Rumours Suggest Mid-Tier AMD Radeon 7000 GPUs May Beat the 6900 XT

Later this year, probably around October (give or take) AMD should be releasing their brand new Radeon 7000 graphics cards. Set to transition to a brand new RDNA3 architecture, there is clearly a lot of hope that with these new releases, Team Red will continue to close the gap on Nvidia’s gaming GPU dominance. No, I don’t think anyone expects AMD’s graphics cards to ever really get on top. The more competitive they get though the better it can only surely only be for us consumers.

While very little information is still known about the Radeon 7000 series, however, following a report via TechRadar, information has appeared online suggesting that the mid-tier of AMD Radeon 7000 GPUs, and specifically the 7700 XT, or perhaps far more interestingly 7600 XT, may be capable of matching, or possibly even beating, the current 6900 XT!

AMD Radeon 7000 – Mid Tier to Match Current Top Tier?!

We would start by freely admitting that on the surface this might sound perfectly logical, and, by proxy, not overly exciting. In the grand scheme of things, however, when the consider the general progression graphics cards have made over the last 10-15 years, this news does make the Radeon 7000 series significantly more interesting.

Put simply, although not always the case, the general precursor is that a next-generation graphics card should outperform the model immediately above it in the last/current gen. Confused? Well, let me try and make this simpler. Taking ray tracing and DLSS entirely out of the equation, the basic gaming performance offered by the 2080 Ti is, roughly speaking, about on par with the 3080/3070 Ti. – Based on this analogy, therefore, it’s been suggested that rather than the 7800 XT competing and contrasting against the 6900 XT, this might be achievable by much lower-tier models. In other words, the mid-tier Radeon 7000 graphics cards, such as the 7600 XT and/or 7700 XT might offer comparative performance to the top-top spec offered in the current 6000 series.

And if that’s true, then the overall landscape, and particularly those at the top of the 7000 range, are going to be amazingly impressive!

Ray Tracing

Another interesting slice of information from this leak is that when compared to the current Radeon 6000 series, the RDNA3 architecture is going to really kick AMD’s, so far pretty mediocre, ray tracing support into a whole new gear. – It’s no secret that to date, Nvidia has had all the trump cards in their deck when it comes to ray tracing. AMD can do it, Nvidia is simply much, much, better at it.

If this leak is proven accurate, however, then it would appear that a key focus on the development of RDNA3 has to bring this way more up to the standards set by their rivals.

Why is all of this so important though? Well, by and large, because we already know, without any information, that the Nvidia 4000 series is going to be decent. For AMD playing catch-up, however, news such as this is highly encouraging that they might, finally, be starting to show some real competition in all of the key areas. – Overall, and as things stand right now, between Nvidia 4000 and Radeon 7000, I’m far more curious about the latter. With just around 5-6 months to go until they’re launched/released, therefore, rest assured we’ll be keeping a close eye on this one!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!