AMD’s mid-range RDNA 3 GPU could be as fast as RX 6900 XT

techradar.com:

AMD’s next-gen RX 7700 XT, which will be a mid-range RDNA 3 offering, is rumored to be equally as powerful as the current 6900 XT (RDNA 2) flagship – or even better performing in some respects.

This is the latest from Moore’s Law is Dead(opens in new tab) (MLID), a YouTube leaker who often chimes in on the subject of GPUs and CPUs, but as ever with anything from the rumor mill, arm yourself with a boat-load of skepticism.

So, the theory as outlined by MLID is that the mid-range RDNA 3 graphics card, presumably set to be called the RX 7700 XT (the follow-on to the 6700, of course), will match the performance of the 6900 XT in rasterization, meaning traditional rendering as opposed to ray tracing. Indeed, performance could be slightly faster in 1080p (and a little slower in 4K resolution), but likely the same ballpark for 1440p which is what the 7700 XT will be pitched at.

The further assertion is that when it comes to ray tracing, the RX 7700 XT – which is built around the Navi 33 GPU – will outdo the 6900 XT, although MLID is a bit more vague about how much in the way of gains we can expect here.

MLID reminds us that the 7700 XT is set to be a 6nm monolithc GPU (meaning it’s a single chip, rather than chiplets – the latter is supposedly the route AMD will take with the higher-end RDNA 3 GPUs, meaning Navi 31 and 32).

The 7700 XT will see speedier clocks than Team Red’s current products, and better power-efficiency – indeed that’ll be a hallmark of the entire RDNA 3 family, as you might guess. The GPU will supposedly run with 8GB of GDDR6 video memory, with a 128-bit memory bus, so cut down in other words (the 6700 XT is 192-bit), but the faster VRAM will make up for that, MLID reckons.

MLID notes that the design decisions