Within the new generation of graphics cards that AMD will present next January, the Radeon RX 8700 XT undoubtedly occupies a very important position, as it will become a big star of the middle class within the RDNA4 family, one of the busiest and most popular levels due to its tight price-performance ratio.

A few months ago we published a special where we reviewed everything we knew about the Radeon RX 8700 They leave us with a possible configuration change in this would mean a reduction in performance.

This change in configuration would be negative, but it’s important to be clear nothing is confirmed yetand therefore the final specifications of the Radeon RX 8700 XT and its final performance values ​​are not yet known. All in all, what I am going to tell you in this article is quite reliable and has a high chance of coming true.

Possible specifications of Radeon RX 8700 XT

• Navi 48 graphics core made on TSMC’s 4nm node.
• 56 computing units.
• 3,584 shaders at 3 GHz.
• 224 texturing units.
• 96 raster units.
• 56 third-generation cores to accelerate ray tracing.
• 112 second generation cores for AI.
• 256-bit bus.
• 16 GB of GDDR6 memory at 18 Gbps (576 GB/s bandwidth).
• 4MB L2 cache.
• 64 MB of external L3 cache on four 16 MB chiplets.

If these specs are confirmed, the Radeon RX 8700 XT would have a slight increase in total shaders compared to the Radeon RX 7700 XT, 3,584 versus 3,456but it would run at a much higher speed, have a wider memory bus, have more graphics memory, and also have more L3 cache.

We must not forget that when using the new RDNA 4 architecture, the difference in shader performance at the same frequency between Radeon RX 8700 XT and Radeon RX 7700 will be much more pronounced than the raw numbers suggest, and in the 16GB graphics memory configuration it will be a much more versatile and better 4K-ready solution.

Using a 256-bit bus and increasing the L3 cache will also greatly affect the performance of the Radeon RX 8700 XT, which goes from 48 MB to 64 MB compared to the Radeon RX 7700. With this configuration, it will have the first more bandwidth and the hit rate when searching the L3 cache will increase significantly.

Basically, the Radeon RX 8700 XT appears as a stripped down version of the Radeon RX 8800 XTwhich we also recently informed you about in an updated article where you can find everything we know about it. It will also use an MCM design with a monolithic GPU built on TSMC’s 4nm node and L3 cache externalized on four chips that could be manufactured in 5nm or 6nm.

Corresponds to using GDDR6 memory instead of GDDR7 a simple matter of cost. AMD is going to approach the Radeon RX 8000 family as a generation aimed at prioritizing the price/performance ratio, and installing GDDR7 memory could increase the cost too much, which in turn would have a big impact on the selling price.

Target Resolution, Performance and Equivalence

Radeon RX 8700 XT will be the graphics card ideal for 1440p and able to perform well at 2160p, mainly thanks to the increase of the memory bus to 256 bits, the increase of the L3 cache to 64 MB and the 16 GB of memory that this graphics card will have.

In terms of raw performance, if these specs are confirmed, the Radeon RX 8700 XT will have the upper hand 43 TFLOPs in FP32. Radeon RX 7700 XT has FP32 performance 35.17 TFLOPsso on paper the difference between the two wouldn’t be too much, but as i always tell you, it doesn’t represent real power in games.

When we talk about gaming performance other factorsbecause architecture, bandwidth, caches and other optimizations can make a big difference, and that’s exactly what happens with the Radeon RX 8700 XT. It is also important to point out that in these raw power calculations we have used a value dual emission shaders, and that without them her strength would be 21.5 TFLOPs.

In terms of equivalence, the Radeon RX 8700 means that in games it could perform slightly lower than the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER in the ideal resolution, which is 1440p.

If we compare with GeForce RTX 50, this AMD graphics card should be between GeForce RTX 5060 Ti and GeForce RTX 5070.

It will be interesting to see the improvement AMD achieves in ray tracing with this new architecture. The latest rumors suggest that RDNA 4 can be equaled or even surpassed Ada Lovelace’s ray tracing performance, but nothing can be guaranteed until we see performance tests in demanding games.

In terms of consumption, this graphics card could be around 170 watts, which is a very good figure considering the performance it would be able to offer. The efficiency improvement of this model compared to the Radeon RX 7700 XT would be very large as it has a TBP of 245 watts. The difference is 75 watts.

Recommended resource and processor for Radeon RX 8700 XT

If the Radeon RX 8700 XT’s 170 watt consumption is confirmed You won’t need a very powerful power sourceand this is positive, because it will be a more affordable and easier to install graphics card even in computers that have cheap resources.

For example, a PC consisting of a Ryzen 5 7600 processor, 32 GB of DDR5 memory, a PCIe NVME M.2 SSD, six fans, a 240mm AIO liquid cooling kit and this Radeon RX 8700 XT would consume around 340 watts, which means from a 450 watt source everything would run smoothly and we would have a large reserve.

That TBP would be enough 8-pin power connector, although AMD may decide to also use another additional 6-pin to guarantee overall stability in case we want to overclock the Radeon RX 8700 XT.

As for the processor, we will need at least Ryzen 5 5600 or Intel Core i5-11600K accompany the Radeon RX 8700 XT without serious obstacles. A Ryzen 5 7600 or an Intel Core i5-12600K would be ideal, especially if we are going to use upscaling, as this technology lowers the base resolution and increases CPU dependency.

Keep in mind that if we have a processor with very high consumption, we will need a more powerful source, because the difference can be very big in some cases. For example, an Intel Core i9-13900K with the same configuration I listed above would increase the total consumption of the device to about 510 watts, which would force us to buy a 600 watt power supply Unless we want to be very fair.

Radeon RX 8700 XT price and possible release date

It should be introduced at the same time as the Radeon RX 8800 XT, so the launch of both should be simultaneous, although this is not confirmed. All in all, it’s most likely to end up on the market sometime this month January next year.

Its strong point could be the price of the Radeon RX 8700 XT, because in theory it will cost approx 400 dollars. If confirmed, the price in Spain should be around 449 euros per changea very attractive figure, since we are talking about a model that would be able to offer performance similar to that of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER at half the price.

As I always tell you, keep that in mind this price would correspond to the price of the reference model, and that other models with superior design will come to market at higher prices.

AI generated images.