Finally! AMD's RDNA 3 architecture is here, and it brings with it the world's first GPU based on chiplet technology. Why is that a big deal you ask? Making large chips is expensive, more expensive than making several small chips. AMD realized that years ago and built their Ryzen CPUs using the chiplet approach, which is the foundation for the company's tremendous comeback in the CPU space. Team Red is betting that the same can happen in the GPU world, and today we're testing their first products built using that philosophy. Using chiplets gives another major advantage—you can combine multiple production processes. For the case of the Navi 31 GPU that powers the Radeon RX 7900 Series, the central compute die is fabricated on TSMC's leading 5 nanometer node, because efficiency greatly matters for its design. On the other hand, the memory-cache dies don't put out as much heat, and contain analog technology, which doesn't scale as well with process size. That's why AMD decided to build those with 6 nanometer tech, which makes them cheaper to produce.

In this review we're covering the Radeon RX 7900 XT, the smaller brother to the XTX flagship, which we've reviewed here. The XT is built on the same Navi 31 GPU as the XTX, but with some units disabled. The number of GPU cores is 5376 (vs 6144 on the XTX), 84 out of 96 compute units, 20 GB instead of 24 GB GDDR6. The most interesting change is that instead of six MCDs with 96 MB of L3 cache, the XT uses five MCDs, which lowers the amount of L3 cache to 80 MB, and memory bandwidth from 384 bit to 320 bit. RDNA 3 also introduces an upgraded display engine, which has support for DisplayPort 2.1, for higher refresh rates on upcoming 4K and 8K displays, and you also get support for hardware-accelerated AV1 encoding—the video format of the future.

For this round of reviews I've switched my testing to a Core i9-13900K, replacing our aging Ryzen 7 5800X that served us well for many years. Originally I wanted to switch over the holidays, but constant feedback on how "outdated, slow, and terrible" the 5800X is (it is not), made me switch early—just last week. So in addition to working on the RDNA 3 reviews I also had to retest all my cards on the new setup, which is why there's fewer comparison cards in this review than what you're used to. I'll keep retesting and update this review with data for the remaining GPUs. All the important high-end cards are included right now, so the outcome won't change in any way, it will just give you a broader overview.

Averaged over our whole 25-game test suite at 4K resolution, with RT off, we find the Radeon RX 7900 XT matching the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti almost exactly—last generation's super-expensive NVIDIA flagship. Radeon RX 7900 XTX that also releases today is 19% faster, the RTX 4080 is 14% ahead and the RTX 4090 is 49% faster at more than twice the price. These are only averages though, and the differences between individual games are huge, which is why I've added a new chart at the end of the "Relative Performance" page, to break that down for you. If you take a closer look at RX 7900 XT numbers at different resolutions, it becomes apparent that at 4K the card is surprisingly weak compared to all other cards in this segment. I suspect that due to the smaller L3 cache size of 80 MB, the cache isn't big enough anymore to achieve the full benefits that we're seeing on the XTX. It almost feels like AMD intentionally designed the segmentation like that, which protects the more-expensive RX 7900 XTX, and at the same time it helps make the XT more attractive to buyers from the 1440p crowd—a stroke of genius.

It's also possible that the press driver isn't fully optimized for all our games yet. RDNA 3 introduces new dual-issue compute units, which require special code optimization, so that they can achieve the +100% performance uplift. In briefings AMD has made it clear they have been optimizing the driver for the new units, and I'm sure a lot of work has already been done in the shader compiler, but I'm just as certain that there's some cases where hand-optimization can yield further benefits. During testing I also encountered crashes in AC:Valhalla and Elden Ring, no doubt these will be fixed soon.

With those performance characteristics, RX 7900 XT is an excellent choice for gaming at 4K, with maximum details. You can max out everything and you'll still run at over 60 FPS in nearly all titles. As mentioned before, the card is especially strong at 1440p, definitely an outstanding option if you want to drive a high-refresh-rate monitor. Things are different when you enable ray tracing though, here the RX 7900 XT is considerably weaker than what NVIDIA offers. On average (new chart in the RT section), the RTX 3090 Ti is 16% faster, and the RTX 4080, which has new architectural RT improvements is even 36% faster. I think everyone agrees that ray tracing is the future, and just disagrees on how quickly that future is happening. If you're part in the "I want this now" camp, then you should probably consider the RTX 4080, or RTX 4090. On the other hand, if you feel like ray tracing is just minor additional eye candy, that comes with a huge performance hit, then you can happily grab the RX 7900 XT.

While NVIDIA's RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 are huge cards that will not fit all cases, the AMD reference cards that we're reviewing today are relatively compact. While they are not "small" by any standard, they roughly match the size of the previous generation boards, so you can easily upgrade just the graphics card. Power requirements are very similar, too, and there's no 16-pin power connector, so your existing PSU will be fine for upgrading from a 6800/6900-Series to a 7900 XT/XTX. A smaller cooler does mean that keeping things cool isn't as easy. Temperatures are actually super low on the RX 7900 XT, just 58°C, which is among the lowest I've seen in a long time. The Hot Spot temperature reaches 74°C under full load, which is also comfortably low, especially when considering that AMD confirms that "up to 110°C" is "within specification." While such low temperatures are certainly nice, they come at the cost of increased noise levels. With 37 dBA, the RX 7900 XTX is not "loud," but it's definitely not "quiet." NVIDIA's RTX 4080 Founders Edition is considerably quieter than that, and custom designs are nearly inaudible. I'll be testing a bunch of RX 7900 XT custom designs soon, hopefully these will offer a better balance between noise levels and temperature. As expected from all modern graphics cards, both the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT come with the idle-fan-stop capability that shuts off the fans when not gaming.

Power efficiency of the new Radeons is fantastic, clearly much better than the previous generation of RDNA2 and NVIDIA Ampere cards. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40 cards are a bit better still, by 18% (RTX 4090) and 24% (RTX 4080). Even the RX 7900 XTX is 7% more efficient. It seems that for the XT AMD forgot to lower the operating voltage, which should be possible because it runs lower clocks. During gaming the RX 7900 XT uses around 320 W of power, sitting right at its power limit. While the choice for dual 8-pin makes a lot of sense, it slightly limits the card in what it can do in terms of power. I also noticed that as the card heats up, the frequencies will drop by a lot. In our thermal load test, the card starts out running at 2666 MHz, and stays in that state for around 20 seconds, good to get a boost on short running benchmarks, but then clocks go down to 2505 MHz and stay there until the card cools down again at the end of your gaming session. This 6% drop is clearly significant and costs AMD against NVIDIA's cards, which don't drop nearly as much.

We measured a shocking power consumption result for multi-monitor and media playback. Here just the graphics card alone consumes 85 W and 76 W, respectively. This is way too high, RTX 4080 uses only 20-23 W in the same scenario, even the last generation RDNA2 cards were less than half that with 40 W. This can only be some sort of driver bug, because it basically disqualifies the new Radeons for multi-monitor use. Remember, this is idle sitting at the desktop, not gaming. Wasting that much power is simply a big no-no, especially in these times. AMD has had a long history of drawing a lot of power in these power states, so I'm not 100% convinced this really is so easy to fix. I also find it hard to imagine that nobody at AMD tests multi-monitor power draw, so in some meeting somewhere someone decided "we will release it like that."

AMD has already announced a $900 price point for the Radeon RX 7900 XT, which is surprisingly close to the XTX. Of course you can ask "does that mean that the XTX is priced lower than expected, or is the XT priced higher?", it really doesn't matter at the end of the day. The prices are what they are. The lower price point is certainly welcome for gamers who want to save some money, but I feel like AMD is successfully dangling the $100-carrot in front of me. At 4K, buying the XTX will give you a +16% performance uplift—definitely worth considering. As mentioned before, at 1440p, the XT scales quite well, and here both cards are evenly matched in the value that they offer. Another important consideration to make is that there's still quite a lot of existing inventory of Radeon RX 6000 Series cards, so maybe AMD is deliberately pricing the 7900 XT higher, until the older cards are sold off. NVIDIA is launching RTX 4070 Ti in the coming weeks and this card will be the primary competition to the RX 7900 XT. At this time we don't know performance or pricing for the 4070, so things will stay exciting in the coming year.