The Radeon RX 8800 XT is a next-generation graphics card that will use AMD’s RDNA 4 architecture and slot into what we can consider high range input. It is one of the models that has generated the most interest, especially after the alleged cancellation of the Radeon RX 8900 XT, although we must keep in mind that this has not yet been confirmed by AMD.

So far, all the leaks and information I’ve seen ensure that the Radeon RX 8800 XT will be the most powerful model that AMD will launch in this generation, which there will be no supply peak and that Sunnyvale will approach RDNA 4 as a transition architecture. If this is true, NVIDIA will be left alone in the market with its GeForce RTX 5080 and GeForce RTX 5090, because I don’t think the Radeon RX 8800 XT will be able to compete with either of these two graphics cards.

In that scenario The Radeon RX 8800 XT will rival the GeForce RTX 5070, or perhaps a hypothetical GeForce RTX 5070 Ti. That’s the direction the data I have so far and their possible specs point. I know there is a dearth of important information about the Radeon RX 8000, so today I want to share with you everything I know so far about the Radeon RX 8800 XT.

Possible specifications of Radeon RX 8800 XT

As I said at the beginning, this will be a high-end entry-level graphics card and not a real top of the range, as that position would normally be reserved for the Radeon RX 8900 XT or Radeon RX 8900 XTX. Will use Navi 48 graphics core and will be able to run current games in 4K resolution without any problems.

• Navi 48 graphics core made on TSMC’s 4nm node.
• Five L3 cache chips, each 16MB in size, manufactured on TSMC’s 6nm node.
• 84 computing units.
• 5,376 shaders at over 3 GHz.
• 336 texturing units.
• 192 raster units.
• 84 cores of the third generation RT.
• 168 second generation cores for AI.
• 256-bit bus.
• 16 GB of GDDR7 memory at 28 Gbps (672 GB/s bandwidth). It is rumored that it could use GDDR6 memory to reduce costs, but this is not confirmed.
• 6 MB L2 cache.
• 80 MB of externalized L3 cache on five chips.

Compared to the Radeon RX 7800 XT, we have a significant increase in the number of shaders, which it goes from 3,840 to 5,376, and of course other important elements like the number of texturing and rasterization units, AI cores and RT cores are also increasing. The latter two are evolving to become the second and third generations, which should translate into higher performance.

Generally these possible specs of Radeon RX 8800 XT are very similar to those of the Radeon RX 7900 XT, but in this case we have an architectural leap, so the performance difference between the two should be significant. It’s hard to predict, but I think we can expect performance between the Radeon RX 7900 XT and the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, or better than the latter in the best cases.

In terms of consumption, AMD did not make the expected progress in terms of efficiency with the Radeon RX 7000, but the jump to TSMC’s 4nm node and the use of a new architecture could significantly improve this problem with the Radeon RX 8000. In the case of the Radeon RX 8800 XT, I am inclined to believe that it will have TBP between 250 and 300 watts, which means we wouldn’t need a very powerful power source to move it around without any problems.

Architecture and possible performance

The RDNA 4 architecture will almost certainly retain the design we saw in RDNA 3. This means that the GPU will continue to have monolithic core because it will integrate all its basic elements in the same chip but L3 cache will be externalized in what we know as MCD units. Each cache chip will be 16MB.

The manufacturing process will be different for both components. The GPU will be manufactured in TSMC 4nm node, although there are rumors saying that AMD will make the jump 3nm node. The L3 cache chips should be manufactured at a 6nm or 5nm node, both also from TSMC.

Only with a change in architecture and the use of a new node should the values ​​of raw power and efficiency (power per watt) improve, which means that the Radeon RX 8800 XT would have to be more powerful and efficient than Radeon RX 7900 XTif the specs we’ve seen are confirmed.

The most important improvement in terms of performance could come from usage new cores to speed up ray tracingand I also saw some rumors that AMD might finally start using dedicated AI cores to implement new technologies in FSR 4. It sounds very good to be honest, but it’s better not to get too excited because like I said, it’s not confirmed.

In terms of raw performance, this Radeon RX 8800 XT running at 3.2GHz would top 68.81 TFLOPs in FP32, due to its ability to work with two Wave32 instructions. This figure ranks it above the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which achieves 61.39 TFLOPs of performance in FP32but we must keep in mind that game performance does not depend only on floating point operations and that many other things come into play.

All in all, it’s important that with these numbers and with its 16 GB of graphics memory, the Radeon RX 8800 XT could easily run games in 4K resolution. Ray tracing should be a significant improvement over the current generationas already happened at that time with the jump from RDNA 2 to RDNA 3.

What PSU and CPU would you need for Radeon RX 8800 XT

If everything I told you in this article is true, the Radeon RX 8800 XT will have similar performance to the Radeon RX 7900. This means that a minimum of Ryzen 5 5600X or Intel Core i5-11600K will be acceptable for displacement conditions, and that the ideal will be have Ryzen 5 7600 or with Intel Core i5-12600K.

All It will also depend on the resolution which we will play because in 4K the dependence on the CPU is greatly reduced, but if we use some rescaling technique, it gets worse again because the real rendering resolution is reduced and the CPU again has a big impact on the whole team’s performance. In any case, starting from the ideal level we will not have serious obstacles.

For a graphics card like the Radeon RX 8800 XT It would be ideal not to drop below 1440p, because at 1080p it is very easy to have bottlenecks due to lack of optimization with any current high-end graphics card, unless we activate very demanding ray tracing that can saturate the GPU. This could happen in Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077, for example.

Jumping to the power supply, if the Radeon RX 8800 XT ends up with a TBP of 250 watts, we need to have at least power source 650W, although it will also depend on the processor we will be using. If we have a Ryzen 5 7600, that power supply will be sufficient, as this processor has very low consumption, but if we use a processor with a higher consumption, such as the Intel Core i9-13900K, it will be suitable to mount the power supply 750 watts.

Release date and possible price

Sources disagree on a possible Radeon RX 8800 XT release date. Some information says it will arrive at the end of this yearand others already assume that it will not be presented until 2025. At the moment, both options are open and we can’t rule out either of them, although AMD is interested in arriving as soon as possible so as not to leave NVIDIA alone with the GeForce RTX 50.

In terms of price, the Radeon RX 8800 XT will be the top entry-level model and will most likely cost that much between 500 and 549 euros. Keep in mind that these would be the starting prices of the cheapest models, and that graphics cards with premium designs and finishes could easily exceed the prices. 600 euros.

AI generated images.