AMD Radeon RX 7900M “Navi 31” Laptop GPU Beats The NVIDIA RTX 4080 “AD104” In First 3DMark Tests

The first AMD Radeon RX 7900M "Navi 31" GPU performance tests are in and it beats the GeForce RTX 4080 laptop GPU in 3DMark Time Spy.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900M was first leaked by us back in early October and it made its official debut last as a part of the Alienware m18, the only AMD Advantage and all-AMD laptop design to feature top-tier Radeon GPU & Ryzen CPU hardware. Prior to that, AMD's RNDA 3 lineup was quite lacking with only Navi 33 GPUs serving the entry-level and mainstream segments.

Both AMD and NVIDIA usually launched GPUs one tier below the desktop flagship as the top mobile SKU and even those were further spec'd down, either in terms of core configurations or clocks/power. With the Radeon RX 7900M, AMD not only brought the world's first chiplet GPU to the laptop segment but also offered its flagship Navi 31 chip on the laptop segment, something that even NVIDIA has been unable to do due to power/thermal constraints.

AMD Radeon RX 7900M "Navi 31" GPU Specifications

The AMD Radeon RX 7900M GPU is based on the RDNA 3 graphics architecture and features a total of 36 WGPs or 72 Compute Units which make up a total of 4608 cores. That's 20% more cores than the 7800 XT & 10% lower cores than the 7900 GRE. Clock speeds for the GPU peak out at 2090 MHz.

In terms of memory, the GPU is equipped with a total of four MCDs which will enable a 256-bit wide bus interface & 16 GB memory capacities. That will get AMD on par with NVIDIA's top RTX 40 offerings such as the RTX 4090 which max out at 16 GB memory too. As for the power numbers, the AMD Radeon RX 7900M will be configured at a TGP of 160W & can be pushed up to 200W with SmartShift technologies.

RX 7900M is 7% faster than the RTX 4080 laptop on average.

The main difference is in the pricing:

????RTX 4080 + 7945HX (Baseline) = $3349.99 US????RX 7900M + 7945HX (Baseline) = $2799.99 UShttps://t.co/IGib1eA9Zr pic.twitter.com/ekNCsXz9GN

— Hassan Mujtaba (@hms1193) October 19, 2023

Now we have the first performance benchmark in the 3DMark Time Spy synthetic benchmark courtesy of tech and gaming YouTuber, GizmoSlipTech. The system is once again the Alienware m18 laptop, configured with AMD's Ryzen 9 7945HX and the Radeon RX 7900M GPU, and retails for a baseline price of $2799.99 US whereas the RTX 4080 with similar system specs has a retail listing for $3349.99 US or 20% higher price.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900M RDNA 3 GPU scored 19,743 points in the 3DMark Time Spy graphics test and 18,404 overall points. This is a really good score for a laptop GPU which ends up being around 4.3% faster than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 which scores an average of 18923 points in the same benchmark.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 remains the king with its AD103 GPU core while the AD104 shows its strengths being almost on par with the Navi 31 GPU. Considering the price, the Radeon RX 7900M is looking like the better value versus the RTX 4080 but that's based off just one synthetic test.

However, we have to consider the fact that the thermal and power figures of laptop GPUs are just as important as the synthetic/gaming performance since an efficient GPU can offer similar performance with lower temps and higher battery times. AMD's own official benchmarks showed a 7% gain in performance over the RTX 4080 so it looks like the flagship Navi 31 GPU does well against its AD104 opponent though more testing will be appreciated, especially in games which this GPU is designed for.

News Source: VideoCardz