AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is a desktop graphics card that launched in Q4 2022 with a MSRP of $899. It is built on the RDNA 3.0 GPU microarchitecture (codename Navi 31) and is manufactured on a 5 nm process.

Memory

The RX 7900 XT has 20 GB of GDDR6 memory, with a 2,500 MHz memory clock and a 320 bit interface. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 800 Gb/s, which affects how fast it can transfer data to and from memory. GPU memory stores temporary data that helps the GPU with complex math and graphics operations. More memory is generally better, as not having enough can cause performance bottlenecks.

Cores and Clock Speeds

The RX 7900 XT includes 5,376 stream processors (SPs), the processing units for handling parallel computing tasks. The GPU operates at a core clock speed of 1,387 MHz and can dynamically boost its clock speed up to 2,394 MHz. It usually operates at 2,025 MHz during typical gaming workloads. Complementing the processing units are 336 texture mapping units (TMUs) for efficient texture filtering and 192 render output units (ROPs) for pixel processing. Additionally, the GPU features 168 AI accelerators optimized for AI workloads and 84 ray accelerators dedicated to real-time ray tracing calculations.

Compatibility & Power Consumption

The RX 7900 XT occupies 2 PCIe expansion slots. It supports HDMI 2.1a, DisplayPort 2.1, USB Type-C display connections. AMD recommends a power supply of at least 700 W to handle the GPU's thermal design power (TDP) of 300 W.

Benchmark Performance & Value

The RX 7900 XT has the 5th best 3DMark 11 Performance GPU score among the 543 benchmarked GPUs in our database. It achieves 72.46% of the performance of the best benchmarked GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Its 75,896 score and $899 launch price (MSRP) gives it a performance per dollar of 84.42. This is the 31st best in value for the 3DMark 11 Performance GPU benchmark.