Benchmark scores for AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card have leaked ahead of its launch, revealing disappointing performance when compared to its predecessors. AMD announced its RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7000 lineup last month as an upgrade over the RDNA 2-based RX 6000 series launched in late 2020. The upcoming lineup is expected to include three core GPUs, including the top-of-the-line Navi 31, along with the Navi 32 and Navi 33. Only two cards in the new lineup have been announced so far — the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and the Radeon RX 7900 XT.
The Radeon RX 7000 cards will be released at a time when NVIDIA's RTX 4000 series GPUs are getting a lot of attention for their impressive benchmark scores. New benchmarks suggest that not only is the RTX 4090 significantly faster than the RTX 3090 Ti, but even the RTX 4080 could be handily beating the last-gen flagship in a slew of popular games, including F1 2022, A Plague Tale: Requiem and Microsoft Flight Simulator, with or without DLSS turned on. However, AMD has also released official benchmark scores for RX7900, showing significant performance gains over its last-gen lineup.
The leaked performance benchmarks for the Radeon RX 7900 XTX showcase the OpenCL and Vulkan performance of the upcoming graphics card on Geekbench 5. As can be seen on the official Geekbench website, the RX 7900 XTX could only notch up an OpenCL score of 150,372, which is much slower than the 170,000+ racked up by the RX 6900 XT. The new card also has a Vulcan score of 91,652, which is around 20 percent slower than the RX 6900 XT.
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Benchmark Scores
At first glance, the benchmark scores of the RX 7900 XTX would suggest that it is much slower than the RX 6950 XT. However, the new card is said to be between 60-70 percent faster than its predecessor, meaning the unit used in the Geekbench 5 test is likely running on early drivers that are not fully optimized. If the reports about the RX 7900 XTX's expected performance are anywhere near accurate, the card should offer much better performance with the final drivers.
Another point worth noting is that the new card only has a boost speed of 2270MHz on the new benchmark, which is far below its 2.5GHz peak boost clock. The higher clock speeds in the final retail units should also aid its performance, meaning there's no real cause for concern yet for would-be buyers. What could be a cause for concern, however, is the impending price drop for the RTX 4080, which could make it much more competitive against the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX.