Asus has just unveiled the world’s first dual-fan AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT graphics cards, in the shape of the Asus Dual Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Asus Dual Radeon RX 7900 XT. As all previous graphics cards based on these AMD GPUs sported three fans, you might expect a dual-fan variant to have a small card design, but that’s not the case with these cards.
As AMD’s current best graphics card for gaming, the RX 7900 XTX is a monstrously powerful card that generally needs every bit of help it can get to remain cool while still being quiet. However, these new Asus versions of AMD‘s finest appear to cut down their cooling capacity, while not obviously offering any other advantages.
What’s particularly odd here is that Asus hasn’t taken the opportunity to create a smaller version of either card, as we’ve seen with classic compact variants of other high-end cards, such as the Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Mini. Instead, these cards are even bigger than some other RX 7900 XTX/XT variants, with both measuring 322 x 147 x 58mm.
In fact, these cards are so large that it looks as though Asus could have easily fitted far larger fans to them, enabling them to offer more airflow while spinning slower and creating less noise. Instead, we get two small-looking fans that look lost in a great expanse of heatsink shroud.
Adding further to this sense of strangeness is the fact that Asus has overclocked these cards, with a speed bump that matches the company’s existing Asus TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7900 XTX OC. The default 7900 XTX game clock is 2,365MHz, with a 2,498MHz boost clock, but these Asus cards hit 2,455MHz and 2,615MHz respectively in their overclocked profile.
As for the RX 7900 XT, its stock speed game clock is 2,025MHz game clock with a 2,394MHz boost clock. These figures rise to 2,175MHz and 2,535MHz respectively on both the Asus TUF and new Asus Dual models.
Pricing of the new Asus Dual Radeon RX 7900 XT and XRX models hasn’t been made clear yet, though Videocardz says it’s seen prices on European retailers that are “not even worth mentioning.” We’d beg to differ on that point, but we digress. Everything about these cards suggests they should have a lower price than standard, three-fan cards, but that remains to be seen.
In the meantime, you can instead either snap up Asus’ existing TUF variants of these cards, or there are some decent discounts on other variants, with some RX 7900 XT deals being particularly enticing, including the XFX Speedster model going for just $729 right now.