AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series - Release date, pricing and latest leaks

The AMD Radeon RX 7000 series is hugely anticipated, as it will feature the new RDNA 3 architecture. And with a release date and price now officially confirmed, we've rounded up every bit of information we could find so you can get an idea of what to expect from these new GPUs.

With the thrilling competition between Nvidia and AMD, let's dive into the product that could potentially give the Nvidia 4000 series a bit of a run for its money...

AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series - Latest Leaks

So, as with most products that are being worked on and shielded from our prying eyes, the Radeon RX 7000 series has had more than a few 'leaks' to date.

That's both good news and bad news; good, because it gives us something to sink our teeth into, but bad because it could taste a little...off.

With the new official AMD livestream, we now have plenty of confirmed information, but some of the more technical details are shrouded.

We'd always advise taking these leaks with a big pinch of salt before getting too excited, but there could be some truth to them which can help point our expectations in the right direction.

AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series - Release Date

Originally, an AMD official live stream revealed that 4 new GPUs were due to be released on the 27th of September, but that didn't turn out to be the case.

After a while of inactivity, we finally received some official news, as Scott Herkelman, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Radeon division, tweeted that the RDNA 3 architecture would be announced on the 3rd of October.

AMD eventually sent out a press release to officially confirm that a livestream event would take place on this date for their Radeon graphics cards, where AMD executives would be announcing the details.

During this livestream, AMD announced the release date for their first RDNA 3 graphics cards: the RX7900 XTX and RX7900XT. Both cards were released on the 13th of December and are now officially available to buy.

As per VideoCardz, leaker momoon_us also discovered that power supply maker Enermax has eight new graphic cards up for selection, which could relate to the release of either the Radeon RX 7000 Series or Nvidia's RTX 4000 Series.

'Turning to 2022. Demand for our product is very strong, and we look forward to another year of significant growth and share gains as we ramp our current products and launch our next wave of Zen 4 CPUs and RDNA 3 GPUs. We have also made significant investments to secure the capacity needed to support our growth in 2022 and beyond.'

AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series Stock Rumours

According to a recent report by hardwaretimes, it looks like AMD is pulling all the strings to ensure people can, well, buy their GPUs.

In recent years the chip shortages have been well documented, which is why the major players have been seemingly 'reserving' chips for their upcoming cards.

According to the report, Tongfu Microelectronics confirmed that its manufacturing capacity is set to increase in the coming months, and apparently, it's going well so far...

Fingers crossed it'll be a smooth release.

AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series Price

AMD announced in their recent livestream that the RX 7900 XTX will cost $999, with the XT costing $100 less at $899.

This is significantly more than the the previous generation of graphics cards are currently being sold for. The 6950 XT, which is the top-spec card, costs $849 and the 6900 XT is going for $679.

But, considering the supposed performance boost that the RDNA 3 architecture will offer, it makes sense that there would be such a hike in price.

AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series Specs

With the premiere, we can put many rumours aside; we now have confirmed specs of the 4 RX 7000 GPUs that AMD will be releasing on the 27th of September.

RDNA 3 is rumoured to allow for a huge performance boost, across everything from Ray Tracing to power consumption, but these are not confirmed just yet.

One leaker did try their hand at guessing what could be heading our way with Navi 31, 32, and 33, which we've shared below.

This 'prediction' looks to have been updated in recent weeks as reliable leaker Greymon55 has noted that the flagship Navi 31 GPU, the Radeon RX 7900 XT may well see a clock speed of 3GHz and 100 teraflops of performance, which would make it rather powerful indeed.

Furthermore, reliable leaker Kepler_L2 (via WCCFTech) has recently noted that the high-end Radeon RX 7000 chips based on Navi 31 may feature support for PCIe Gen 5.0 x16, which would make them rather speedy indeed, with an alleged support transfer rate of 128GB/s.

Whilst the Radeon RX 7900 XT may well have nearly 100 teraflops of performance and a 3GHz clock speed, AMD looks to have revised their core counts for the Navi 31 and 32 GPUs, according to leaker Greymon55 who posted what purports to be the leaked revised counts.

Greymon55 has stated that the performance goals for the RDNA 3 GPUs remain the same as before even with these revised core counts, and could actually be even higher, which could suggest these cards will be more efficient.

In addition, AMD has essentially confirmed (via WCCFTech) that the Radeon RX 7000 will be running on 5 and 6nm processing nodes, which contrasts the previous generations' 7nm.

Speaking of the cards being smaller, a recent leak from Greymon55 has suggested that as well as being on a smaller node, that the actual chip area itself on the top-end Navi 31 cards will be 33% smaller than on its predecessor with a size of 350 square millimetres.

But, two images tweeted by @9550pro appear to show an AMD RX 7000 Series graphics card. If this is the case, then it sure looks pretty spectacular and will be bigger than AMD's existing RX 6900.

AMD themselves have recently, and officially, confirmed a huge performance uplift from these RDNA 3-based cards, with the Senior Vice President of Engineering David Wang noting that they will have over 50% more power per watt over the current RDNA 2 GPUs.

In addition, the GPUs will feature a brand new Compute Unit and a new generation of its Infinity Cache, as well as being based on a 5nm processing node.

Speaking of Infinity Cache, leaker Kepler_L2 has noted that the top-end Navi 31 card may well have a 384MB Infinity Cache, which would represent a 3x increase on the old RDNA 2 cards that only came with 128MB. Infinity Cache essentially allows AMD to add more bandwidth to the GPU which offers a more efficient method of power by removing memory bottlenecks and offers a quicker 'route' to the GPU as it were.

With reference to cache size, a new leak from Angstronomics (via VideoCardz) has suggested that the top-end Navi 31 will have a 96MB Infinity Cache, and be comprised of one Graphics Chiplet Die (GCD) plus six Memory Chiplet Dies (MCDs). This is all expected to come in a small 5nm processing node, as AMD is going all in on smaller chips that still offer a noticeable increase in power.

Intriguingly, Greymon55 has highlighted that the top end Navi 31 may feature a 384-bit memory bus as opposed to 256-bit. In the real world, this may mean that the card will need fewer memory modules, which could make them cheaper and easier to keep cool.

The memory bus upgrades aren't just expected to be limited to the top-end Navi 31 GPUs, either, if Greymon55 (via WCCFTech) is to be believed. Navi 32 is also in line for a bus upgrade to 256-bit, complete with 16GB of memory.

Elsewhere, prominent hardware leaker Kepler_L2 has noted that the RDNA 3-based SoCs are allegedly having their drivers enabled in Linux, as per some patch notes that reference GFX11 (believed to be RDNA 3, given GFX10 refers to RDNA 2). This is a key example of prep work that AMD is likely to be doing to prepare their GPUs for an autumn release.

A recent leak from Kepler_L2, according to a recent Linux patch, has noted that the RDNA 3 architecture that will run the RX 7000 series of GPUs looks to be one of the first to support DisplayPort 2.0 output, which in theory could allow for 16K output at 60Hz.

Interestingly, Seasonic, manufacturer of PC PSUs, looks to have accidentally listed the wattage figures for the upcoming GPUs, which look to be the same as the current RX 6000 series (via TweakTown).

For reference, the top-end Radeon RX 7900 XT will require a 750W for the GPU only, with the Radeon RX 7800 XT having the same output, and the Radeon RX 7700 XT requiring 100W less power required.

This could be indicative of the fact that the data inputted for RX 7000 is just a placeholder, or possibly that the cards are aiming to run at the same power output, which would make them more efficient than Nvidia's RTX 4000 series, according to leaks.

On the point of power consumption, in a recent interview with Tom's Hardware, AMD's product technology architect Sam Naffziger has been quoted as stating that the new RX 7000 series cards will have higher total power consumption with innovations such as PCIe 5.0, although with a more efficient design.

A new leak from RedGamingTech (via NeoWin) has suggested that AMD has upped the TDP for the top end Navi 31 SKU by 8% to 405W from the originally expected 375W, which would make it a beefier and potentially more powerful card. This comes in the wake of leaks suggesting the RTX 4000 series might pack some serious power, so it may be the case AMD is looking to compete fully.

AMD has also allegedly patched a Github repository that allowed them to add a matrix-based instruction set to RDNA 3, which could let the cards perform AI-based image reconstruction in a similar vein to Nvidia DLSS. Leaker Greymon55 has taken this inclusion to mean that AI acceleration support will be present on the RX 7000 series, although we aren't certain for sure.

A recent addition to a Linux patch (via WCCFTech) has highlighted the point that the new RDNA 3 GPUs may feature an uprated DCN engine to 3.2.1, from the previous 3.0.

We've also seen a rather large dump of specs and details courtesy of Paul at RedGamingTech who purports to have the SKU list of the RX 7000 series. He notes that the cards will be split into Navi 31 (top end), Navi 32 (mid-range) and Navi 33 (low-end) categories, and above all has concurred with similar leaks in the past concerning specs regarding RAM and memory bus upgrades.

The General Manager of AMD Radeon, Scott Herkelman, has confirmed in a tweet that the RDNA 3 GPU's will not be using the 12VHPWR power connector, as originally rumoured. Although not mentioned specifically, this will presumably apply to the Radeon 7000 series.

Will this turn out to be the case? We'll just have to see how it all unfolds, and we've got our fingers crossed we won't be waiting too long to know more.