AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX debuted in December 2022. They are high-end cards with the most powerful RDNA 3 GPU: Navi 31. Flagship cards are always released first, and usually the next GPU released is a notch lower. This time, however, it is different.

The next card released was the Navi 33-based RX 7600, which was really 5 months later than the RX 7900 card; where the heck is the Navi 32-based RX 7800 card? There could be a number of reasons: AMD was not satisfied with the performance, the GPU needed a re-turn, or there was an unexpected errata. We will probably never know.

While waiting for the Navi 32 card, Igor's Lab conducted an interesting experiment. He got an AMD Radeon Pro W7800 graphics card, disabled half of its 32 GB of memory, and tweaked the power limits to simulate what one would expect from a virtual RX 7800 XT.

Before looking at the results, it is important to remember that this is an experiment and does not claim to accurately simulate the RX 7800 XT; the actual specs of the Navi 32 GPU remain confidential, including number of shaders, clock speed, and power levels.

Also, this is a very unscientific comparison since the W7800 uses the larger Navi 31 GPU that it shares with the RX 7900 card. An appropriate amount of salt should be taken. Nevertheless, this is interesting and a fun little experiment by Igor.

The results show that the "RX 7800 XT" is barely faster than the "RX 6800 XT"; the "RX 7800 XT" may be more power efficient than the "RX 6800 XT", but without the performance leap across generations, there would be little reason to choose the "RX 7800 XT would have little reason to choose the "RX 7800 XT".

The RX 7800 has the potential for improved ray tracing performance, but unless its raster performance is significantly better than the best RDNA 2 cards, it won't mean much. Of course, AMD could sell the RX 7800 at an attractive price, but obviously would not want to sacrifice margins.

Between a rock and a hard place?

I spoke with a rep from one of AMD's partners at Computex. At that point, they had not yet been informed of AMD's plans for the RX 7800 or RX 7700 cards. However, as it stands, a Navi 32 card is not likely to appear anytime soon. If I were to look into my crystal ball and make a guess, I would say that it will most likely be released in September or October.

AMD surely wants to price the card somewhere in the large gap between the RX 7600 and the much more expensive RX 7900. I sincerely hope the RX 7800 card beats the RX 6950 XT and can compete with the RTX 4070 and 4070 Ti at a good price. If nothing else, we need competition to bring prices down!

I look forward to testing the RX 7800 and RX 7700 cards when or if they are released. Sooner or later.