A new AMD Radeon GPU will soon arrive to challenge Nvidia, but the red team’s contender seemingly packs less memory than the RTX 4090. While the RDNA 3 graphics card was set to launch with 24GB VRAM, those specs now reportedly belong to a Navi 31 GPU that’ll compete with a full-fat Lovelace release.
According to Wccftech sources, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT wields 20GB VRAM — 4GB less than the RTX 4090. The memory decision is framed as a downgrade, as the card was allegedly set to match Nvidia’s flagship. The card’s reduced memory specs are apparently accompanied by a slightly reduced MCM chip, which implies we’ll get a full-fat version that can compete with the RTX 4090 Ti.
AMD is seemingly “very confident” that the new Radeon RX 7900 XT specs will still hold up against the RTX 4090, particularly when it comes to pure rasterization performance. The company also believes the GPU will boast significantly better ray tracing capabilities compared to current gen RDNA 2 graphics cards.
The Radeon RX 7900 XT could arrive within Nvidia’s RTX 4080 release date window, as AMD says RDNA 3 will launch in November. There’s a chance the gaming PC giant will actually release two GPUs, but whether we’ll see a 7800 XT or a higher spec 7950 XT next month is currently unknown.
Naturally, we’ll need to get a hold of an RX 7900 XT before knowing how it truly stacks against Nvidia’s best graphics card. However, while our RTX 4090 review sets the bar high, AMD might be able to slay the Lovelace leviathan with aggressive pricing and power efficiency.