Introduction

ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7700 XT OC Edition is one of the most over-the-top custom designs you'll see today from our extensive coverage of AMD's double launch for the RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT. The two fill a vast performance gap that existed in the RX 7000 series, between the mainstream RX 7600, and the enthusiast RX 7900 series. Both the RX 7700 XT from this review, and its 7800 XT sibling, are designed for maxed out 1440p across AAA and e-sports titles; as well as extreme refresh-rate competitive gaming at 1080p. These are firmly next-generation cards, implementing the AMD RDNA 3 graphics architecture, and being based on the 5 nm foundry node where it matters.



The new RDNA 3 graphics architecture promises generational performance uplifts on the backs of a new generation compute unit that features dual-issue rate compute units with AI accelerators designed to more efficiently utilize the SIMD resources; a 2nd generation Ray accelerator that offers a 50% ray tracing performance uplift, and the MDIA (multi-draw indirect accelerator), a component that promises transformational speed-ups for DirectX 12 apps that utilize it.

The Radeon RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT debut the new Navi 32 GPU, which is built on the same chiplet design philosophy as the Navi 31 powering the RX 7900 series. All of the GPU's graphics rendering and number crunching components that tangibly benefit from the switch to the new 5 nm foundry node are placed on a central die called the graphics compute die (GCD). This 5 nm logic-heavy chiplet is surrounded by four smaller chiplets built on the older 6 nm foundry node that contain segments of the GPU's Infinity Cache and GDDR6 memory controllers—components that can make do with the older process and don't benefit from 5 nm as much as the shaders do. The four chiplets add up to the GPU's 256-bit GDDR6 memory interface and 64 MB Infinity Cache, however the RX 7700 XT is configured with 3 of them, resulting in a 192-bit memory interface and 48 MB Infinity Cache.

The RX 7700 XT is carved out of the Navi 32 by enabling 54 out of 60 RDNA 3 compute units present on its GCD, which result in 3,456 stream processors, 108 AI accelerators, 54 Ray accelerators, 216 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. The 192-bit memory interface is paired with 12 GB of 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory, driving 432 GB/s of memory bandwidth. At reference speeds, the RX 7700 XT has its board power set at 245 W, although board partners are free to set their power limits above or below this.

The ASUS TUF Gaming OC Edition is a premium custom-design, they are running the GPU at factory-overclocked speeds of 2276 MHz, compared to 2171 MHz reference; while leaving the memory untouched at 18 Gbps. The star attraction is the large triple-slot TUF Gaming cooling solution, which looks like it's been designed for GPUs from a segment above. Both the RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT TUF Gaming products from ASUS use a common board design, so one can expect low temperatures and noise figures for this card. ASUS is pricing the RX 7700 XT TUF Gaming OC at $470, a $20 premium over the $450 starting price for this SKU.

Short 10-Minute Video Comparing 9x RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT

Our goal with the videos is to create short summaries, not go into all the details and test results, which can be found in our written reviews.