Ten months after the primary RDNA 3-powered laptop computer GPUs appeared, AMD has lastly obtained round to utilizing its premier Navi 31 processor in a cell configuration. The brand new Radeon RX 7900M is being touted as being 7% sooner on common than Nvidia’s RTX 4080 Laptop computer, so followers of high-end gaming on the go may find yourself going all Crew Purple.
By way of specs, simply assume Radeon RX 7900 GRE, however a bit of bit slower. Like the entire Radeon RX 7900-series fashions that use the RDNA 3-based Navi 31, this new GPU is a medium-sized lump of silicon, containing the entire graphics circuitry (referred to as the GCD), surrounded by plenty of tiny chiplets that home the L3 cache and reminiscence interfaces (MCDs).
One thing else that is widespread to all of them is that the MCD is just about equivalent. In reality, the one variations are the variety of lively Compute Models (CUs) and the clock speeds used. Within the case of the RX 7900M, you are getting 72 CUs with a recreation clock of 1,825MHz. For reference, the RX 7900 GRE sports activities 80 CUs and has a recreation clock of 1,880MHz.
The enhance clock for the RX 7900M is ‘as much as 2,090MHz’ as a result of the worth is actually set by the laptop computer vendor. The utmost clock velocity is proscribed by how a lot energy the GPU is allowed to eat and within the case of this one, the specs record a complete graphics energy of ‘as much as 180W’. So if the laptop computer has a decrease restrict than this, then the enhance clock will probably be lower than AMD’s worth.
One thing else that it shares with the GRE card is the variety of MCDs. This determines how a lot VRAM the GPU may have entry to, together with the overall width of the reminiscence bus and the quantity of L3 Infinity Cache. For the RX 7900M, it is 16GB of GDDR6, all working at 16Gbps (576GB/s of bandwidth) and 76MB of cache.
For me, the perfect factor about the entire RX 7900-series GPUs is all of them have the identical variety of Shader Engines (SEs). Consider these as being like an condo constructing that homes the entire amenities you want and for a graphics chip, meaning one thing to handle threads, rasterize triangles, crunch shaders, and perform render operations.
Since they’ve six SEs, each RX 7900 additionally sports activities 192 ROPs (render operation models) however because the RX 7900M has the least variety of shaders within the vary, it means the GPU will nearly by no means be ROP-limited in a recreation. Not that that is often a significant downside, nevertheless it’s considerably extra ROPs than in Nvidia’s RTX 4080 Laptop computer, which simply has 80 of them.
For prime decision gaming, particularly at excessive body charges, having numerous ROPs is a good factor.
By way of uncooked metrics, the RX 7900M is unquestionably higher than the RTX 4080 Laptop computer, however then once more, so it ought to be. Nvidia makes use of the AD104 for this mannequin, which is a smaller GPU than the Navi 31, even on this cut-down kind. It additionally has a decrease peak energy restrict of 150W but when the costs for RX 7900M laptops are much like RTX 4080 ones, then it would not actually matter.
The primary laptop computer that is being offered with the RX 7900M is Alienware’s m18. It is solely obtainable in a particular configuration that makes use of an AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX, 32GB of DDR5-5200, and 1TB of storage for a dear $2,800 and that is $50 lower than a configuration utilizing a Ryzen 9 7845HX and an RTX 4080 Laptop computer GPU.
When you’re not nervous about utilizing ray tracing in video games, then the RX 7900M configuration is the higher of the 2. Nonetheless, in case you’re in search of the perfect efficiency within the newest rendering tips, then the RTX 4080 might be the one to choose.
Personally, I might nonetheless go along with AMD’s new GPU. I feel it is a greater match for the 18-inch 1920 x 1200, 480Hz display screen used within the Alienware m18 laptop computer, and for simply outright gaming, the RX 7900M appears to be like actually good. Finest to attend for evaluations and benchmarks, although, earlier than taking the plunge as $2,800 is a lot of cash to spend on a laptop computer.
I am glad that we will lastly get a Navi 31 GPU in a laptop computer however ten months is way too lengthy a time to deliver this to market. Nvidia’s had all of its cell RTX 40-series out because the starting of this 12 months and it is exhausting sufficient to discover a laptop computer with an honest AMD GPU as it’s. With so many distributors churning out Nvidia-powered gaming laptops, reductions are fairly frequent, too.
If Dell is not joined by numerous different firms in adopting the RX 7900M, there is a good probability that AMD’s tremendous graphics processor will hardly see the sunshine of day.