We’ve now had a chance to fully test the Radeon RX 7800 XT, and you can see all the benchmarks in our full Radeon RX 7800 XT review, where we give you our verdict on the latest AMD mid-range GPU, and see how it compares with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070.
After plenty of speculation, specs and images of AMD’s upcoming RX 7800 XT have been revealed early by one of its board partners, PowerColor. The PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT leak reveals images of PowerColor’s Red Devil RX 7800 XT version of the card as well as specs of the new AMD Navi 32 GPU that it uses.
Many of the specs of the new mid-range graphics card had been revealed in previous leaks, as detailed in our summary of the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT specs, price, and release date. However, these leaks coming directly from PowerColor (via Videocardz.com) finally confirm what we’ve previously seen.
Key details include the use of a new Navi 32 GPU that sits between the Navi 31 used by the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT and the Navi 33 GPU used in the RX 7600 – there’s also the Navi 31 XL used in the RX 7900 GRE, but this remains a card that’s exclusive only to certain markets.
Navi 32, then, uses a chiplet or multi-chip-module (MCM) RDNA 3 design, like Navi 31, but where that GPU has one Graphics Compute Die (GCD) and six Memory Cache Dies (MCDs), Navi 32 has one GCD and four MCDs. The GCD is the die that contains the stream processors, ray tracing cores, and other processing parts of the GPU while the MCDs contain the memory controller and L3 cache. In contrast, Navi 33 is a monolithic design that uses a single die that contains the processors, cache, and memory controller.
Image credit: Videocardz.com
As you might expect, Navi 32 having two-thirds the number of MCDs means it has two-thirds the L3 cache and a narrower memory interface, reducing memory bandwidth. Specifically, while Navi 31 has a 384-bit interface, Navi 32 drops to a 256-bit interface
The GCD, meanwhile, is visibly a smaller die than the GCD of Navi 31, despite it being called the same thing. This new smaller Navi 32 GCD houses 60 compute units, incorporating 3,840 stream processors, which puts it at around half to two-thirds the processing power of the Navi 31 GCD which houses 96 compute units and 6,144 stream processors.
We also expect Navi 32 to be used in the upcoming RX 7800 (if such a card exists and it isn’t just the RX 7800 XT) and RX 7700 with some combination of either reduced clock speeds, memory allocations, disabling of one of more MCDs or a reduction in the enabled portions of the GCD, resulting in a reduced compute unit and stream processor count.
As for PowerColor’s Red Devil RX 7800 XT, it appears to be the same core card design as the company’s RX 7900 GRE with a very larger triple-fan cooler design that stretches considerably higher than the card’s IO bracket. This should result in excellent thermal and acoustic performance but might limit case compatibility.
PowerColor describes the card as ‘embrac[ing] an upgraded triple ringed-fan cooling solution (100 x 100 x 100mm), a set of 8 x 6φ heatpipes running through the heatsink, and a sleek copper plate directly touching the GPU while covering VRAM to rapidly transfer the heat; it also utilizes high quality PCB that comes with the 11+3+1+2+1 phase VRM design, and DrMOS with IMON real-time digital monitoring built in, all together to guarantee the optimum cooling efficiency and stability when pushing to the limits.’
With this leak, along with AMD’s recent announcement that its ‘enthusiast’ RDNA 3 cards would be arriving in Q3 2023, it really does look like we’ll be getting new mid-range AMD GPUs within the next seven weeks.
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Meanwhile, for our current GPU recommendations, check out our best graphics card guide.