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy5. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing6. Assassin's Creed Valhalla7. Cyberpunk 20778. Days Gone9. Dying Light 210. Far Cry 611. Forza Horizon 512. God of War13. Horizon Zero Dawn14. Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered15. Red Dead Redemption 216. Resident Evil Village17. Total War: Warhammer III18. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)19. Cost Per Frame Analysis20. Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk 207721. Ray Tracing: Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered22. Ray Tracing: Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition23. Ray Tracing: Resident Evil: Village24. Clock Speed25. GPU Temperatures26. Acoustics27. Power Draw: 1080p28. Power Draw: 1440p29. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)30. Performance per Watt: 1080p31. Performance per Watt: 1440p32. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)33. Total System Power Draw34. Overclocking35. Closing Thoughts36. View All Pages

Launching alongside AMD's flagship RX 7900 XTX, today we can present our review of the RX 7900 XT, the least expensive of the two 7900 series cards, though it still hits the market at £899.99. Offering a cut-down Navi 31 experience, AMD will hope that the 7900 XT can entice those who want a high-end gaming GPU, but perhaps don't want to go all out on an XTX. We're certainly not sure about the name scheme, but can the XT do enough to earn a recommendation?

Announced alongside the RX 7900 XTX at AMD's event in Las Vegas, the Radeon RX 7900 XT has gone under the radar somewhat. In that initial announcement, the company didn't show a single benchmark for the XT, focusing instead on the XTX, and it was only a couple of weeks later than we saw the first 7900 XT benchmarks.

Built on the same RDNA 3 architecture and Navi 31 silicon as the full-fat XTX model, the 7900 XT has simply been trimmed back somewhat, offering fewer cores and less memory in a lower-power package. But will it be enough to step out from the XTX's shadow? That's what we will find out today…

It's also worth noting that while this is a standalone review for the RX 7900 XT, we do also have a day one review for the RX 7900 XTX, and you can find that HERE.

If you want to read this review as a single page, click HERE.

	RX 7900 XTX	RX 7900 XT	RX 6950 XT	RX 6900 XT	RX 6800 XT	RX 6800
Architecture	RDNA 3	RDNA 3	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA 2
Manufacturing Process	5nm GCD + 6nm MCD	5nm GCD + 6nm MCD	7nm	7nm	7nm	7nm
Transistor Count	57.7 billion	57.7 billion	26.8 billion	26.8 billion	26.8 billion	26.8 billion
Die Size	300 mm² GCD 220 mm² MCD	300 mm² GCD 220 mm² MCD	519 mm²	519 mm²	519 mm²	519 mm²
Ray Accelerators	96	84	80	80	72	60
Compute Units	96	84	80	80	72	60
Stream Processors	6144	5376	5120	5120	4608	3840
Game GPU Clock	Up to 2300MHz	Up to 2000 MHz	Up to 2100MHz	Up to 2015MHz	Up to 2015MHz	Up to 1815MHz
Boost GPU Clock	Up to 2500 MHz	Up to 2400 MHz	Up to 2310MHz	Up to 2250MHz	Up to 2250MHz	Up to 2105MHz
ROPs	192	192	128	128	128	96
AMD Infinity Cache	96MB	80MB	128MB	128MB	128MB	128MB
Memory	24GB GDDR6	20GB GDDR6	16GB GDDR6 18Gbps	16GB GDDR6 16Gbps	16GB GDDR6	16GB GDDR6
Memory Bandwidth	960 GB/s	800 GB/s	576 GB/s	512 GB/s	512 GB/s	512 GB/s
Memory Interface	384-bit	320-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Board Power	355W	315W	335W	300W	300W	250W

First, let's take a quick look at the specs. We've already covered the key figures in our announcement article, but it's worth recapping the core details here.

For starters, the RDNA 3 architecture has seen AMD transition to a chiplet-based design – a world first for a gaming GPU. We find a 300mm² Graphics Compute Die, based on TSMC's 5nm node, flanked by six 37mm² Memory Cache Dies (though one is disabled for the 7900 XT). In total, the Navi 31 GPU packs 57.7 billion transistors.

Internally, the GCD makeup hasn't been radically changed compared to what we saw with RDNA 2. While a full Navi 31 GPU packs in 96 Compute Units, the 7900 XT is cut down to 84 CUs, each of which houses 64 Steam Processors, for a total of 5376 shaders. There's also 84 Ray Accelerators – one per CU – and 192 ROPs.

As for clock speed, AMD has de-coupled the clocks, so the front-end and shaders can operate at different clock speeds in a bid to save power. With the RX 7900 XT, the shader clock features a rated game clock of up to 2000MHz, and a boost of up to 2400MHz.

Meanwhile, the memory configuration has taken a step forward. The RX 7900 XT packs 20GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 20Gbps, operating over a 320-bit memory interface, for total memory bandwidth of 800 GB/s. 80MB of Infinity Cache is also present, which allows AMD to claim an ‘effective memory bandwidth' of up to 2900 GB/s.

Power draw for the RX 7900 XT is rated at 315W Total Board Power (TBP), but we are using our updated GPU power testing methodology in this review, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

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