ITC editors tested the most powerful Radeon video card in the world – RX 7900 XTX 24Gb. The flagship version in the reference version promises to be an interesting alternative to NVIDIA RTX 4080 (for which the manufacturer has significantly inflated the price). In a detailed review, we will check the video card in working programs, measure temperatures using a software method and a pyrometer. We also measure the level of energy consumption of the entire system. And of course, we test popular AAA video games at 1440p and 2160p resolution.
Test stand
Before we move on to the video card, we will present other components that took part in the test:
- Intel Core i7-10700K processor;
- Motherboard: Asus PRIME Z490M-PLUS;
- RAM: G. Skill DDR4 32Gb 3200MHz Ripjaws V;
- Power supply unit: CHIEFTEC Proton 650W Gold;
- Case: NZXT S340;
- Drive 1: SSD Kingston A400 480 GB;
- Drive 2: SSD Kingston A2000 1 Tb;
Looking ahead, the power supply turned out to be quite sufficient for any scenarios of the operation of this PC. Radeon RX 7900 XTX requires only 2×8 Pin GPU. Owners of 600-700W PSUs can not worry about the need for an upgrade.
Complete set and type
The reference version from AMD was reviewed. The box is tiny, you might think that some budget video card with one fan is hidden there. In fact, it has the top Radeon 2022 flagship with 24 GB of video memory.
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Inside – minimal equipment. For obvious reasons, there are no adapters, as in the case of NVIDIA. The video card itself takes up almost all the space in the box. It turned out to be very compact. It is unusual to see a top graphics adapter of such dimensions. After the NVIDIA RTX 4080/4090 MSI Suprim X, this model looks tiny.
The back plate (backplate) covers all the elements. Cooling is done with taste. The designers tried their best. An aesthetic and beautiful video card that will fit into any compact case. One of the neatest models ever to be reviewed by ITC editors.
Three fans are responsible for cooling. Not too noisy, not too quiet. There will be no discomfort in the closed case under the table. Did the compact dimensions of the radiator affect the temperature indicators? We tested this thoroughly in the Power Consumption and Heating section and during gaming benchmarks.
Productivity in work tasks
We checked the speed of the new product in popular synthetic benchmarks that reflect the theoretical power of the video card.
Geekbench Open CL
Geekbench Vulkan
Geekbench results surprised. As for the RX 6900 XT, the results were worse than Open CL. It is clear where this indicator comes from. Multiple repetitions of the test did not change the results.
The RX 7900 XTX video card is still far behind NVIDIA’s current models in Open CL. But in the Vulkan test, the novelty managed to outpace its competitor RTX 4080. We should expect advantages in games that work with this API.
Blender
Rendering performance in the Blender Benchmark looks good when compared to previous Radeon flagships. But it is enough to look at the RTX 4080 result and everything falls into place.
Even the average NVIDIA RTX 3070 or the “retired” RTX 2080 Ti is equal to the new leader Radeon RX 7900 XTX. The difference between the new ADA RTX 4000 is striking. Specialists will definitely not choose AMD Radeon for work.
Performance in games
Radeon graphics adapters primarily position themselves not as professional graphics processing tools, but as components for video games. Let’s check popular AAA projects with different resolutions.
A Plague Tale Requiem
Luxurious visuals and incredibly high requirements. RX 7900 XTX is enough to run this toy in 4K. But to get 60 FPS, you will have to lower several parameters.
In NVIDIA ADA, the frame rate is doubled due to frame generation technology, in this case there is only what the graphics card can offer in an “honest” way.
1440p:
2160p:
AC Valhalla
A historically accurate game about medieval Vikings shows the advantage of the Radeon over the RTX 4080. You can enjoy the maximum graphics with a resolution of 2160p. The novelty is close to the performance of the RTX 4090 in this game. At the same time, the difference in cost is almost twofold.
1440p:
2160p:
APEX Legends
On eSports settings, we get 200-250 frames per second. Enough for top monitors. The first run of the game was terrible. Continuous hangs forced the game to be restarted. After that, everything got better.
1440p:
2160p:
Control
A very demanding game, although not the “first freshness”. Ray tracing eats up a lot of performance and the frame rate drops by more than half. Without RT FPS is more than comfortable.
1440p:
2160p:
Cyberpunk 2077
The same situation in Cyberpunk 2077. The game runs perfectly in 4K until RT is turned on. Activating this option causes the FPS counter to drop three times.
1440p:
2160p:
DOOM Eternal
A perfectly optimized game that works perfectly with any settings. Ray tracing takes significantly less productivity than other projects.
1440p:
2160p:
F1 2021
The approximate racing simulator is also running perfectly. 4K monitor “in hand” and you can play at 200 FPS with Ultra preset. We activate RT and performance drops by 3 times.
1440p:
2160p:
MFS 2020
The power of the flagship Radeon is enough for MFS 2020, but regular crashes spoil the experience. The simulator gave errors often and refused to work with DX11. After switching the mode to DirectX 12, no colors were observed in the game.
1440p:
2160p:
PUBG
The immortal Battle Royale classic needs a powerful processor. Landing in a crowded place, on the i7-10700K and RX 7900 XTX we get identical FPS with different resolutions. 170 FPS is still enough for 4K 144Hz monitors.
1440p:
2160p:
The Witcher Next Gen
The updated version of the Witcher has slightly improved visuals. Productivity is also at a good level. Ray tracing in this game is strictly prohibited for all gamers and lovers of good graphics.
It’s hard to find a toy where RT is so horribly implemented. Cyberpunk 2077 looks well optimized against the background of Next Gen Witcher. Losses of productivity of more than 300%. The frametime line is getting terrible. FSR doesn’t really save the day. Also, the game constantly “flew out”. Frequent crashes did not give rest. Restarting the PC partially fixed the situation.
1440p:
2160p:
Call of Duty Warzone
We tested the first part of Warzone for comparison with the results of the RTX 4090. We will remind that the ITC editors tested the RTX ADA flagship on this test bench, as well as the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
1440p
2160p:
An interesting fact is that at times the Radeon RX 7900 XTX interacts better with this test bench than the NVIDIA RTX 4090. This is only evident in some games. At 1440p resolution, we saw the best result on the same computer.
In AC Valhalla, they received an Intel Core i7-10700K processor. It could not deliver more than 135 frames per second with NVIDIA, and with Radeon crossed the limit of 150. When testing RTX 4080 with Intel Core i9-13900K, the indicator was 150+ FPS, which confirms the processor limitations. A very strange result, but a fact. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX performs significantly better in some projects and directly affects the CPU component.
The video card turned out to be very productive in relation to its predecessor, but it still cannot be called the RTX 4080 killer. After all, with the use of Ray Tracing, DLSS, Frame Generation, the overpriced model from NVIDIA goes ahead and no longer looks like such an outsider.
The ideal monitor for a Radeon flagship is a 2K Ultra Wide at 144Hz. In this scenario, we turn off ray tracing, and all games will fly with high FPS. Rays or incredible smoothness – the choice is clear.
Most likely, a gamer will choose an increased frame rate over a slight change in visuals. In half of the games, tracing is implemented, to put it mildly. We should mention such masterpieces as Fortnite, in which the RTX 4090 produced 20-30 FPS.
There are plenty of games without this technology that look better than more demanding projects with Ray Tracing. A Plague Tale Requiem, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 are great examples.
Energy consumption and heating
The proprietary software allows you to optimize energy consumption. Undervolting (voltage reduction) slightly reduces heating. Productivity in itself has almost suffered, the deviation is no more than an error. Note that without this procedure, the Furmark stress test forced the video card to reset frequencies.
The noise of the cooling system is within normal limits. The fans spin, buzz, and do not interfere with playing. Ordinary coolers of the middle class, not bad, but far from ideal. Much quieter models have also visited ITC.
It cannot be said that the video card overheated during gaming tests, but the indicators were significantly higher compared to RTX series ADA. It’s all about a small radiator. The RX 7900 XTX video card is half the size of the RTX 4080 from MSI Suprim X. Below, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the temperatures and power consumption during stress tests.
Blender
Furmark
Cyberpunk 2077
It is also worth adding a few words about the throttle whistle. The ITC editors also noted this problem for the RTX 4080/4090, but here the sound turned out to be somewhat different. This effect appears only under high load. If the computer is standing on the table next to the monitor, as is customary for the new generation of gamers, it will not be possible to avoid the annoying sound.
It was possible to record the hottest points (Hotspot) in the range of 100-110 degrees in the game Cyberpunk 2077. It would be better if the software gave incorrect indicators. But it is easier to believe in these data, looking at the total energy consumption and heating. A pyrometer was used for hardware temperature measurement at various points of the video card.
Backplate
Between the radiator and the board
Power cables
In the end, we will please you with low indicators. A system with an Intel Core i7-10700K and an RX 7900 XTX graphics card consumes less than 50 watts when idle. Internet surfing, office applications, other light tasks, etc. – all these scenarios are very economical. Without load, the video card consumes almost no electricity.
Desktop
Pros:
excellent performance with high resolution, compact size.
Cons:
software problems, heating (up to 110 ° C hotspot), not the best performance in work programs, whistling throttles.
Conclusion:
RX 7900 XTX is the most powerful representative from the Radeon camp. This is the ultimate flagship that shows good “pure” performance and promises to be much cheaper than analogs from NVIDIA. The compact dimensions of the reference (and aesthetic) version are reflected in high temperatures. Probably, manufacturers Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Biostar, Palit will use stronger cooling in their own versions of the RX7900 XTX. I was most alarmed by the heating (hotspot up to 110 degrees). “Pure” performance (without using AMD FSR, NVIDIA DLSS) is very good, but when activating proprietary technologies, “green” video cards feel somewhat better. With DLSS, we get less loss of image quality and a slightly higher frame rate boost. Until AMD releases its frame generation technology, there is no point in comparing NVIDIA’s Frame Generation. With this chip, the RTX 4080 leaves far behind the RX 7900 XTX, because it can double the FPS without losing quality. Ray tracing is significantly improved over the Radeon 6000 series. The percentage loss of the frame rate is less than that of previous flagships. And everything is known comparatively. Competitors with Ray Tracing technology feel much better. Also in working programs. Radeon is not the best for rendering 3D graphics and is significantly inferior to the RTX series. It was not without a large number of software defects. At the time of testing, a release driver was already available, with which some of the problems were resolved by themselves. But there were still regular crashes and bugs where they shouldn’t be (DOOM Eternal, MFS 2020, The Witcher 3). We hope that these software bugs will be fixed by the developers. If so, then the video card fully deserves 4/5 stars. Only then can the RX 7900 XTX be called a truly successful purchase. But now the owners of the new flagship are highly likely to face the problems described above. AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX – video card for 4K 60Hz or 2K 144Hz monitors. If you don’t play with ray tracing (which in half the cases makes no sense), then we get a productive adapter with a huge reserve for the future. The recommended price of $999 makes potential gamers think about the choice. So far, NVIDIA analogues are very expensive – this is a good alternative for brave gamers who do not want to overpay for DLSS and Frame Generation.
