If you pay attention to the Steam’s charts and survey, you will find that Full HD resolution is still the most common and popular gaming resolution available. While there are plenty of 4K resolution displays on offer, Full HD and 1440p gaming still offer the best value for the gaming community. While the biggest chunk of gamers; more than 60% of Steam users in fact, games at 1080p Full HD resolution, there are also more players moving on to the 1440p platform due to the decreasing costs of high-resolution monitors. We also think that 1440p resolution is quite perfect for PC gaming.
The thing is for you to game at 1440p resolution smoothly, you cannot rely on one of those entry-level GPU. Before you go off buying the highest end GPU for your PC though, you also want to take note that 1440p does not require you to spend that kind of fortune either. You can do more than enough with mid-range GPUs these days. That is the whole purpose of AMD’s latest Radeon RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT anyway.
The new AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT are made to replace the aging AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT and RX 6800 XT with their own sets of improvements. While the older Radeon RX 6000 GPUs are proven to be capable mid-range to high-end GPUs for immersive 1440p gaming, they are based on old RDNA 2 technology announced in 2020. It is 2023, it is time to modernize.
AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 series GPU is not exactly new, but it was limited to the highest end GPU they have so far, the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX GPUs. These new RDNA 3 GPUs are made mostly for 4K resolution gaming, a little overkill for 1440p gaming. The new RDNA 3 GPU series GPUs do come with some practical benefits to gamers for the modern age though. HDMI 2.1 for example for high resolution and speedy displays. They also include AV1 transcoding capabilities for more multifaceted functions like high-speed, low-latency streaming.
Those technologies now trickle down to AMD’s mid-range GPUs in the RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT. Of course, the new GPUs also come with other improvements to make 1440p gaming better than ever before.
AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT
Other than AMD’s RDNA 3 technology, and the HDMI 2.1 ports, and AV1 transcoding capabilities, the RX 7800 XT comes strangely with less compute cores than before at 60 compared to 72 units from the RX 6800 XT before. There are also 60 ray tracing accelerators on the new GPU compared to the 72 from its predecessor. There is now 120 AI cores on the GPU for even better upscaling performance with AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3 for short). With FSR 3, you can technically use the RX 7800 XT for 4K gaming too at up to 120 fps if you have a capable resolution.
Despite the lower core count, the Radeon RX 7800 XT’s 60 compute cores are capable of higher clocks. The GPU clocks at a minimum of 2,124 MHz over the 2,015 MHz of the older GPU. At boost, the RX 7800 XT clocks at 2,430 MHz over the 2,250 MHz of its predecessor. You get the same 16GB GDDR6 memory as before though, which means you will not get the benefit of a faster GDDR6X memory. Still, the faster clock speed from the GPU also means that it performs better than before at least according to AMD’s own tests.
Less compute scores also means that the Radeon RX 7800 XT consumes less power than its predecessor though. Instead of the 300W before, the new GPU consumes 263W, at least 10% less than before, meaning you can save a little bit on your monthly electricity bills. While DisplayPort 1.4a was a good and capable port, AMD also replaced it with DisplayPort 2.1 interface for future-proofing.
AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT
The AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT gets all the technologies that the RX 7800 XT. You get the HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.1, RDNA 3, and AV1 transcoding capability as the more premium GPU. The Radeon RX 7700 XT is a cheaper GPU though, so there are some trade-offs to settle with.
There are less compute units at 54 units instead of 60. It is more than the 40 units from the previous GPU though. There are more RT accelerators than before too at 54 compared to 40 of the RX 6700 XT. While that means a much more capable GPU over the older Radeon RX 6700 XT, the new RX 7700 XT picks up more power than before at 245W power consumption over the 230W from before.
There is still the same 12GB of GDDR6 RAM than you see on the previous RX 6700 XT, which is not entirely surprising. The slightly odd thing is that the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT’s RDNA 3 compute units are clocked slightly slower than before at 2,171 MHz at base and up to 2,544 MHz at boost. Still, the extra cores should help the GPU trundle things along nicely.
Availability
AMD did not mention the exact pricing of the newly announced GPUs. They also did not mention anything about producing reference cards on their own. They mentioned that the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT GPUs will be available from board partners like ASRock, ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte, PowerColor, Sapphire, Vastarmor, XFX, and Yeston from the 6th of September 2023 onward. More information the new GPUs can be found on AMD’s website.