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The RX 7700 XT launched over a year ago now, and we recently published a revisit of the GPU to see how it stacks up in 2024. It seems Sapphire is not yet done with this market segment however, as the company recently launched the RX 7700 XT Pure Frostpunk 2 Edition, a card we first got hands-on with back at Computex 2024. Sporting a unique aesthetic that directly ties in with the game, today we take a look at this graphics card and see what it can bring to the table.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
00:50 Meet the 7700 XT Frostpunk 2 Edition
01:21 Unboxing experience
02:01 Design impressions + RGB
03:35 Heatsink and PCB analysis
04:53 Test setup
05:20 Thermals and noise
06:35 Power + efficiency
07:24 Clock speed, game benchmarks
08:34 Overclocking
09:20 Closing thoughts
The first thing you need to know about the Sapphire RX 7700 XT Pure Frostpunk 2 Edition is that it is fundamentally the same card as the regular RX 7700 XT Pure, which we have previously reviewed. By that I mean it's the same heatsink design, same fan layout, same PCB – the underlying card is identical, but Sapphire has changed up the visual appearance quite significantly, plus it comes with a bunch of Frostpunk 2 extras in the box, as well as a deluxe game code.
| RX 7900 XT | RX 7800 XT | RX 7700 XT | RX 6800 XT | RX 6800 | RX 6700 XT | |
| Architecture | RDNA 3 | RDNA 3 | RDNA 3 | RDNA 2 | RDNA 2 | RDNA 2 |
| Manufacturing Process | 5nm GCD + 6nm MCD | 5nm GCD + 6nm MCD | 5nm GCD + 6nm MCD | 7nm | 7nm | 7nm |
| Transistor Count | 57.7 billion | 28.1 billion | 28.1 billion | 26.8 billion | 26.8 billion | 17.2 billion |
| Die Size | 300 mm² GCD
220 mm² MCD |
200 mm² GCD
150 mm² MCD |
200 mm² GCD
150 mm² MCD |
519 mm² | 519 mm² | 336 mm² |
| Compute Units | 84 | 60 | 54 | 72 | 60 | 40 |
| Ray Accelerators | 84 | 60 | 54 | 72 | 60 | 40 |
| Stream Processors | 5376 | 3840 | 3456 | 4608 | 3840 | 2560 |
| Game GPU Clock | Up to 2000 MHz | 2124 MHz | 2171 MHz | Up to 2015MHz | Up to 1815MHz | Up to 2424MHz |
| Boost GPU Clock | Up to 2400 MHz | Up to 2430 MHz | Up to 2544 MHz | Up to 2250MHz | Up to 2105MHz | Up to 2581MHz |
| ROPs | 192 | 96 | 96 | 128 | 96 | 64 |
| AMD Infinity Cache | 80MB | 64MB | 48MB | 128MB | 128MB | 96MB |
| Memory | 20GB GDDR6 20Gbps | 16GB GDDR6 19.5 Gbps | 12GB GDDR6 18Gbps | 16GB GDDR6 16Gbps | 16GB GDDR6 16Gbps | 12GB GDDR6 16Gbps |
| Memory Bandwidth | 800 GB/s | 624 GB/s | 432 GB/s | 512 GB/s | 512 GB/s | 384 GB/s |
| Memory Interface | 320-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit |
| Board Power | 315W | 263W | 245W | 300W | 250W | 230W |
First, let's take a quickly recap the specs. Unlike the smallest RDNA 3 GPU – the RX 7600 – AMD has made a return to its chiplet-based design for the RX 7700 XT, as we initially saw last year with the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT. This time around, the 7700 XT offers a 200mm² Graphics Compute Die (GCD) using TSMC's 5nm process, flanked by four 150 mm² Memory Compute Dies (MCDs) built on TSMC's 6nm node. One of those MCDs is disabled however, as the 7700 XT is not a full implementation of Navi 32.
Internally though, the compute makeup hasn't been radically changed. The cut-down Navi 32 silicon deployed here packs in 54 Compute Units, each of which houses 64 Stream Processors, for a total of 3456 shaders. There's also 54 Ray Accelerators – one per CU – and 96 ROPs.
As for clock speed, this remains high with the RX 7700 XT, with AMD touting a boost of up to 2544MHz, though a slightly lower game clock of 2171MHz. The Pure Frostpunk 2 Edition is slightly overclocked, with a 2584MHz boost clock.
Meanwhile, the memory configuration is almost identical to the previous generation RX 6700 XT. We still find 12GB GDDR6 operating over a 192-bit interface, but this time the memory clocks in at 18Gbps, up from 16Gbps. This gives a memory bandwidth of 432 GB/s, though AMD claims an ‘effective' bandwidth of 1995.3 GB/s due to the 64MB of 2nd Gen Infinity cache.
Power draw for the RX 7700 XT is rated at 245W Total Board Power (TBP), though AMD pointed out to us that this is an ‘up to' figure. We are using our well-established GPU power testing methodology in this review, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.
