AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX vs 7900 XT
Which of the top end is a better pick for RDNA 3?
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Radeon RX 7900 XTX vs RX 7900 XT, two new graphics cards built on the next-generation, high-performance RDNA 3 architecture, have been unveiled by AMD, the industry leader in graphics chips.
The 7900 XT and 7900 XTX were first announced on November 3 and will be available on December 13 for $899 and $999, respectively.
Architecture
The Navi 31 GPU is fully functional on the 7900 XTX, whereas it is slightly scaled back on the 7900 XT. The XT variant features 84 of the 96 Compute Units (or CU) that Navi 31 offers, a clock speed of 2GHz as opposed to the XTX’s 2.3GHz, 20GB as opposed to the XTX’s
24GB GDDR6, and a slight reduction in Infinity Cache.
Specifications
| RX 7900 XTX | RX 7900 XT | |
|---|---|---|
| GPU | Navi 31 XTX | Navi 31 XT |
| GPU process | TSMC 5+6nm | TSMC 5+6nm |
| Shaders | 6,144 | 5,376 |
| Base clock | 1,900 MHz | 1,500 MHz |
| Boost clock | 2,500 MHz | 2,400 MHz |
| Memory | 24GB GDDR6 | 20GB GDDR6 |
| Memory clock | 20 Gbps | 20 Gbps |
| Memory bus | 384-bit | 320-bit |
| TBP | 355W | 300W |
The 7900 XT has a slightly lower TDP and a slower clock speed. The only significant difference between the two GPUs will be performance.
Performance
The 7900 XTX outperformed the 6950 XT in six AAA games tested at 4K (three of which also had ray tracing enabled) by a factor of 1.5 to 1.7. This is only conjecture, but if AMD had tested a 7900 XT, we may assume it would be 1.3 to 1.5 times quicker than the 6950 XT.
AMD states that the 7900 XTX very easily achieves frame rate caps at 1440p in esports games, including Valorant’s 833 fps cap and Apex Legends’ 300 fps cap. In contrast, AMD asserts that the 7900 XTX can game at 8K resolutions and even at frame rates much above 60.
Although AMD acknowledges that it needs FSR to achieve these frame rates; this sounds very similar to Nvidia’s 8K gaming claims and may even be too good to be true. Conversely, the 7900 XTX has DisplayPort 2.1, unlike the RTX 4090, which allows it to display more than 60 frames per second at 8K.
Is the 7900 XTX better than the 7900 XT?
The 7900 XT and 7900 XTX are a bit traditional in terms of GPU debuts; the XTX model represents the pinnacle of AMD technology, while the XT model is a little more streamlined at a lower price. Which GPU should you buy, therefore, based on these preliminary results? The 7900 XTX seems like a great deal right now.
For an additional $100, you can get about 15% more cores, a slightly faster clock speed, a little more VRAM, and roughly the same power consumption. But before we offer our final advice on how all these specifications perform, we must test them ourselves.
