AMD’s next-gen RDNA 3 flagship is already in the hands of board partners who are tuning them for their respective PCBs and heatsinks. Based on the modular (chiplet) Navi 31 core, the Radeon RX 7900 XT will combine one 5nm Graphics Compute Die (GCD) with six 6nm Memory Complex Dies (MCDs). The former will pack 12,288 shaders across 48 Work Group Processors (WGPs) and six shader engines (SEs).
| GPU Name | RX 7700 XT (Navi 33) | RX 7800 XT (Navi 32) | RX 7900 XT (Navi 31) | RX 7950 XT (Navi 30?) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Process Node | 6nm | 5nm + 6nm | 5nm + 6nm | 5nm + 6nm |
| Die Config | 6nm x1 | 5nm x1, 6nm x4 | 5nm x1, 6nm x5 | 5nm x1, 6nm x6 |
| Shader Engines | 2 | 4 | 6 | 6 |
| WGPs | 16 | 32 | 48 | 48 |
| CUs | 32 | 64 | 96 | 96 |
| Cores | 4,096 | 8,192 | 10,752? | 12,288 |
| Memory Bus | 128-bit | 256-bit | 320-bit? | 384-bit? |
| Memory Type | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6 |
| Memory Capacity | 8GB | 16GB | 20GB? | 24GB? |
| Infinity Cache | 64MB | 128MB | 192MB | 192MB? |
| TGP | 200W | 250W? | 300? | 350W? |
| Launch | Q4 2022 | Q1 2023 | Q4 2022 | 2023 |
Each of the MCDs will consist of 16MB of Infinity “L3” cache 3D stacked with another 16MB or 32MB per die paired with a 64-bit memory controller. This gives you 192MB of LLC alongside a 384-bit memory bus. According to Greymon55, board partners (AIBs) have already received the first wave of RDNA 3 chips and are testing them for next month’s release.
The performance looks mighty impressive with a gen-over-gen uplift of 2x in raster workloads and over 2x in ray-traced games. This means that the Radeon RX 7900 XT will perform roughly the same as the RTX 4090 in rasterized titles but likely lag behind in ray-tracing. Even a 2x gain in RT won’t be enough to match the RTX 4090 as its successor; the RTX 3090 is already up to twice as fast as the RX 6900 XT.
And then you’ve got DLSS 3, which more than doubles performance in supported titles. By the time the RTX 40 series parts land, we should have at least 50 titles supporting it, with 2 out of 3 new releases featuring it. AMD’s FSR 2 upscaler looks pretty solid but still suffers from limited adoption and won’t be a match for DLSS 3. RDNA 3 promises a massive upgrade in efficiency (up to 50% higher performance per watt), but in the end, it’ll be raw performance and upscaling tech that will decide this round.
