The release of AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 graphics cards is still a while away, but we’re already hearing rumors about the performance and power requirements of these next-gen graphics cards.
Today, a known leaker has teased that even entry-level AMD RX 7000 GPUs may be capable of outperforming the current-gen flagship, the RX 6900 XT. As a cherry on top, new AMD graphics cards could be a lot less power-hungry than the upcoming Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000 GPUs.
https://twitter.com/greymon55/status/1503626231740174340?
The information comes from Greymon55, a leaker with a good track record when it comes to PC hardware. Even though Greymon has been accurate in the past, it’s best to take these rumors with a grain of salt, because they are exactly that — rumors, at least until AMD tells us more about its plans for the RX 7000 GPU line.
According to Greymon, the upcoming Navi 33 GPU may be able to outperform even high-end Navi 21 graphics cards, such as the RX 6900 XT — and this applies even to more budget-friendly versions of the card. If AMD retains the current naming scheme, this could mean that potentially, a Radeon RX 7700 XT could beat the current-gen RX 6900 XT in terms of pure performance.
Greymon bases this rumor on FP32 testing, which describes how many calculations the chip can perform per second. According to the leaker, the RX 6900 XT can hit 22.9 teraflops (TFLOPs) when clocked at 2.80GHz. This implies the card would have to be overclocked to reach such frequencies, as the regular boost clock for that GPU is 2.25GHz. Greymon implies that the Navi 33 GPU should be capable of hitting higher TFLOP counts, or at least a similar level. If proven true, this would mean that a high-end GPU from the previous generation would become outclassed by a mid-range offering from the current generation when the RX 7000-series launches.
The high expectations for the RX 7000-series graphics cards don’t end there. Greymon also stated that an expected power consumption level for such a GPU would be in the 220 to 250 watts range. Considering that the current flagship RX 6900 XT has a TGP of 300 watts, this implies great things for the upcoming GPUs. If the leak proves to be true, the card could be capable of hitting high performance while keeping power consumption at a reasonable level.
Reasonable power requirements would help AMD compete with Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 4000 “Ada” GPUs. Of course, we’re still in the rumor stages, but there have been signs that especially the flagship RTX 4090 may be extremely power-hungry, reaching as high as a TGP of 850 watts. Even if we slice that in half, AMD could be the winner in this regard if it maintains the aforementioned low power requirements on its flagship GPU.
