AMD Radeon 7000 launch live blog: as it happened

We’re still a few hours away from the start of the event, but we’re looking forward to it. Nvidia has been the best GPU dog for so long, we really want AMD to release a line of new GPUs that For real put the pressure on Team Green. After all, healthy competition drives innovation, and that means we PC gamers win.

While it’s been a bit quiet on AMD’s official Twitter account, the Radeon RX account is building some hype!

The name of the event is “together we move forward_gaming”, so we expect to hear a lot about how these GPUs bring exciting performance improvements and features to the latest PC games.

This is the latest in a series of events hosted by AMD, and a week later, on November 10, AMD is hosting the slightly less exciting “forward_datacenters together.”

Well, our friends at Ditching Pro will be thrilled either way.

If you want to build up the suspense, check out our list of the current best AMD graphics cards.

Right now, the Radeon RX 6800 is our pick as AMD’s best overall GPU. Will the GPUs AMD showcase today make it out of the top spot? We certainly hope so.

Nvidia has been the market leader in graphics cards pretty much since its inception, and AMD, while competitive, has always been a close second. With Nvidia’s recent issues, especially reports of melting power adapter cables, AMD has emphasized that it’s sticking to the standard 8-pin connectors that most power supplies already have.

There are also concerns about power consumption, with Nvidia’s RTX 4090 consuming nearly half a kW. As we saw with AMD Ryzen 7000 series chips, AMD has made some strides in power efficiency that we find very encouraging. Hopefully the new Radeon GPUs will keep that trend going.

Given all the power issues we’ve seen in the UK and elsewhere, I think AMD’s focus on power consumption is a commendable approach and could be a major asset in the battle with both Nvidia and Intel.

We definitely hope AMD shows some more price-friendly cards today as well. While we wouldn’t expect a RX 7700 XT or RX 7600 XT today, these are still some of the most anticipated GPUs on our list, as we’d love to see more affordable graphics cards like the Intel Arc A770.

We haven’t been able to test that GPU ourselves yet, but it seems like a solid graphics card in every way and not for a whole lot of money. We’re in the midst of an ongoing cost of living crisis, so any price advantage AMD can bring would be welcome to many PC gamers.

Well, that’s it for me. I’m turning things over to our US team now, but I’ll be watching with everyone to see what Nvidia has in store for us in just under an hour, and I really hope it’s an exciting day for gamers everywhere. Watch out everyone!

Hello all! This is Allisa James, US Computing Staff Writer, and I’m taking over the live blog. I look forward to seeing what AMD has in store for us in about 10 minutes.

It begins! And we have Dr. Lisa Su, AMD Chairman and CEO, speaking as usual for these presentations. Just an introduction for now, detailing the products they’ve released so far and what they plan to release in the future.

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

As a refresher, the RDNA 3 is the first gaming chiplet. It features 61 Tflops of processing power, 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 are detailing some of the more specific specifications of each chip.

Wonder if any of the other rumors about RDNA 3 chips will be revealed during this livestream. It would be nice to have more affordable GPU options available. And just to be clear, it’s the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT that were unveiled.

We now know that the newly unveiled chips have a new memory cache chip, a new graphics compute chip, 165% more transistors per mm2, and more.

We shot a shot of the 7900 XTX, which is, of course, quite large.

We also find out that you don’t need to upgrade your PC or power adapter for these new chips, you just need to take out the old one and put the new one in. Most useful stuff.

Now they’re digging into the Display Port 2.1, which will upgrade both 4K and 8K gaming. At 8K, DP 2.1 provides 165Hz and 4K up to 480Hz.

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

Now showing off the Callisto protocol and Forspoken, which AMD will have technical partnerships with. That’s great, as we can see this progress. Also a technical collaboration with Snowdrop Engine 2.0.

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

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

The software is getting an update called AMD Hypr-RX Mode, which will allow you to increase frame rates and decrease latency, and it will be out in early 2023.

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

We finally have the release dates and prices for the chips! A December 13 release, the RX 7900 XTX costs $999 and the RX 7900 XT costs $899.

Looks like that’s it for show! Tons of information shared with us today, thank you for joining us!

A summary: The RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT were announced today and got an overview of some specifications. They will have a new memory cache chip, a new graphics compute chip and 165% more transistors per mm2. No mention of the other rumors about the 7000 series chips, which is a shame considering we don’t have budget options for AMD’s next generation.

They also feature Display Port 2.1, which offers 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 partner with AMD to take advantage of these and other upgrades.

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