News AMD Announces Radeon RX 7800 XT at $499, RX 7700 XT at $449

[bourgeoisdude]

I've been waiting a long time for an upgrade and the 7800 XT looks tempting. I was really hoping it would be nearer the $450 price range though. Seems AMD doesn't want a home run this generation.

 

[hannibal]

Some notes... These are very well priced compared to 4060ti and 4070 so no problem in there... Mainly Nvidias fault that AMD don´t have to even try and still offer better price / performance (Like normal: AMD better in rasterization, Nvidia better in Raytrasing. Nothing new in there)

The price difference between 7700XT and 7800XT is the interesting one. My theory is that AMD has rather good yealds to these GPU chips. So AMD has a lot fully working chips that they use in 7800XT and quite few faulty chips that they use in 7700XT. So AMD is pushing customers to buy the product that they have a good stock and to buy less the product that don´t have much... This will change when they have more faulty chips and the 7700XT start to fill shelves. Then the price / performance parity will push 7700XT down in price somewhat.

 

[-Fran-]

Welp... The 7800XT while not (yet) a complete disappointment, it's kind of "meh" to me. Also, it should be called 7700XT and the 7700XT should be the 7700 instead. But whatever, right?

I like these have AV1 encoding support and are just overall more efficient (or so I'd expect!). Other than that... I don't know what else they have going on for them?

Time to sit and wait for reviews, I guess.

Regards.

 

[Nexus52085]

"Sure, they're going up against Nvidia's $499 and $399 parts, but Nvidia's GPUs are overpriced. Also, Nvidia has more features and is the market leader, so AMD can't hope to gain market share merely by attempting to match Nvidia's pricing."

Sorry Jarrod are you suggesting both AMD cards are competing with the 4060tis? Because surely by the slide's they'll be competing with the 4070 and 4060ti, which are $600 and $500. And if they beat those they will be good value?

Or am i missing something here?

EDIT: And are you suggesting AMD should price to compete with Nvidia if Nvidia price their cards purely on what people want them to be priced at?

What you said. This article is suggesting the 7800xt and 7700 xt are competing and priced against the 4060ti 16GB and 8GB, respectively. It's clear that the AMD cards are going up against the 4070 and 4060ti at $599 and $499, which means 7800xt is being priced $100 cheaper than the 4070, and the 7700xt is priced $50 less than the 4060ti 16GB. If the 7800xt is matching the 6900xt at $499, that's actually not bad at all.

 

[bit_user]

It hasn't been great for the last 5 years and it's not going to be great, good, or even decent again until AMD and nVidia aren't making money hand over fist in the enterprise market, and Intel isn't going to be able to put enough pressure on them to make them change anything.

I've got bad news for you. GPUs have been giving us more perf/$, largely by riding the cost curve of smaller nodes. Unfortunately, that trend has mostly run its course.

​

Source: https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-number-of-transistors-per-chip-increase-according-to-Moore-s-law​

​

Not only that, but AMD's cloud/server GPUs really haven't been doing great. Sure, where they have CPU and GPU dies on the same node, there might be some internal competition about where to use limited wafer supply, but we know TSMC hasn't been supply-limited for about a year. So, wafer-competition doesn't really explain anything about their current generation's pricing.

If you wish bad fortune on AMD, you're unlikely to see anything good happen in their consumer GPU offerings. We're already hearing rumors they've cancelled high-end, die-stacked RX 8000 GPU models, probably not helped by the lackluster market for their RX 7000 products.

 

[InvalidError]

$450 for the RX7700 or $500 for the RX7800 which has 33% more VRAM, VRAM bandwidth, cache, etc., and ~10% more raw compute... makes me wonder why does the RX7700 exist. If you have $450 to spend on a GPU, you really should save a bit more for the RX7800, cheap future-proofing insurance. The RX7700 needs to be $25-50 cheaper to make sense while the RX7800 looks priced just right to make Nvidia's 4060Ti/16GB look completely retarded.

 

[gg83]

For AMD, the 6950xt is still the best bang for buck?

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

"Sure, they're going up against Nvidia's $499 and $399 parts, but Nvidia's GPUs are overpriced. Also, Nvidia has more features and is the market leader, so AMD can't hope to gain market share merely by attempting to match Nvidia's pricing."

Sorry Jarrod are you suggesting both AMD cards are competing with the 4060tis? Because surely by the slide's they'll be competing with the 4070 and 4060ti, which are $600 and $500. And if they beat those they will be good value?

Or am i missing something here?

EDIT: And are you suggesting AMD should price to compete with Nvidia if Nvidia price their cards purely on what people want them to be priced at?

I've corrected the prices to note that it's $599 and $399 (and sort of $499 with the 4060 Ti 16GB). But yeah, all of those are basically higher priced than what people want. And I have no doubt Nvidia is making money on all of them and could have gone lower.

It's basically the same story as much of the 40-series. Every 40-series card got bumped up a level in naming compared to where we'd normally expect it to land. RTX 4080 would have made more sense as a 4070 Ti, and then give us a "real" 4080 with 20GB and a 320-bit interface that's a toned-down AD102. Or call that the 4080 Ti maybe and give us a 4080 with 16GB that costs $999 or less.

Calling the RX 7800 XT with that name would (in the past) imply that it would be at least ~25% faster than an RX 6800 XT. But instead we're likely getting barely faster performance, for a lower launch price but a similar current street price. The 7700 XT has the right name, and maybe even the right performance... but 6700 XT was launched at a higher price than it warranted due to mining and shortages. It really should have been a $399 or $349 card (not that it would have sold for that in 2021 through 2022).

If you look at all the benchmarks of the previous generation, AMD is basically doing lateral moves and maybe a slight upgrade, but often at the places where smaller gaps existed.

7900 XTX is 10~20% faster than 7900 XT (CPU bottlenecks come into play)
7900 XT is 15~20% faster than 6950 XT (bigger gap)
6950 XT is 6~8% faster than 6900 XT
6900 XT is 5~7% faster than 6800 XT << 7800 XT lands here
6800 XT is 15~18% faster than 6800 (bigger gap)
6800 is 20~25% faster than 6750 XT (bigger gap) << 7700 XT lands here
6750 XT is 5~7% faster than 6700 XT
6700 XT is ~15% faster than 6700 10GB (slightly bigger gap)
6700 10GB is 10~15% faster than 6650 XT (slightly bigger gap)
6650 XT is ~5% faster than 6600 XT << 7600 lands here
6600 XT is 15~20% faster than 6600 (bigger gap)

Listing it this way, you can see that the 7900 XT and XTX at least justify their existence more. 7800 XT looks to be a very small improvement over the 6800 XT when you get right down to it. 7700 XT offers potentially bigger gains over the 6700 XT, but also pushes into higher pricing territory. 7600 only looks like a big upgrade if you compare against the vanilla 6600, but the price was higher than the going rate for 6650 XT.

 

[g-unit1111]

Does anyone notice how when the prices are being compared on the AMD chart the 7700xt is listed at $499 and the 7800xt is listed at $449? That 7800xt is looking like a pretty tempting upgrade from my 6800.

Yeah it's incredibly strange considering how low AMD priced the 7600XT. I feel like the 7700XT should be somewhere in between the low end and the mid range. But I'm definitely planning on upgrading my 2070 to a 7800XT.

 

[ilukey77]

Shader count is pretty disappointing, and a big step back from the 6800 XT. Memory speed is a bigger improvement than rumored, but is a 22% improvement enough to compensate for having only half as much Infinity Cache?

And while the TFLOPS rate looks a lot better on paper, I think what we saw with the 7900 XTX is that real-world performance didn't improve over the 6950 XT nearly as much as the TFLOPS increase would've suggested.

I believe their original intention was to sell the 7900 GRE as the 7800 XT, but they felt the market wouldn't support a high enough price for it to have adequate margins. What they're now selling as the 7800 XT and 7700 XT was probably designed to hit slightly lower tiers, like 7600 XT, 7700, and 7700 XT.

yeah but i think the clever marketing is lining the 7800xt up against the 4070 12gb ( as shown in the sides ) but its really a 4060ti 16 gb competitor !!

It doesnt beat the 6800xt or is close to it but it doesnt need to be better than the 6800xt because in the scale of things the 7900xt is the new 6800xt really !!

In fact if you want to nit pick the 7900xtx is the new 6800xt and the 7900xt is the new 6700xt because the 4090 exists with no competition !!

edit: BUT it does leave AMD in a silly position next gen with these series numbers last gen we had clear competitors 3090 / 6900xt 4080 6800xt and so on ..

If next gen AMD swing big 5090 /8900 xtx then will we be back to 5080 8800xt and so on confusing consumers to whats paired with what like this gen has done ..

 

[ilukey77]

$450 for the RX7700 or $500 for the RX7800 which has 33% more VRAM, VRAM bandwidth, cache, etc., and ~10% more raw compute... makes me wonder why does the RX7700 exist. If you have $450 to spend on a GPU, you really should save a bit more for the RX7800, cheap future-proofing insurance. The RX7700 needs to be $25-50 cheaper to make sense while the RX7800 looks priced just right to make Nvidia's 4060Ti/16GB look completely retarded.

i think there pulling the upsell bs with the 7700xt and 7800xt which seems kinda shady again !!

instead of 7900xt 100usd more gets you the 7900xtx its 50usd upsell

 

[Colif]

The whole, lets compare against last gen when really someone with a 6000 series card shouldn't be even looking at a new card yet., is a joke.

I know websites like to compare against previous just to show an increase if there is any but its not the actual target audience. If you have a 6950 xt now, you shouldn't even be looking.

Most of the people who will buy these don't have last gen cards. Probably explains why AMD compared them to older cards.

 

[InvalidError]

The whole, lets compare against last gen when really someone with a 6000 series card shouldn't be even looking at a new card yet., is a joke.

What convinced me to buy an RX6600 is seeing how little gain there was from previous-gen to current-gen, especially on a performance-per-dollar basis. Prospects aren't improving much, no point in waiting.

Most of the people who will buy these don't have last gen cards. Probably explains why AMD compared them to older cards.

Do people with older cards really pay attention to where their current GPU stands against current-gen stuff though? I'm guessing most already have a pretty good grasp on how well their antiques perform in whatever it is they do with them and are only looking at the new stuff coming out to see whether there is anything good enough within their budget to bother upgrading yet.

 

[salgado18]

For AMD, the 6950xt is still the best bang for buck?

Depends on price point and resolution, but for 1080p the RX 6600 is a steal.

 

[Colif]

Do people with older cards really pay attention to where their current GPU stands against current-gen stuff though? I'm guessing most already have a pretty good grasp on how well their antiques perform in whatever it is they do with them and are only looking at the new stuff coming out to see whether there is anything good enough within their budget to bother upgrading yet.

I can't speak for other people but I did look to see where my 2070 Super stood against the other cards available at the time. I didn't classify it as an antique really. Its my spare card now. Beats the GTX 960 I had in that role before it.

I also didn't really have a budget besides knowing I couldn't afford the 4080 or 4090. As such my choice was mostly limited to AMD cards if I wanted new. Finding the high end 6000 series cards started to be difficult in Australia at end of last year as well. I had been looking for a few months. Hence I waited for the 7900 XT and was happy with that purchase... if you ignore its old price anyway. Its much better now.

At least AMD targetted 1440p and didn't back track to 1080p like Nvidia did with the 4060 cards.

 

[Nexus52085]

I've corrected the prices to note that it's $599 and $399 (and sort of $499 with the 4060 Ti 16GB). But yeah, all of those are basically higher priced than what people want. And I have no doubt Nvidia is making money on all of them and could have gone lower.

It's basically the same story as much of the 40-series. Every 40-series card got bumped up a level in naming compared to where we'd normally expect it to land. RTX 4080 would have made more sense as a 4070 Ti, and then give us a "real" 4080 with 20GB and a 320-bit interface that's a toned-down AD102. Or call that the 4080 Ti maybe and give us a 4080 with 16GB that costs $999 or less.

Calling the RX 7800 XT with that name would (in the past) imply that it would be at least ~25% faster than an RX 6800 XT. But instead we're likely getting barely faster performance, for a lower launch price but a similar current street price. The 7700 XT has the right name, and maybe even the right performance... but 6700 XT was launched at a higher price than it warranted due to mining and shortages. It really should have been a $399 or $349 card (not that it would have sold for that in 2021 through 2022).

If you look at all the benchmarks of the previous generation, AMD is basically doing lateral moves and maybe a slight upgrade, but often at the places where smaller gaps existed.

7900 XTX is 10~20% faster than 7900 XT (CPU bottlenecks come into play)
7900 XT is 15~20% faster than 6950 XT (bigger gap)
6950 XT is 6~8% faster than 6900 XT
6900 XT is 5~7% faster than 6800 XT << 7800 XT lands here
6800 XT is 15~18% faster than 6800 (bigger gap)
6800 is 20~25% faster than 6750 XT (bigger gap) << 7700 XT lands here
6750 XT is 5~7% faster than 6700 XT
6700 XT is ~15% faster than 6700 10GB (slightly bigger gap)
6700 10GB is 10~15% faster than 6650 XT (slightly bigger gap)
6650 XT is ~5% faster than 6600 XT << 7600 lands here
6600 XT is 15~20% faster than 6600 (bigger gap)

Listing it this way, you can see that the 7900 XT and XTX at least justify their existence more. 7800 XT looks to be a very small improvement over the 6800 XT when you get right down to it. 7700 XT offers potentially bigger gains over the 6700 XT, but also pushes into higher pricing territory. 7600 only looks like a big upgrade if you compare against the vanilla 6600, but the price was higher than the going rate for 6650 XT.

I agree to certain extent, but it seems like you're comparing the 7800 XT to the current pricing of the 6800 XT, which I don't think is fair. Once inventory dries up, that point will be moot. However, if you do it that way, then sure, this look likes a very marginal improvement and flat out isn't worth the cost; but the 6800 XT launched at an MSRP of $649. The 7800 XT looks to be 6-10% faster for $150 lower launch price, or 23%. So, I suppose the questions I have are these: should the 7800 XT be called the 7800, or should we look at it as the 7800 XT still maintaining at least a small generational improvement but at a substantially lower cost? If AMD added $150 to the price and got the 25% performance increase, would that be a better move?

 

[baboma]

>Most of the people who will buy these don't have last gen cards. Probably explains why AMD compared them to older cards.

It's the difference between enthusiasts (read: people here) and regular buyers. Yeah, in many ways, the views here don't represent regular folks. Neither do the benchmarks.

I respect Jarred's writings and largely agree with his pieces. But his slant is catered to the present audience, viz enthusiasts. Not so much regular people.

Case in point: Judging whether a GPU is "appropriately" priced by comparing price/perf against the current street price of the previous gen is, IMO, inappropriate. It's like comparing one card's MSRP against the sales price of another, because that's what the prev gen cards are priced at, to be cleared out. In a few weeks or months, they will be gone.

Regular people don't follow product launches. Whenever they buy, it's not likely older cards will still be for sale, nor are they likely to buy used cards on eBay.

This isn't to defend the current gen's lackluster price/perf. Yes, it's not great. But it is still better than last gen by far, when the crypto craze was in full swing, and cards were GROSSLY overpriced and had much worse price/perf. People have short memory.

Another difference is that, unlike crypto, AI will be around for a lot longer, and hoping for a "better tomorrow" isn't a realistic proposition. NYTimes has a piece on how bad GPU shortages are for AI (disable Javascript if needed to read).

The Desperate Hunt for the A.I. Boom’s Most Indispensable Prize (Published 2023)

To power artificial-intelligence products, start-ups and investors are taking extraordinary measures to obtain critical chips known as graphics processing units, or GPUs.

nytimes.com

Edit:

>but it seems like you're comparing the 7800 XT to the current pricing of the 6800 XT, which I don't think is fair. Once inventory dries up, that point will be moot.

Ninja'ed.

>Yeah it's incredibly strange considering how low AMD priced the 7600XT. I feel like the 7700XT should be somewhere in between the low end and the mid range.

Yes, there is a big gap between 7600's $270 and 7700's $450, especially when $300-350 would be the sweet spot for buyers. I expect AMD will launch a card to fill this gap at some point.

 

[Colif]

I wasn't singling out one reviewer for the habit, when everyone does it. Video makers seem to be the worst with it infact,

 

[baboma]

>I wasn't singling out one reviewer for the habit, when everyone does it. Video makers seem to be the worst with it infact.

To be fair, you (the writer) can only write for your audience, and the audience for these pieces are by and large enthusiasts, not regular folks. I understand the imperative, why Jarred et al write the way they do. But the bias is there. I'm only pointing it out. I'm not saying Jarred should write any differently.

 

[InvalidError]

Case in point: Judging whether a GPU is "appropriately" priced by comparing price/perf against the current street price of the previous gen is, IMO, inappropriate. It's like comparing one card's MSRP against the sales price of another, because that's what the prev gen cards are priced at, to be cleared out. In a few weeks or months, they will be gone.

Prices change almost every week. For people looking to buy now/soon, the NOW prices are very much relevant. Prices and availability a month down the road are next-month-you's problem. That is why things like "Best GPU/CPU/etc." lists are recurring monthly features.

 

[Co BIY]

there might be some internal competition about where to use limited wafer supply, but we know TSMC hasn't been supply-limited for about a year. So, wafer-competition doesn't really explain anything about their current generation's pricing.​

TSMC is able to ask a premium for their wafer starts so I imagine that that effects pricing,

 

[usertests]

Hmm, I wonder if the chiplet packaging is just really expensive on its own and dropping a memory controller doesn't actually save AMD much money. Both the 7700xt and 7900xt have launch prices too close to the next step up. Hard to imagine AMD made the same mistake twice after so much backlash for the 7900xt. Makes me think it isn't a mistake and the actual manufacturing costs is just really, really close between the products.

Either way, the 7800xt is a bit too much, and the 7700xt is way too much. Very weak launch if performance goes as expected. A $399 7700xt would've been a different story.

I don't think chiplets are expensive. I think this is the new strategy. Price in response to Nvidia, keep MSRP as high as possible and upsell even if it means negative reviews, let prices drop as needed. AMD clearly wants you to think of the 7700 XT as a superior alternative to the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB, and 7800 XT to the RTX 4070.

7700 XT will follow the same trajectory as the 7900 XT, but not before they make some sales.

 

[InvalidError]

TSMC is able to ask a premium for their wafer starts so I imagine that that effects pricing,

If you ask for premiums during a demand lull for a given process line, all you end up with is excess spare capacity weighing your bottom line down. With the bunch of fabs coming online in the near future, TSMC will need to beware of turning away too many clients with premiums on anything but its most advanced processes.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I agree to certain extent, but it seems like you're comparing the 7800 XT to the current pricing of the 6800 XT, which I don't think is fair. Once inventory dries up, that point will be moot. However, if you do it that way, then sure, this look likes a very marginal improvement and flat out isn't worth the cost; but the 6800 XT launched at an MSRP of $649. The 7800 XT looks to be 6-10% faster for $150 lower launch price, or 23%. So, I suppose the questions I have are these: should the 7800 XT be called the 7800, or should we look at it as the 7800 XT still maintaining at least a small generational improvement but at a substantially lower cost? If AMD added $150 to the price and got the 25% performance increase, would that be a better move?

This is true, but also not taking into account the full market picture. That's the problem.

The crypto-shortages ultimately resulted in bigger orders of previous generation cards later in the product cycle, and I think both AMD and Nvidia ended up with a lot of cards that they then had to sell. Nvidia apparently canceled or held off on a bunch of Ada wafers just to let inventory drain. I'm not sure AMD did the same.

The result is that it feels very much like 2018-2019 again, where there are previous generation cards priced at very good prices, and they're readily available. RX 6000-series GPUs have been at basically clearance prices for well over six months now. If you didn't buy one of those because the price/performance wasn't where you wanted, having 7000-series cards that generally deliver worse price/performance won't result in more sales.

Nvidia's RTX 30-series cards have mostly disappeared from the market now. I thought there would be some bigger sales, particularly on 3080 and above, but it never occurred and now they're basically gone. Only 3050 and 3060, and maybe a limited stock of 3070-class, are still available at anything approaching a price gamers might be willing to pay (meaning, lower than the 40-series equivalents that are now "better").

As for focusing on current gen and previous gen cards, my GPU benchmarks hierarchy does have results for all of the older generation cards. People who have one of those and are wondering about where to upgrade should consult that. But in the minds of most people that regularly read Tom's Hardware, they're going to be far more familiar and interested in generational improvements, rather than how that compares to two or three generations. Because, again, price/performance is important.

Any GPU that doesn't clearly beat the price/performance ratio of the previous generation cards is going to be a tough sell, short of market conditions like cryptomining that make such things unimportant. The majority of the 7000-series and 40-series are right in that "tough sell" group.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

If you ask for premiums during a demand lull for a given process line, all you end up with is excess spare capacity weighing your bottom line down. With the bunch of fabs coming online in the near future, TSMC will need to beware of turning away too many clients with premiums on anything but its most advanced processes.

Unfortunately, the AI wave might make the cost of wafers for consumer parts simply irrelevant. Nvidia appears more than happy to buy a lot of 4N capacity for H100. I suspect both AMD and Intel are buying a lot of N5 and soon N3 for the same reason.