Question Questions about 7900 XT/XTX

[jahu00]

I'm considering buying either 7900 XT or XTX for AI related tasks (game asset generation and coding assist) and some gaming. I know the software stack ain't there yet for the 7000 series and will require a lot of fiddling, however 20/24GB VRAM is really tempting. Getting a GPU for AI with less than 16GB makes no sense (I've run out of VRAM on a 10GB GPU when both diffusion models and LLMs).

I have a V850 Gold V2 850W PSU. Would that be enough to power an XTX or at least an XT? I have a Ryzen 7 5800X CPU, 32 GB DDR4 RAM, up to 5 various drives (HDD, optical, SSD, NVME), 3 case fans and a 2 fan CPU cooler (I'm considering replacing it with AIO).

Are those cards loud? I had bad experience with RX 480 and RX 6700 in 2 fan configuration, can 3 fans even cool 300+ W TDP GPU without sounding like a jet engine? The way I use AI right now, GPU is under full load from a few seconds, up to a few minutes, the noise isn't that big of an issue in this situation, but training LORAs etc. might require running GPU under full load for hours. As for games, when I run No Mans Sky or 7d2d on my RX 6700, I need to crank down the settings a fair bit, to prevent the GPU from becoming really loud (it can mostly handle the graphics, but my ears can't handle the noise). I have a 3440x1440 75Hz free sync monitor.

Assuming power would be an issue, can I sacrifice some performance to make it use less power on those cards?

Right now in my country (Poland), MSI Radeon RX 7900 XTX GAMING TRIO CLASSIC 24GB is one of the least expensive XTXs. Is that a good model? If not, a model from which brand would be recommended? My case can fit GPUs up to 334 mm in length. I would prefer something that isn't going to blow my PSU and is reasonably quiet. I have a budget of up to 1500 USD (6000 PLN), but I don't have to spend it all Popular shops in my country include (morele, x-kom, komputronik, proline). If I were to buy this new GPU it would be within next month.

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I did consider other options than 7900 XT/XTX, but even 16GB VRAM is pretty low for running LLMs (should be enough for high resolution image generation with ControlNet enabled). I might just be able to squeeze a big LLM model into 16GB, but running the model requires spare VRAM (ever increasing GBs of it).

If I did limit myself to 16GB VRAM the most likely candidates would be:
- RX 6800 and up - cheaper than 7000 series, less power hungry, possibly quiet, existing software stack
- RTX 4080 - only NVIDIA card with at least 16GB within my budget (actually, slightly above), but just as power hungry as the 7000 series; better performance in ML and even better software stack

There is also:
- W6800 - RX 6800 with 32GB VRAM at the price of 7900 XTX, single fan cooling (must be super noisy)

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Had I actually bought an RX 6800 instead of RX 6700, I wouldn't feel the need to change the GPU right now. Those power hungry GPUs make me worry that I'll go over allowed power draw in my flat (maybe I should forget about training LORAs).

 

[Ksan]

I'm running my Sapphire Pulse RX 7900 XT on a MSI 750 PSU without any problems, my case is well vented with 10 fans the card runs cool and is not loud. I have to stop and focus on listening to my PC to hear anything, if i am not thinking about it, i don't hear it. Maybe I've become use to it but it isn't loud to me. You can always under volt the card and in fact AMD cards do better when you under volt them.

Unless you're at 4k you would see around a 23% CPU bottleneck with a RX 7900 XTX So you may want to keep that in mind.

I only use it to game on so can't speak about anything else.

 

[jahu00]

I did some more research and found that OC models from Sapphire can also run at reference TDP. Since cooling needs to be adequate for the OC mode, there should be plenty of it for reference TDP (hopefully it would be quiet). Possibly other brands have this option tu run at referenc TDP as well.

I also read that 7900 series cards can be a hit or miss. Some units are just faulty. The only thing I can take out of this is, it's probably better to skip refurbished ones as they are more likely to be bad and someone returned them for a reason (loud, singing coils etc.). There is also no guarantee that they underwent any repair before being proclaimed refurbished.

I did try learning about the coil whine of this series, but on all the videos I've seen on YT, it's very quiet and barely noticeable. Back in the day, 8800 GT had coil whine under load, now that card could really sing.

3440x1440 is more like 3K.

If W6800 wasn't so expensive and there was some simple cooling mod, I would probably buy that (I wouldn't like to void warranty on card that costs as much as a whole PC).

AI is evolving each day, and it's possible future models will fit just fine in limited amount of VRAM (though proper support for reduced precision might require new hardware anyway). Right now 16GB look like bare minimum and having extra space to actually utulize some of theose networks is neede anyway. With that in mind XTX's 24GB seem like a good option. Enough space to fit a 16GB model and extra 8GB to run it (or utilizing two lighter AIs at the same time).

Right now (under the best of curcumstances) XTX is only slightly worse than 4080 in terms of performance for AI. This should improve with proper support from AMD. Some support should show up around the time W7900 is released, but it still might take months for it to get optimized.

 

[jahu00]

After thinking about the subject way too much, I came to the conclusion that the best course of action for now is to wait.

Ideally GPU for AI would have 32GB VRAM, but that's workstation GPU territory. Workstation GPUs cost twice as much (or even more) as consumer GPUs and sometimes offering little beyond extra VRAM. That's way out of my budget. I could buy last gen workstation GPU (like W6800) as they are priced similarly to current gen GPUs. However, that's probably a bad idea as they are nowhere near as powerful.

My best bet is getting as powerful consumer GPU as possible with as much RAM as possible within my budget. NVIDIA is very stingy with VRAM (they don't want their consumer GPUs to compete with workstation GPUs) and the few consumer GPUs that do come with more memory are very expensive. Thankfully AMD tries to compete with both price and VRAM size, which would make XTX the prefect option for me if the software stack for 7000 series was available.

So the only thing to do is to wait for ROCm 5.5 to release (should be somewhere around 2023 Q2) and buy XTX then. Hpefuly the prices of XTXs will stay the same or even drop.

EDIT: Apparently ROCm 5.5 just dropped. Hopefully PyTorch will have a compatible version soon enough (unless current one works with 5.5).

EDIT2: Having considering many options (price/availability/budget/space in case) i narrowed down 3 XTXs: MSI Gaming Trio, Sapphire Pulse, Sapphire Nitro+. Nitro+ has a second BIOS that can be used as silent mode with reduced TDP, so I bought that. If my PSU is not enough or card is too loud, at least this gives me some options. None of the other cards I've considered had silent mode (or it wasn't advertised). There was also ASRock Phantom, but that supposedly needs 1000W PSU. I've seen XFX Merc on Amazon for a decent price, but it's too big for my case, plus the seller wasn't all that reputable. I went with my usual parts supplier (other shops were either out of stock, had a single brand or had significantly higher prices or some combination of the 3).

 

[alceryes]

My 7900 XTX Taichi pulls over 425W - and that's undervolted. Performance is top notch though.

It definitely depends on the model. 2x8pin models will have lower consumption, generally, but the 3xpin models are designed for overclocking, with the corresponding increase in power draw. For these models, I wouldn't go with anything less than a good quality 1000W PSU.

 

[jahu00]

I read on the web that people reported having problems with the 2 pin modes. During a peak, card could crash if it fails to get enough power. However most of the XTX models I've seen had 3 pins (even non OC ones). I'll see how my 850W PSU handles this card. If there are problems (and AI pushes GPUs to 100%), I'll know soon enough. Hopefully, factory silent mode will solve potential power issues and if not, new PSU it is.

 

[jahu00]

My XTX appears to work just fine with my 850W PSU. Good thing I didn't buy a bigger card. In theory I might have 10-15mm space left, but putting the card inside the case was another problem altogether (I could barely fit it diagonally without removing CPU cooler).

There is some coil whine under load, but nothing too serious. Fans are not noisy, on my old RX 6700 they would sound like jet engine under load (50% and up fan speed), but not on XTX (and I haven't even tried Silent mode).

However, I haven't succeeded at running AI apps under Linux so far (and I seriously tried for the last 3 days), which is disappointing. I can run them on Windows, but there are serious benefits when running them under Linux (speed and VRAM usage).

Edit: Weirdest of all, I didn't have to reinstall drivers on Windows or Linux. My previous AMD updates did require reinstall on Windows, but not this time.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I don't know why you're having this problem but as for the driver package, it's not uncommon for the same package to work on multiple cards. A couple of years ago, I swapped out my RX 5700 XT and sent it to XFX for an RMA and just popped one of my R9 Furies into the slot without changing drivers. The drivers recognised the Fury and it just worked. AMD has a tendency to use one driver package for ALL of their current cards and one driver package for ALL of their legacy cards. It's just how they've always seemed to do it. I didn't have to change drivers from my HD 4870s to my HD 7970s, then to my R9 Furies, then to my RX 5700 XT, then to my RX 6800 XT. Having said that, I do update my drivers when new ones come out and if I didn't do that, it's possible that the new card wouldn't be detected by drivers that are really old.

 

[jahu00]

After a lot of fiddling I got AI to work on the card on Linux. AI was a big reason for buying an XTX and it would be a huge disappointment if it didn't work at all.

AMD sure is slow at releasing their compute software stack. I understand that they don't care if people use it on consumer GPUs, but didn't they already release PRO cards from the 7000 series? The software stack was released a month later (maybe something worked with previous version already). Only some parts work on Windows and is unclear when (or if) it will be fully supported. In theory 7000 series isn't even officially supported yet (though in practice it can now be used). Probably the were unable to optimize for current release and didn't feel confident enough to list any 7000 series cards. Hopefully next release will improve performance and will be less of a pain to get working (this is down to other software catching up).

Edit: Forgot to mention, The price dropped by about 50 USD a week after I bought it, but it rose back by 25 USD.