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AMD introduces a new GPU for laptop gaming

The new Radeon RX 7800M is based on AMD’s Navi 32 architecture

Robert Dow

AMD introduced the mobile Radeon RX 7000 series at CES in January of 2023. At that time they debuted the Radeon RX 7600M, Radeon RX 7600M for gaming laptops and the Radeon RX 7700S and Radeon RX 7600S for lower power thin and light laptops. The flagship Radeon RX 7900M was later released in October of 2023. The new Radeon RX 7800M will fit in the stack between the High-end RX 7900M and the midrange RX 7600M XT.

What do we think? The Radeon RX 7800M had an impressive debut last month when One-Netbook provided a video of the new GPU running 3dMark’s Time Spy and providing a graphic performance score of 15806. That 15806 score places it well above the average score of the Radeon RX 7600M XT which is 8600 as well as Nvidia’s RTX 4070 laptop GPU that posts an average score of 12400 on Time Spy. When the Radeon RX 7900M was introduced a year ago October AMD announced major design wins for the GPU with Alienware. As of yet, AMD has not published any wins for the RX 7800M, but considering its performance, we expect to see some shortly.

The RX 7000 Series

At CES in 2023 AMD introduced its new RX 7000 series for laptops based on its RDNA architecture the new GPUs were designed to deliver energy efficiency and a strong performance to watt ratio at 1080p gaming. The AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT and Radeon RX 7600M delivered a 25% performance upgrade compared to previous generation GPUs.

AMD followed the released of the RX 7600M XT and RX 7600M midrange GPUs with the high-end RX 7900M in October 2023. The RX 7900M was geared for 1440p gaming as well as content creation applications. At the time of release and still today the RX 7900M is the fasted mobile GPU that AMD has ever developed. AMD’s flagship GPU was adopted by Alienware of its Enthusiast gaming M18 laptop series.

After the introduction of the RX 7900M, AMD was left with a major performance gap between the flagship GPU and the midrange RX 7600M XT, the RX 7800M will now fill that void. The7800M provides 87.5% more compute units and stream processors than the RX 7600M XT, as well as 50% more memory.

 Radeon RX 7900MRadeon RX 7800MRadeon RX 7600M XTRadeon RX 7600M
Release DateOctober 2023September 2024January 2023January 2023
ArchitectureRDNA 3RDNA 3RDNA 3RDNA 3
Transistors (B)53.928.113.313.3
Compute Units72603228
Stream Processors4608384020481792
Game Clock speed (MHz)1825214523002070
Memory TypeGDDR6GDDR6GDDR6GDDR6
Memory Size (GB)161288
Memory Speed (Gbps)18181816
Memory Bandwidth (GB/s)576432288256
GPU Power (W)18018012090

Table 1: Specifications on Radeon RX 7000 Series mobile GPUs

Performance

Last month the China based company One-Netbook, manufacturers of popular handheld gaming consoles, released a YouTube video of the RX 7800M running 3DMark. Along with mobile consoles One-Netbook also produces a portable eGPU docking station that features the RX 7600M XT, so its not surprising that the Chinese company would be one of the first OEMs to get their hands on AMD’s latest GPU.

 Radeon RX 7900MRadeon RX 7800MRadeon RX 7600M XTRTX 4070 laptop GPU
Release dateOctober 2023September 2024January 2023January 2023
ArchitectureRDNA 3RDNA 3RDNA 3Ada Lovelace
Time Spy Graphic Score1700015806860712400

Table 2: Mobile GPU Time Spy graphic score (Source: UL)

Time Spy graph
Figure 1: Time Spy score comparison (Source: UL)

One-Netbook tested the RX 7800M on Time Spy, and the new GPU produced an impressive score of 15806. Which is a massive 84% performance boost over the RX 7600 XT and best Nvidia’s RTX 4070 laptop GPU by 27%.

The RX 7800M performs well in comparison to its GPU competitors; it will be interesting to see how AMD markets the new GPU and whether it will find traction with OEMs.

PC gaming hardware market