AMD RDNA 3 GPUs Are Much Cheaper Than RTX 4090

Last August, Dr. Lisa Su introduced the world to AMD’s latest version of CPU technology, Ryzen 7000 series– But it didn’t stop there. We’ve got an announcement about announcing: RDNA 3, AMD’s next generation of GPU technology. Well, today is November 3rd, and now we know more about AMD’s answer to RTX 40 . series.

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Dr. Sue started the presentation by thinking about the release of the Ryzen 7000 Series and stating AMD’s ambitious goals, just as she had done during the previous presentation. For RDNA3, she reiterated the company’s commitment to energy efficiency and performance.

“At the forefront of what we do, it’s about power and energy efficiency. We want to make sure we continue to innovate around driving performance per watt to enable all player upgrades with great performance, but at reasonable power.” – Dr. Lisa Su

Starting with the new chip design, RDNA 3 takes a modular approach with the goal of improving overall GPU design efficiency. Much like the Ryzen CPU family, RDNA3 will use a hybrid chip architecture. With a 5nm Graphics Die Compute Module (GCD) containing all shaders, rendering drivers and an updated media engine, the GCD is paired with a 6nm Memory Cache Die (MCD) that consists of a GDDR6 controller plus 96MB of AMD Infinity Cache – 2nd Generation Infinity Cache , This is it!

With this new design, the RNDA 3 chip will have a connection speed of up to 5.3 TB/s (2.7 times more than RDNA 2), enabling up to 61 TFLOPS of computing. All of this will be powered by up to 24GB of GDDR6 with up to 384-bit memory buses (not the GDDR6X we saw in the RTX 4090), and according to Dr. Sue, the RDNA 3 GPU will enable up to 54% higher performance per watt compared to in the previous generation.

So, what is this GPU magical mystery? Well, it’s actually two GPUs: the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and the RX 7900 XT.

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX comes with 24 GB of GDDR6 and the Radeon RX 7900 XT comes with 20 GB of GDDR6. Designed as 4K and 8K gaming graphics, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT contain a number of updates over the previous generation that will help propel it into the gaming future.

Starting with custom AI acceleration, RDNA 3 is said to improve the GPU’s AI-based functionality by 2.7x and ray tracing instructions by 1.8x over RDNA 2. In rendering applications – including ray tracing, this new architecture is said to get Up to 50% more performance per unit of account and doubling of instructions per hour. This is a much needed leap for Radeon Graphics to compete in this particular space of graphics processing!

But there is more:

AMD’s new Radiance Display is the engine that drives all that data into the screen. The engine will support 12 bits per channel with up to 68 billion colors as well as higher refresh rates. Thanks to the large adoption of DisplayPort 2.1 and HDMI 2.1, the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT will support refresh rates of up to 900 Hz at 1440p, 480 Hz at 4K, and 165 Hz at 5K.

Besides the Radiance Display Engine, AMD has also revealed a new dual media engine for simultaneous encoding and decoding for AVC and HEVC formats. This engine will also support AV1 encoding and decoding, with a maximum resolution of 8K60. Later in the presentation, AMD introduced future support for AV1 encoder support within OBS as well as other popular video streaming and editing software. This teaser also included a futuristic feature called SmartAccess Video, which will take advantage of Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs together to provide up to 30% of 4K multi-stream encoding.

When it comes to gaming performance, the RX 7900 XTX is claimed to perform up to 1.7x better than AMD’s previous flagship GPU, the Radeon RX 6950 XT, at rasterization and up to 1.6x better at ray tracing games. Using FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), the graphics shown by AMD for the 7900 XTX showed several titles operating at frame rates well in excess of 200 fps at 4K. He was one of the top bravewhich showed the RX 7900 XTX running at 704 FPS! Lots of bold claims here, but we’ll have to see for ourselves once the cards are in the hands of third party reviewers!

When it comes to the actual specifications, the RX 7900 XTX will have 96 compute units with a gaming clock of 2.3GHz. All of this is said to operate with a total panel power draw of 355 watts. For context, that’s 95 watts less than NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 Founder Edition while hovering close to typical board power for the RX 6950 XT. The RX 7900 XT will have 84 compute units with a 2GHz game clock and a total board power of 300W.

Oh yeah, and neither would need a special cable to run.

This is just the device, though. AMD took some time to talk about FSR adoption, the performance improvement seen in FSR2, and how well RDNA 3 works with it enabled. One example offered by the company was Ubisoft Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla It runs at 96 fps at 8K. It was a short clip, but it’s crazy to see all the same. But AMD wanted us to know that FSR doesn’t stop at FSR2. There is a new iteration, FSR3. At the time of the announcement, AMD said that Radeon users can expect up to twice the frames per second on FSR2 and that the technology will be available in 2023.

Continuing the talk about the software, AMD’s Frank Azor has shared updates to the Radeon Adrenaline software, including a new feature coming in the first half of 2023 called the AMD HYPR-RX. This feature will be a one-button optimizer to give AMD systems the best possible performance without having to make all the adjustments yourself.

Team Red also shared its commitment to delivering the best unified CPU and GPU experience by working with system integrators to bring the AMD Advantage line to the desktop platform. This means pairing AMD GPUs and CPUs together in system configurations that have been carefully orchestrated by AMD for the best possible AMD experience.

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT will be available on December 13, 2022. What about the price? $999 and $899, respectively. That’s a stunning distinction from NVIDIA’s $1,599 flagship.

We look forward to seeing these GPUs perform in the wild! Let us know in the comments what you’re most excited about in today’s AMD announcement and if you plan on doing an upgrade before the year is out.