AMD is prepping its next-gen RDNA 3 graphics cards for launch in the year’s third quarter. The Radeon RX 7700 XT will be the first SKU to hit retail sometime in late October or November. Based on the Navi 33 die, it will compete with the likes of the GeForce RTX 4070. It will feature an 8GB VRAM buffer across a 128-bit bus along with 128MB of L3 “Infinity” cache. The core count is rumored to be 4,096 across 32 CUs and 16 WGPs.
According to Tom from MLID, it’ll be faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT at 1080p but fall behind at 4K due to the higher external bandwidth requirement. In ray-traced titles, however, you can expect markedly better performance than all the existing Radeon RX 6000 GPUs. In terms of power consumption, the original TGP target was 200W but now has been increased to 230W. Interestingly, the RX 7700 XT will be equipped with an 8-lane PCIe Gen 5 bus which is more than sufficient considering the high bandwidth of Gen 4/Gen 5. However, users with older PCIe Gen 3 boards may run into bottlenecks.
Related: AMD Prepares Drivers for Radeon RX 7900 XT/7700 XT for Doubled Compute Unit (CU) Throughput
Navi 33 will be the only GPU to feature a 6nm-based monolithic die. Navi 32 and Navi 31 will be modular designs with a single 5nm GCD (Graphics Compute Die) and multiple 6nm MCDs (Memory Controller Dies?). The Radeon RX 7900 XT (Navi 31) will be the highlight with one GCD and six MCDs. The GCD will pack a total of 12,288 shaders across 96 CUs and 48 WGPs. A total of 384MB of L3 “Infinity” Cache will be distributed across the six MCDs and paired with the memory controllers. The memory bus is said to be an impressive 384-bit wide, a first for the RDNA family. As expected from the N5 process, the boost clocks should easily hit 3GHz. And finally, the TDP should also increase, though not as much as Lovelace. A 350W TGP for the RX 7900 XT is my guess.
The Radeon RX 7800 XT will launch early next year as the 7900 XT and the 7700 XT battle the RTX 4090, and 4080, respectively. I have to say. AMD’s launch order certainly is confusing, to say the least. NVIDIA will have the entire floor to itself till the RX 7900 XT launches in December or January.
