It looks like the 'real' /affordable RDNA3 + next gen NV desktop launch won't launch until September. Thoughts?

[g67575]

I think an interesting comparison is the RX 6800 XT vs the RTX 4090.

Initially it might seem absurd to compare these 2, considering the different performance teirs.

But they both have plenty of VRAM.

The RX 6800 XT has sold for as little as £520 on sale, and could fall below £500.

The RTX 4090 sells for £1500-£1600.

In fairness the 4090 has the best RT performance available right now, but...

The RX 6800 XT offers just over half the performance of the 4090 in 3D graphics /raster.

 

[eddyr]

Not sure that a 7600 XT is needed.

Hopefully ~£400 for a 7700 XT, it would smash Nvidia's offerings at that price, especially if there's 12 or 16GB of VRAM.

I don't think they should charge much more than the 6700 XT (~£350), which is pretty much the most cost effective GPU at the moment.

Probably £550-£600 for a 7800 (60 CUs, maxing out Navi32).

No need for a 7800 XT (yet).

The only smashing happening when it comes to new GPU's is that of everyone's piggy banks.

 

[humbug]

Th current situation.

AMD:
7900XTX $999
7900XT $749
------------
7800XT $599?
7800 $529?
7700XT $449?
7700 $399?
7600XT 16GB? $349?
7600 $279?

Nvidia:
4090 $1599
4080 $1199
4070Ti $799
4070 $599
4060Ti 16GB $499
4060Ti $399
4060 $299

My reasoning on AMD pricing is this:

Nvidia have been very clever in undercutting the 6800XT MSRP with the 4070, AMD cannot repeat the $649 price for the 7800XT when its not going to be more than 20% faster than the 6800XT its replacing, at 20% faster it would put it just about (bar 1% TPU 1440P results) behind the 4070Ti, its probably only 15% better than the 6800XT which puts it a few % behind the 4070Ti.

It doesn't alwys pay to wait to see what your competitor does, Nvidia are not stupid, they know AMD's game and just pre-empted it,, as a result AMD are now forced to go a little lower than they probably would have liked and lost the march on Nvidia, had AMD gone first they might have got a couple of weeks of sales with not direct competition, but no, they played a stupid game and won a stupid prise.

Its been 5 moths since they release two RDNA3 cards, and that's it, its all they have given us, how long to the want to drag this release out for? I have no sympathy for them, next time take the initiative when it presents its self to you.

 

[g67575]

Nvidia have been very clever in undercutting the 6800XT MSRP with the 4070

Does that matter when you can buy them for around £520 in the UK?

The RTX 4070 isn't selling well at current prices, and it should probably be dropped to £500-£525.

It's more likely that Nvidia plans to sell another card at this price point, which I doubt will sell well.

 

[SpudMaster]

Does that matter when you can buy them for around £520 in the UK?

The RTX 4070 isn't selling well at current prices, and it should probably be dropped to £500-£525.

It's more likely that Nvidia plans to sell another card at this price point, which I doubt will sell well.

The point here is that 7800XT is likely to be sold at a price similar to what the 6800XT's MSRP was.

And yeah the 4070 should be closer to £500, below it really IMO.

 

[g67575]

The point here is that 7800XT is likely to be sold at a price similar to what the 6800XT's MSRP was.

Seems likely, given that the other products in the RX 7000 series have all had lower MSRPs so far than RX 6000 series equivalents.

 

[g67575]

One thing I noticed looking on US websites, there was a new RX 7900 XT listed for £650 (not including import duty).

It seems reasonable to think that they could offer the same price in Europe /the UK.

 

[SpudMaster]

Are the reference 7900XT's still being produced or are the cards available just lefter over stock from launch? The 7900XTX reference cards soon disappeared but all the cooler issues probably help with that. They are the only MSRP cards so if they disappear then no 7900XT's for under £800

 

[Haggisman]

One thing I noticed looking on US websites, there was a new RX 7900 XT listed for £650 (not including import duty).

It seems reasonable to think that they could offer the same price in Europe /the UK.

At that price point it would be a no brainer really, but would mean the 7800XT would be around £500-550 which I can't really see.

Honestly I prefer gaming on my PS5, I love the ecosystem and ease of play, I love Sony exclusives and although I used to have a PC in the living room, its too much hassle and it belongs in my office. I do still game a fair amount on it and its a decent spec (5900X and 6800) but I do still prefer the PS5.

I think a lot of people like me exist, maybe its an age thing, but given I have been a software dev for over 25 years and have lived and breathed Tech since I was a little boy, I don't think Tech ignorant is a fair choice of words.

PS Steam Deck is great also

Out of interest, what did you find was hassle about the living room PC?

It's something I'm tempted with myself; reusing existing parts if I do end up upgrading (currently stream my main PC via Nvidia Shield). 5-10 years ago I would definitely agree with you, and granted the initial setup is a lot more involved, but these days with Steam having native controller support and being able to boot into Big Picture mode, it's just as easy as a console.

 

[welshrat]

At that price point it would be a no brainer really, but would mean the 7800XT would be around £500-550 which I can't really see.



Out of interest, what did you find was hassle about the living room PC, as it's something I'm tempted with myself; reusing existing parts if I do end up upgrading (currently stream my main PC via Nvidia Shield). 5-10 years ago I would definitely agree with you, and granted the initial setup is a lot more involved, but these days with Steam having native controller support and being able to boot into Big Picture mode, it's just as easy as a console.

There were many things that I found a bit of a hassle.

Mouse and keyboard being comfortable on my lap even with a resting table. Various peripherals not working as expected like wireless xbox controller (I think this has improved somewhat), games not supporting controller and then having to use some mapping program to attempt to fix it all and never being truly happy with the result.

Asthetics as I wanted it to fit in with rest of TV hifi gear but it never really did.

Then there is all the typical software, driver updates etc.

All the above are small issues and I did use one for a good while as I was never really happy with the power of the original PS4 so played a lot via PC on TV (including witcher 3). However I am much happier now its confined to my office and personally am very happy with the power level of current gen of consoles.

I have given up on the series X as I dont think it offers me anything and what Gamepass games come out that are good I play on PC.

 

[humbug]

Does that matter when you can buy them for around £520 in the UK?

The RTX 4070 isn't selling well at current prices, and it should probably be dropped to £500-£525.

It's more likely that Nvidia plans to sell another card at this price point, which I doubt will sell well.

SpudMaster reiterated my point for me. IMO they are all too expensive for what they are, emphasis on that because they are not bad cards, far from it, but they are stagnant, AMD are no better in that regard.

The 4070Ti is $800, the 4080 $1200, i have no doubt that when Nvidia pushed the 4080 out at its ridiculous $1200, and it is utterly utterly ridiculous, AMD thought ah.... look at how silly Nvidia are, we can make some good margins here on the sub 7900XT cards.

And then waited for Nvidia to launch all their subsequent cards at equally silly prices, That didn't happen, the 4070Ti at $800 is still silly but its $400 less silly than the 4080, so no room for a slightly slower 7800XT to manoeuvre in between that and the $600 4070, while it might be quicker in raster than the 4070 AMD don't have the halo features so it needs to be priced to compete with the slower 4070, so $600, its the same story with the 4060Ti and 4060.

Nvidia are not going to let AMD catch a break, they are still willing to punch AMD in the face on pricing, AMD should have expected this and just put a good price on these cards to get the jump on Nvidia. Now Nvidia have the jump on AMD and AMD are stuck in a difficult spot.
These cards are not the generational up tick we are used to, but they will be cheaper now, Nvidia forced them in to it.

AMD are currently trading about 30% higher than Intel, as a company they are valued about 30% higher than Intel, that is an astonishing turnaround, but now perhaps they are taking too much advice from this mountain of money, they need to tell these people trust us to know what we are doing, AMD not worried about thier investors is how they did this, they need to get back too it, they are making too many mistakes, they are not being bold enough.

 

[humbug]

AMD being bold would have been to make a 370mm logic die instead of the 300mm die for the 7900XTX with that many more shaders at $999.

Yes that would result in higher power consumption, but no more than the 4090, it would have been a 4090 level card and better RT than what they now have.

The whole stack should have been higher like that, that would have put Nvidia in a difficult spot.

AMD's architectural engineering advantage over Nvidia gives them an option to land a killer blow, they didn't use it, they may not get another chance.

 

[Zarax]

AMD being bold would have been to make a 370mm logic die instead of the 300mm die for the 7900XTX with that many more shaders at $999.

Yes that would result in higher power consumption, but no more than the 4090, it would have been a 4090 level card and better RT than what they now have.

The whole stack should have been higher like that, that would have put Nvidia in a difficult spot.

AMD's architectural engineering advantage over Nvidia gives them an option to land a killer blow, they didn't use it, they may not get another chance.

RDNA3 scaling is likely worse than you estimate. Overclocking the card didn't bring much of an improvement and I suspect adding more CU wouldn't have been very effective both in cost and performance.
Sadly we're likely seeing another Vega-like generation, especially as they did reintroduce features they dropped to make RDNA leaner in the past...

 

[humbug]

RDNA3 scaling is likely worse than you estimate. Overclocking the card didn't bring much of an improvement and I suspect adding more CU wouldn't have been very effective both in cost and performance.
Sadly we're likely seeing another Vega-like generation, especially as they did reintroduce features they dropped to make RDNA leaner in the past...

Its difficult to know because for TPU at least they don't say what the average core clock increase was. Not at all useful if you're trying to figure that out.
But i wouldn't call it "Vega-Like"

They got a 10% performance gain from overclocking, that's more than i get from overclocking my MSI Gaming X RTX 2070 Super.
There absolutely is a gain from overclocking, 10% is not bad at all, i would say that's above average from modern GPU's which run pretty much on the limit out of the box.
There might be some memory bandwidth strangling, but it only has 18GB/s IC's on it, 21GB/s IC's are mainstream, just adding them to it would probably net a couple of % alone.

ASUS Radeon RX 7900 XTX TUF OC Review - Amazing Overclocking

The ASUS Radeon RX 7900 XTX offers fantastic overclocking potential. Thanks to a triple 8-pin power input, the XTX is no longer power-limited, and the amazing quad-slot cooler ensures the card stays cool and quiet at all times. After manual overclocking, the performance uplift to RTX 4080 was an...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[timorous]

Its difficult to know because for TPU at least they don't say what the average core clock increase was. Not at all useful if you're trying to figure that out.
But i wouldn't call it "Vega-Like"

They got a 10% performance gain from overclocking, that's more than get from overclocking my MSI Gaming X RTX 2070 Super.
There absolutely is a gain from overclocking, 10% is not bad at all, i would say that's above average from modern GPU's which run pretty much on the limit out of the box.
There might be some memory bandwidth strangling, but it only has 18GB/s IC's on it, 21GB/s IC's are mainstream, just adding them to it would probably net a couple of % alone.

ASUS Radeon RX 7900 XTX TUF OC Review - Amazing Overclocking

The ASUS Radeon RX 7900 XTX offers fantastic overclocking potential. Thanks to a triple 8-pin power input, the XTX is no longer power-limited, and the amazing quad-slot cooler ensures the card stays cool and quiet at all times. After manual overclocking, the performance uplift to RTX 4080 was an...

www.techpowerup.com

This table from their Taichi White review is most useful.

	Avg. GPU Clock​	Max. Memory Clock​	Performance​
Maximum Overclock Comparison
AMD RX 7900 XT	2740 MHz​	2750 MHz​	90.8 FPS​
AMD RX 7900 XTX	2715 MHz​	2750 MHz​	104.5 FPS​
ASRock RX 7900 XTX Taichi	2795 MHz​	2800 MHz​	106.2 FPS​
ASRock RX 7900 XTX Taichi White	2933 MHz​	2750 MHz​	109.1 FPS​
ASUS RX 7900 XTX TUF	2853 MHz​	2800 MHz​	108.5 FPS​
Sapphire RX 7900 XTX Nitro+	2936 MHz​	2765 MHz​	109.6 FPS​
XFX RX 7900 Merc 310	2921 MHz​	2780 MHz​	110.1 FPS​

If you look at pure shader scaling it is practically linear going from the 7900XT to the 7900XTX. The Taichi White is not linear but that 2750Mhz ram is a bottle neck when XFX Merc with lower average core clocks can score higher with a higher memory clock.

If RDNA 3 had been able to clock like this at 400W and paired it with 20Gbps - 21Gbps ram (or 3d stacking the MCDs to double the L3 cache) they would have had something that sat in the gulf between the 4090 and the 4080 rather than something that is at most 5% faster than the 4080.

RDNA 3 in the form of N31 feels very much like the GTX 480 did. Potential was there but it uses too much power to extract it.

 

[Zarax]

Its difficult to know because for TPU at least they don't say what the average core clock increase was. Not at all useful if you're trying to figure that out.
But i wouldn't call it "Vega-Like"

They got a 10% performance gain from overclocking, that's more than i get from overclocking my MSI Gaming X RTX 2070 Super.
There absolutely is a gain from overclocking, 10% is not bad at all, i would say that's above average from modern GPU's which run pretty much on the limit out of the box.
There might be some memory bandwidth strangling, but it only has 18GB/s IC's on it, 21GB/s IC's are mainstream, just adding them to it would probably net a couple of % alone.

ASUS Radeon RX 7900 XTX TUF OC Review - Amazing Overclocking

The ASUS Radeon RX 7900 XTX offers fantastic overclocking potential. Thanks to a triple 8-pin power input, the XTX is no longer power-limited, and the amazing quad-slot cooler ensures the card stays cool and quiet at all times. After manual overclocking, the performance uplift to RTX 4080 was an...

www.techpowerup.com

I'm basing my assumptions on this: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-rx-7900-xtx-matches-rtx-4090-at-700w
Also I call it VEGA-like because they reintroduced the dual-use instructions that were dropped with RDNA which basically gave great benchmarks but no benefits for gaming.
To be clear, Vega-like in a sense that if AMD tried to make something with the similar price and power draw as the 4090 they would still have come short so IMHO they were prudent in not trying that and they should have been more careful with naming.

 

[Murphy]

Are the reference 7900XT's still being produced or are the cards available just lefter over stock from launch? The 7900XTX reference cards soon disappeared but all the cooler issues probably help with that. They are the only MSRP cards so if they disappear then no 7900XT's for under £800

Have i got the wrong end of the stick here because there's 4 7900XT's under £800 on OCUK, all be it two of them by 1p.

 

[SpudMaster]

Have i got the wrong end of the stick here because there's 4 7900XT's under £800 on OCUK, all be it two of them by 1p.

Yeah thats true, Maybe I should have said none available for £750 then. Which really imo should be the higher end of the spectrum for these cards, not the cheapest

 

[humbug]

You would think the 4090 is 50% faster than the 7900XTX.

The 4090 on average is 22% faster at 4K, source TPU, 356 Watts 7900XTX vs 411 watts 4090.

That is not some massive unattainable difference.

The 14% higher performance overclock was achieved with +15% power, so 409 watts. An overclocked AIB almost does it at the same sort of power level as the 4090.

Clocking existing shaders higher is a higher power cost vs adding shaders, making it a 112 CU GPU with 21GB/s IC's would have got it there.

Yes they have said "we didn't want to make a 400 watt GPU" why not? Its not as if you haven't made even 500 watt GPU's before.... its already 360 watts!!!! its a small leap from that to 400. Played it far too safe and now these products are more "meh" than RDNA2 was, as a product they are uninspiring milk-toast derived from underutilized and frankly waisted tech.

 

[humbug]

This table from their Taichi White review is most useful.

	Avg. GPU Clock​	Max. Memory Clock​	Performance​
Maximum Overclock Comparison
AMD RX 7900 XT	2740 MHz​	2750 MHz​	90.8 FPS​
AMD RX 7900 XTX	2715 MHz​	2750 MHz​	104.5 FPS​
ASRock RX 7900 XTX Taichi	2795 MHz​	2800 MHz​	106.2 FPS​
ASRock RX 7900 XTX Taichi White	2933 MHz​	2750 MHz​	109.1 FPS​
ASUS RX 7900 XTX TUF	2853 MHz​	2800 MHz​	108.5 FPS​
Sapphire RX 7900 XTX Nitro+	2936 MHz​	2765 MHz​	109.6 FPS​
XFX RX 7900 Merc 310	2921 MHz​	2780 MHz​	110.1 FPS​

If you look at pure shader scaling it is practically linear going from the 7900XT to the 7900XTX. The Taichi White is not linear but that 2750Mhz ram is a bottle neck when XFX Merc with lower average core clocks can score higher with a higher memory clock.

If RDNA 3 had been able to clock like this at 400W and paired it with 20Gbps - 21Gbps ram (or 3d stacking the MCDs to double the L3 cache) they would have had something that sat in the gulf between the 4090 and the 4080 rather than something that is at most 5% faster than the 4080.

RDNA 3 in the form of N31 feels very much like the GTX 480 did. Potential was there but it uses too much power to extract it.

There is a 7.6% clock difference between the MBA card and the Merc 310, this with a 5.4% difference in performance, that's a 7/10 scaling, bang on what one would expect.

The memory clock, 30Mhz, 0.01% is nothing.

The Taichi and the Nitro+ are in the same ball park with 1 or less that 1 FPS difference with similar core clocks.