Do you love the idea of having the performance of today’s best graphics cards for gaming, but don’t love the prices or power consumption specs? A recent AMD Radeon 7000 Series leak is bound to draw your attention then. According to a new video from source Moore’s Law is Dead, next generation mid-range graphics card will be far more efficient and perform like today’s best for far less cash.
The focus of the video is on the GPU design of Navi 33 that will expectedly go into the AMD Radeon 7700 XT. The video breaks down some of the leaked specs, plus an early performance estimate as well as what we should expect for pricing.
Moore’s Law is Dead claims that Navi 33 is designed on TSMC 6nm as a monolithic chip, will feature a die size likely within the range of 360-410 square millimeters, a TDP of 180-230W, likely 128MB of Infinity Cache, a PCIe 5.0 x8 connection, and will be paired with 8GBs of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus.
What this all could translate to is a Radeon 7700 XT graphics card comparable in gaming performance to AMD’s current top 6900 XT. However, due to the memory capacity being at just 8GBs, these performance estimates only apply to 1080p and 1440p resolutions, with the card expected to be a bit worse in 4K scenarios.
Upping the mid-range
This would obviously be a huge leap up from the current AMD 6700 XT. AMD’s shift to the Radeon 7000 Series will entail a density increase for the chips to net higher efficiency and better performance, but the 360-410 square millimeter size of Navi 33 could also be far larger than the current 237 square millimeter Navi 23 die.
Along with that, AMD may pump around an extra 50W into the chip along with pairing faster memory for a card that uses more overall power. Note the additional Infinity Cache as well, and there’s a decent bit of supporting evidence to suggest AMD could pull off this performance increase.
Enthusiast performance, affordable prices?
With all this in mind, you’re probably wondering what the AMD Radeon 7700 XT will cost for all this added performance. According to Moore’s Law is Dead, and some of our own analysis, MSRP pricing could end up being surprisingly affordable.
Moore’s Law is Dead estimates pricing could land between $400-500 USD based on several design choices AMD went with to keep costs under control. While Navi 33 could be a much larger die size, the decision to stick with a less expensive node for another generation will help. Additionally, the PCIe x8 connection, plus the limited memory capacity, will help keep costs in check.
We are not as optimistic, though. Despite all of this, the primary point of concern lies with what we learned from current generation marketing. AMD may very well go with an MSRP in the previously mentioned range, but the real question is what the AIBs will do.
We could see another limited release of hard-to-find reference models at MSRP, followed by exponentially more expensive custom designs. For reference, the 6700 XT has an MSRP of $480 USD, but the cheapest custom model you can currently find is the Powercolor Fighter model that’s priced at $599 USD at Newegg.
Still, even with markups, the 7700 XT could offer some tantalizing value for its performance. Compared to the $1,000 USD MSRP of the 6900 XT, it could be a great generational improvement that’s also more practical.
This all bodes well for AMD, and the top models in the Radeon 7000 Series are expected to perform wildly better too. We’ve also covered early rumors for the Nvidia RTX 4000 Series if you’re wondering what the competition could bring. The AMD Radeon 7000 Series is expected to release later this year, so it’s not too much of a wait for those who are patient.
For those who’d rather get a better graphics card now, you don’t need to wait. Market conditions have changed drastically in the past couple months, and you can now get RTX 30 Series or AMD 6000 Series cards for much better prices.
