AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Video Card Review

Awesome review Brent, thanks a ton for your work. I had been eagerly awaiting this review, and the release of these cards. Very impressed by the XTX.

If I was in a market for a card right now, it would be the XTX. No reason to ever consider a 4080, and I can get close enough to the 4090 with the XTX considering the amount of money I save over a 4090. Not to mention you get waaaaaay better experiences in Linux with Radeons and Intel iGPUs/Arc discreet GPUs cuz of their open-source drivers. nVidia open-source drivers on Linux are a joke, you basically need their proprietary drivers, and because those things aren't open-source, they don't play too nicely with a lot of sh!t in Linux. Real pain in the @ss to deal with.

All that said, XTX is still far too rich for my blood. That kind of performance should be around $600-$700 (and even then I would still complain about the price).

Haven't seen XT reviews yet, but with it being only $100 cheaper than the XTX why wouldn't I just spring for the XTX?

SmokeRngs said:
When ray tracing was introduced on the 2x00 nVidia line I figured it would be three generations before it could be usable. I was dead wrong about that. From the look of things is going to be at least six generations before that happens.
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Man I definitely wasn't thinking it would be usable in 3 gens, I was thinking several generations at the least.
 
DrezKill said:
Haven't seen XT reviews yet, but with it being only $100 cheaper than the XTX why wouldn't I just spring for the XTX?
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Brent has one up for this also but also says something similar, but different, in the conclusion.


I think the usability of RT in relation to ongoing GPU releases is a moving target, just like goals with resolutions. I remember in the early 2000s how we were waiting for cards to get up to speed with 1080p but then textures, more shaders, tessellation, and other features kept getting added to games and the demand for 1080p has continued to hold on even now. I guarantee that if we had some new engine that supported truly photo-realistic textures and shading it would crush a 4090 at 1080p even without any RT at all.

We've seen 1440p come, followed by 4K, and 8K far on the horizon (but not for me), and the moving targets will continue as more features are added, and now there's the insane race of uber framerates for competitive gamers to boot. Ultimately it's always going to fall back on the user when it comes to what they want, can afford, are willing to spend, and not to mention availability, but in terms of usability that will probably always remain a moving target.
 
@Brent_Justice, will you be reviewing the custom AIB editions of the 7900 XT/XTX in the near future? From what I've seen from some of the other review sites, the amount of OC potential left in them (via 3 8-pin, instead of 2 8-pin) can be quite substantial, especially on the top-end customs (Sapphire Vapor-X, ASUS TUF/RoG, etc) -- which would explain why AMD's own reference cards disappointed some enthusiasts (they decided to throw some 'incentives' over to their AIB partners, unlike NVIDIA, who essentially actively competes with their AIBs).
 
@Brent_Justice Would you be able to run some Milkyway@home tasks on this GPU. I'm curious to know how well the new AMDs run this particular project. I can walk you through the steps in getting BOINC setup and running. If you need me to.

What I want to know is;
Duration for a single Milkyway@home separation GPU tasks.
Duration for multiple Milkyway@home separation GPU tasks, as many tasks as it can run simultaneously before VRAM is capped or the tasks times have a diminishing return.

Would prefer Linux numbers, but in my experience getting AMD drivers working on Linux is a bit of a pain so Windows will be fine if Linux is too hard.

I suspect this GPU should be able to run one task in well under 1 minute and will most likely not reach the VRAM limit with 24GB of VRAM.

Milkyway project web site: https://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/

Go here to create a new account: https://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/create_account_form.php
Enter your screen name, email address and a password. Email address will be used for the login name, screen name will be used to display your stats on 3rd party stats sites and your username when posting on the forums.

Go here if it doesn't automatically redirect you: https://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/home.php
[login if its not automatically logged in]
Click on Milkyway@home preferences:
Edit preferences in the top Primary (default) preferences table
Uncheck Use CPU
Optional: Uncheck "Should MilkyWay@home show your computers on its web site?" if you wish to hide your computers from being associated with your name.
Uncheck "Milkyway@home N-Body simulation"
Check "Milkyway@home Separation"
Click update preferences

This will create an account and prevent Milkyway@home from running on the CPU. Optionally it'll hide your computers from your name. The computers will just show up as "anonymous".

BOINC software download: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php (You don't need the VirtualBox version for Milkyway)

Windows just download the package and install it like normal. Do not run as a service and you can optionally uncheck the screensaver if that's still an option.

Linux Install: (Debian and all derivatives of Debian; Ubuntu, Mint, etc...)
  1. sudo apt install -y boinc boinctui
  2. sudo systemctl enable boinc-client
  3. sudo service boinc-client start
  4. boinctui
1. Installs the boinc client and boinctui utility.
2. Sets BOINC to run after a reboot.
3. Starts the BOINC daemon
4. Opens the boinctui CLI utility

Using boinctui;
Press F9 to cycle through the top menu options, press enter when you get to the one you want.
Use the directional buttons on the keyboard to navigate to Projects > "Add Project" scroll down to Milkyway@home, hit enter. Go to existing account and enter your email and password for milkyway@home. hit enter again and it'll attach you to the project.
 
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LeRoy_Blanchard said:
Would prefer Linux numbers, but in my experience getting AMD drivers working on Linux is a bit of a pain so Windows will be fine if Linux is too hard.
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From what I've read, support for the Radeon RX 7900-series cards on Linux requires kernel version 6.0 and Mesa 22.2 or better. It may be necessary to manually download the firmware from linux-firmware.git in case they haven't been picked up by one's distribution.

In general, AMD's open-source drivers should work well out of the box, especially for less bleeding-edge GPUs (e.g., 6000-series). Not doubting your experience, but maybe it's been a while since you last tried? Their drivers have seen a lot of improvement in recent years.
 
Tempest said:
From what I've read, support for the Radeon RX 7900-series cards on Linux requires kernel version 6.0 and Mesa 22.2 or better. It may be necessary to manually download the firmware from linux-firmware.git in case they haven't been picked up by one's distribution.

In general, AMD's open-source drivers should work well out of the box, especially for less bleeding-edge GPUs (e.g., 6000-series). Not doubting your experience, but maybe it's been a while since you last tried? Their drivers have seen a lot of improvement in recent years.
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I do admit, it has been a while since I last tried running AMD GPUs under Linux. I believe the last GPU I attempted was some 280X GPUs which also had really, really good FP64 performance for their time. This was a couple years ago when I attempted this not when the 280X first came out.

I've only heard of similar issues with others who have tried slightly newer AMD GPUs under Linux such as the Radeon VII. So I don't know first hand if AMD's GPU drivers are easier to install on Linux or not. All of my GPUs under Linux are Nvidia cards. Even then, it can be a bit of an issue getting older GPUs like the P100s running on some flavors. I've been testing out Mint 20 lately and so far it has been the easiest ditro I've ever used on Linux with getting GPUs to work without much hassle.
 
LeRoy_Blanchard said:
I do admit, it has been a while since I last tried running AMD GPUs under Linux. I believe the last GPU I attempted was some 280X GPUs which also had really, really good FP64 performance for their time. This was a couple years ago when I attempted this not when the 280X first came out.

I've only heard of similar issues with others who have tried slightly newer AMD GPUs under Linux such as the Radeon VII. So I don't know first hand if AMD's GPU drivers are easier to install on Linux or not. All of my GPUs under Linux are Nvidia cards. Even then, it can be a bit of an issue getting older GPUs like the P100s running on some flavors. I've been testing out Mint 20 lately and so far it has been the easiest ditro I've ever used on Linux with getting GPUs to work without much hassle.
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You don't install AMD drivers in Linux, they're built into the kernel. That's the reason of the previous mention of likely requiring kernel version 6.0. The drivers supporting the card will have been put into that kernel already.

And in the vast majority of cases it's a hell of a lot easier and more convenient to run AMD cards under Linux than it is to run nVidia cards and has been that way for a while now.
 
SmokeRngs said:
You don't install AMD drivers in Linux, they're built into the kernel. That's the reason of the previous mention of likely requiring kernel version 6.0. The drivers supporting the card will have been put into that kernel already.
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Indeed AMD started getting the drivers in there well before the cards even came out. Linux 6.0 is all you need: https://www.phoronix.com/review/rx7900xt-rx7900xtx-linux
"So what ends up being the upstream open-source Linux driver requirements for the new Radeon RX 7900 series? I'm pleased to say it's Linux 6.0+ and Mesa 22.2+! It was a pleasant surprise when I first heard it from AMD that Linux 6.0 is in good enough shape for these new graphics cards when originally fearing that possibly the brand new Linux 6.1 kernel or even the Linux 6.2 kernel might be needed for getting things squared away."

Although: "There is one minor caveat with the support and that is the Radeon RX 7900 series GPU firmware files have yet to land in the linux-firmware.git tree. AMD will likely have those out on retail release day and get them into linux-firmware.git..." (which I just realized @Tempest mentioned). But yeah they did get those out: https://www.phoronix.com/news/RDNA3-AMDGPU-Firmware-Added

SmokeRngs said:
And in the vast majority of cases it's a hell of a lot easier and more convenient to run AMD cards under Linux than it is to run nVidia cards and has been that way for a while now.
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Using Radeons and Intel iGPUs/Arc discreet GPUs in Linux is such a pleasant experience since those drivers are open-source. The only decent drivers for nVidia hardware on Linux are their closed-source proprietary ones, which do not play nice with most sh1t in Linux. Proprietary drivers are such a f*cking pain in the @ss to deal with in the Linux world. For example I can't use Wayland on my desktop PC with KDE Plasma 5 because of my nVidia card, but on my laptop with Intel iGPU I can use Wayland no problem. On my desktop I'm stuck with old-@ss X11. nVidia proprietary Linux drivers are indeed quite good, but by being closed-source they just end up causing problems with a bunch of other stuff in Linux. That's definitely going to affect my GPU-buying decisions when I build my next PC. If you're on Linux you generally want to be on a Radeon card or some kind of Intel GPU.

Tempest said:
In general, AMD's open-source drivers should work well out of the box
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Yeah they usually do.
 
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Now I want a newer AMD card to try in Linux. Perhaps if these new 7900 XTX or 7900 XT cards are really well suited for Milkyway@home I'll put some under Linux.
 
well if you're buying a handfull feel free to send one my way. ;)
 
Had an AMD RX 7900 XTX in my shopping cart unfortunatelly my spending limit is 1250€ month and 1 week b4 christmas I don't have 1150€ left

Would have been a nice gift to myself, but it's not meant to be.
 
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