AMD Radeon RX 590 vs AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT Comparison

# AMD Radeon RX 590 vs AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT

The database comparison places the AMD Radeon RX 590 and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT in very different performance tiers. The RX 590 is a Polaris generation part, while the RX 7700 XT is a Navi 32 based card from the current RDNA 3 family. Looking at the aggregate benchmark score, the RX 7700 XT holds a decisive lead: its average score across all recorded tests is 22,549, versus 24,744 for the RX 590. That is a roughly 9.7% advantage for the newer card in overall compute performance. In the specific head-to-head test recorded in the database, the RX 7700 XT wins the only direct comparison, the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 test, with a score of 3316 against 1081 for the RX 590, a delta of 67.4% in favor of the RX 7700 XT.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The direct comparison data is sparse but decisive. In the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 benchmark, the RX 7700 XT scored 3316, while the RX 590 scored 1081. That is a 67.4% advantage for the newer card. This is a massive gap, and it reflects the generational leap between Polaris and RDNA 3.

Looking at the broader benchmark suite, the RX 590 sits at the 70th percentile of all GPUs in the database, meaning it outranks the majority of cards. The RX 7700 XT sits at the 67th percentile, a slightly lower relative standing, but its absolute scores are far higher. The delta between the two cards is most visible in heavy compute workloads; the RX 590's older GCN architecture is thoroughly outclassed.

Architecture Differences

The two cards come from different architectural eras. The RX 590 uses the Polaris 30 chip, built on the GCN 4.0 architecture, and is a 12 nm part from GlobalFoundries. It packs 5,700 million transistors on a 232 mm² die, for a density of 24.6 million transistors per mm². Its successor card, the RX 7700 XT, uses the Navi 32 chip, built on RDNA 3.0 and manufactured at 5 nm by TSMC. The die holds 28,100 million transistors on a 346 mm² slice, for a density of 81.2 million per mm². That is over three times the transistor density, a direct result of the process node shrink.

The RX 590 has 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs. The RX 7700 XT nearly doubles the shading units to 3456, increases TMUs to 216, and triples ROPs to 96. The RX 7700 XT also brings 54 ray tracing cores, a feature the RX 590 does not have at all.

Clock behavior differs substantially. The RX 590 has a base clock of 1469 MHz, a boost of 1545 MHz, and memory clocked at 2000 MHz with 8 Gbps effective bandwidth. The RX 7700 XT has a base of 1435 MHz, boosts to 2544 MHz, and offers a game clock of 2171 MHz. Its memory runs at 2250 MHz, 18 Gbps effective. It is a 12 GB GDDR6 part with a 192 bit bus and 432.0 GB/s of bandwidth, versus 8 GB GDDR5 on a 256 bit bus and 256.0 GB/s.

Where Each One Wins

The RX 590 has no wins in the head-to-head comparison; the RX 7700 XT wins the only benchmark test that directly compares them. But the RX 590 is not without its own use cases. It is an end-of-life product, released in November 2018, and was preceded by Arctic Islands and followed by Vega. The RX 7700 XT is active, released in September 2023, and has Navi II as its predecessor and Navi IV as its successor.

The RX 7700 XT wins in raw performance, with the 67.4% lead in the Steel Nomad benchmark. It also has a large feature advantage: 54 ray tracing cores, 60 more ROPs, 3 times the memory bandwidth, 50% more memory, and a much higher pixel rate (244.2 GPixel/s vs 49.44 GPixel/s) and texture rate (549.5 GTexel/s vs 222.5 GTexel/s). It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, while the RX 590 supports DirectX 12 (12_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3.

For users with older workloads, such as DX9 or G2D, the RX 590 still works: it has Passmark G2D score of 1161, G3D of 22547, and a GPU compute of 12912. The RX 7700 XT's Passmark G3D score is 22547, its G2D is 1161, and its compute score is 12912.

FAQ

Q: Which card has a higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT has a higher average score of 22549, versus 24744 for the RX 590.

Q: Does the RX 7700 XT support ray tracing?

A: Yes, it has 54 ray tracing cores.

Q: Is there a successor to the RX 590?

A: Yes, the successor is the Vega part.

Q: What is the power consumption?

A: The RX 7700 XT has a TDP of 245 W, the RX 590 has a TDP of 175 W.

Q: Which card has more memory?

A: The RX 7700 XT has 12 GB GDDR6, the RX 590 has 8 GB GDDR5.