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AMD Radeon 7000 launch live blog: as it happened

We're live at AMD's “together we advance_gaming”

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By Matt Hanson, Allisa James
last updated
Lisa Su giving a keynote speech at CES 2022
(Image: © AMD)

Welcome to our AMD Radeon 7000 launch event live blog. AMD is hosting a big bash where it'll show off its next generation of graphics cards to take on Nvidia.

This is an exciting time to be a PC gamer, not only do we have more brilliant PC games than we can play, but Nvidia has recently released its GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, and the RTX 4080 is coming soon as well.

So, we're super excited to see what AMD has to offer. Nvidia remains the market leader, and while we were very impressed by the raw power of the RTX 4090, it hasn't been plain sailing for Team Green, with grumbles about high price tags, reports of adaptor cables melting and a hastily-cancelled RTX 4080 12GB model all making headaches for the company.

This gives AMD an exciting opportunity to close the gap on Nvidia, and we hope what it announces today will be some of the best graphics cards you can slap into your gaming rig.

We're expecting the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX,  RX 7900 XT, RX 7800 XT, RX 7800, and perhaps the RX 7700 XT. We don't know for sure what AMD has in store, but with the event kicking off today, Thursday, November 3 at 1PM PDT / 4PM EST / 8PM GMT, we shouldn't have long to wait. If you want to watch along, check out our guide on how to watch the AMD Radeon 7000 launch event, and read on below for all our expert opinion and analysis throughout the event.

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AMD Radeon RX 7000

(Image credit: AMD)

We're still a few hours away from the event starting, but we're excited. Nvidia have been the top GPU dog for so long now, that we really want to see AMD release a range of new GPUs that really put the pressure on Team Green. After all, healthy competition helps spur on innovation, and that means us PC gamers win.

While it's a bit quiet on AMD's official Twitter account, the Radeon RX account is building up hype!

The name of the event is 'together we advance_gaming', so we expect to hear a lot about how these GPUs bring exciting performance boosts and features to the latest PC games.

This is the latest in a series of events hosted by AMD, and a week later, AMD will be hosting the slightly-less exciting 'together we advance_data centers' on November 10.

Well, our friends at TechRadar Pro will be excited, anyway.

AMD Radeon RX 6800

(Image credit: Future)

If you want to keep the excitement building, check out our list of the current best AMD graphics cards.

At the moment, the Radeon RX 6800 is our pick as the best overall GPU from AMD. Will the GPUs AMD shows off today knock it from the top spot? We certainly hope so.

Nvidia has been the market leader for graphics cards pretty much since the very beginning, and AMD, while competitive, has always been a close second place. With Nvidia's recent issues, most notably reports of melting power adapter cables, AMD has made a point of underlining that it is sticking with the standard 8-pin connectors that most power supplies already have.

There is also concerns about power use, with Nvidia's RTX 4090 soaking up nearly a half a kW. As we saw with AMD Ryzen 7000 series chips, AMD has been making some strides in the area of energy efficiency that we find very encouraging. Hopefully the new Radeon GPUs keep that trend going.

Given all of the energy issues we've been seeing in the UK and elsewhere, I think AMD's attention on power use is a commendable approach and could be a major asset in its fight with both Nvidia and Intel.

We definitely hope that AMD shows off some more price-accessible cards today as well. While we don't expect to see an RX 7700 XT or an RX 7600 XT today, these are still some of the most anticipated GPUs on our list since we would really like to see more affordable graphics cards like the Intel Arc A770. 

We haven't been able to test that GPU ourselves yet, but by all accounts it seems to be a solid graphics card and not for a whole lot of money. We're in the middle of an ongoing cost of living crisis, so any price advantage AMD can bring to the table would be welcome by a lot of PC gamers out there. 

Well that's it for me. I'm turning things over to our US team now, but I'll be watching along with everyone else to see what AMD has in store for us in just under an hour, and I'm really hoping it will be an exciting day for gamers everywhere. Take care everyone!

Hello everyone! This is Allisa James, US Computing Staff Writer, and I'll be taking over for the liveblog. Looking forward to seeing what AMD has in store for us in about 10 minutes or so.

It's starting! And we have Dr. Lisa Su, AMD Chair and CEO, speaking as usual for these presentations. Just an introduction for now, detailing the products they've released so far as well as what they plan on releasing in the future.

This presentation is focused on gaming architecture, namely the RDNA 3 powered chips. 

dr li siu holding a chip

(Image credit: Future)

As a refresher, the RDNA 3 is the first gaming chiplet. It features 61 Tflops of compute, 5.3 TB/s, and 58 billion transistors.

They just announced two of the chips: the rumored flagship Radeon XTX and the Radeon XT. Now they're detailing some of the more specific specs of each chip.

Wonder if any of the other rumored RDNA 3 chips will be revealed during this livestream. It would be nice to have more affordable GPU options available. And just for clarification its the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT that was revealed.

We do know right now that the newly revealed chips feature a new memory cache die, new graphics compute die, 165% more transistors per mm2, and more.

the RX 7900 XTX

(Image credit: Future)

We got a shot of the 7900 XTX, which is pretty huge naturally.

Also we find out that you don't need to upgrade your PC or power adapter for these new chips, just slip out the old and slip in the new. Pretty convenient stuff.

Now they're digging into the Display Port 2.1, which will be upgrading both 4K and 8K gaming. At 8K DP 2.1 will allow for 165Hz and for 4K up to 480Hz.

Apex Legends will be able to be played at 300FPS, which is ridiculous. Assassin's Creed Valhalla can be played at 96FPS at 8K. Halo Infinite will also be supporting high-performance Ray Tracing.

Showing off The Callisto Protocol and Forspoken now, which AMD will have technical partnerships with. Which is great, since we'll be able to see these advancements shown off. Also a technical partnership with Snowdrop Engine 2.0.

It'll be interesting to see what comes of this partnership with AMD and Unreal Engine 5, but so far it looks real promising.

AMD Software Adrenaline Edition is the subject now, which is basically a gaming hub for stats and settings. You can also stream games from it and make it a hub to connect other devices.

The software is getting an update called AMD Hypr-RX mode, which allows you to increase frame rates and lower latency, and that'll be coming out in early 2023.

There are also some great toolsets coming for content creators to better edit and upload recorded video content.

We finally got release dates and pricing for the chips! A December 13 release, the RX 7900 XTX will be $999 and RX 7900 XT will be $899.

Looks like that's it for the show! Tons of information shared with us today, thanks for joining us!

A recap: the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT was announced today and got a breakdown of some of the specs. They will feature a new memory cache die, new graphics compute die, and 165% more transistors per mm2. No mention of the other rumored 7000-series chips, which is a shame considering we don't have budget options for next-gen from AMD.

They also feature Display Port 2.1, which will offer a vastly improved refresh rate for 4K and 8K gaming, up to 480Hz for the former and up to 165 for the latter. Several PC games and Unreal Engine 5 will be partnering with AMD to take advantage of these and other upgrades.

Plenty of updates and toolkits coming to AMD's Software Adrenaline Edition in 2.23 for content creators. And finally the XTX and XT will be releasing on December 13 of this year for $999 and $899, respectively.