PowerColor RX 7800 XT Hellhound Review

1. Introduction2. Meet the PowerColor RX 7800 XT Hellhound3. Testing Methodology4. Game Benchmarks5. Clock Speed6. GPU Temperatures7. Acoustics8. Noise-Normalised Temperatures9. Power Draw and Efficiency10. Overclocking11. Closing Thoughts12. View All Pages

Following on from our launch day review of AMD's reference RX 7800 XT graphics card, today we turn our attention to the partner cards, and the PowerColor Hellhound in particular. Offering a beefed-up triple fan cooler, dual-BIOS and a physical switch to control the lighting, this card hits the market at around £520. Is it worth paying the £40 premium for? We find out today.

We were generally impressed with the RX 7800 XT in our launch day review, and while it's not a huge step forward from the previous generation, it does offer convincing value against the likes of the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070. While AMD's own RX 7800 XT reference (MBA) card was decent, we'd expect an experienced partner like PowerColor to improve on pretty much everything with the RX 7800 XT Hellhound, so let's find out what this card can bring to the table.

	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

OC BIOS, left, compared to Silent BIOS, right

First, let's take a quick look at the specs. Unlike the most recent RDNA 3 GPU – the RX 7600 – AMD has made a return to its chiplet-based design for the RX 7800 XT, as we initially saw last year with the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT. This time around, the 7800 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.

Internally though, the compute makeup hasn't been radically changed. Navi 32 packs in 60 Compute Units, each of which houses 64 Stream Processors, for a total of 3840 shaders. There are also 60 Ray Accelerators – one per CU – and 96 ROPs.

As for clock speed, this remains high with the RX 7800 XT, with AMD touting a reference boost clock of up to 2430MHz. PowerColor has tweaked this up to 2520MHz for the OC BIOS however, while the Silent BIOS remains at stock clocks.

Meanwhile, the memory configuration is almost identical to the previous generation RX 6800 XT. We still find 16GB GDDR6 operating over a 256-bit interface, but this time the memory clocks in at 19.5Gbps, up from 16Gbps. This gives a memory bandwidth of 624 GB/s, though AMD claims an ‘effective' bandwidth of 2708.4 GB/s due to the 64MB of 2nd Gen Infinity cache.

Power draw for the RX 7800 XT is rated at 263W Total Board Power (TBP), though PowerColor has again increased this for the OC BIOS. 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.

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