AMD has published a blog post that informs readers that there has “never been a better time to upgrade with Radeon graphics.” A slight issue with the post is that it shows the new RX 7000-series, based on the RDNA 3 architecture, offers a clearly inferior value proposition to the existing RX 6000-series. AMD’s charts show that from all its currently marketed GPUs, the newsome twosome offer the worst FPS per $USD figures of all.
Another chart from AMD’s new blog post, suggests there is a valid place for the RX 7000 flagships in 4K gaming. The simple charts show that the new cards can offer frame rates of up to 180 fps (RX 7900 XT) or 220fps (RX 7900 XTX) in popular 4K gmes. However, there aren’t many high performance 4K monitors with refresh rates beyond 144Hz at the time of writing, limiting the appeal of spending more than the $579 MSRP for the RX 6800 XT, with an average 4K gaming frame rate of 148fps, according to AMD’s data.
AMD’s chosen selection of games for these summary charts included Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, The Callisto Protocol, Grand Theft Auto V, Apex Legends, Valorant, and Overwatch 2 — not the most demanding selection of titles, but most of these games are widely popular and some are competitive / eSports titles that benefit from very fast frame rates. We suggest you check out our review of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT for more extensive testing and a wider selection of games titles.
Tom’s Hardware regulars will probably be aware we regularly update our GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy 2023 with performance charts and comparisons across a multitude of games and common monitor resolutions. While you are comparing, it is also worth a look at our always up to date Best Graphics Cards for Gaming in 2023 feature.
In addition to the bigging-up of the value proposition of the existing Radeon lineup, AMD took this opportunity to highlight that its drivers are better than ever and stuffed with new features. Some particularly interesting claims were that drivers are tested across 6,000 unique systems configurations for performance and stability, and that over the last year some of its RX 6000 graphics cards have seen DX11 performance gains of up to 30% thanks to continuous driver tuning. (That’s only in select situations, naturally.)
Are Mainstream and Budget RX 7000-Series Graphics Cards a Long Way Off?
AMD’s Tweet and blog post show off a hybrid lineup of Radeon RX 7000- and RX 6000 -series cards, presented as if they are a fixed range for 2023. In some ways this image of the Radeon landscape for 2023 implies that there is no urgent need for highly anticipated cards such as an RX 7800, RX 7700, or RX 7600 — with or without XTX/XT suffixes. It also raises the question of whether it may be a long wait for more RDNA 3 architecture graphics cards for desktop PCs.
There have been only a few leaks regarding mainstream RX 7000-series graphics cards, but we really hope they materialize by summer at the latest, perhaps during Computex 2023. A more cynical view of things would be that AMD is trying to clear out inventory of the existing 6000-series parts in advance of launching midrange and budget 7000-series replacements.
Cynical or not, let’s hope that’s the case, as we could really use some better graphics card values in 2023. Our own rankings confirm the value proposition of AMD’s previous generation RDNA 2 cards, as well as the poor value of the latest generation GPUs. And as bad as things might look for the RX 7000-series, Nvidia’s RTX 40-series Ada Lovelace cards are equally overpriced. New midrange and budget offerings that actually meet those criteria — $250–$400 for midrange and less than $200 for budget — would be a welcome respite from increasing costs.