Increased efficiency is a huge boon for mobile applications, so it’s no surprise that AMD is aggressively bringing the new architecture to the laptop market. As part of its CES 2023 announcement, AMD unveiled its first RDNA 3-based Radeon GPUs for laptops. There are four separate models, but all four are based on the same silicon base, code-named Navi 33.
First up is the Radeon RX 7600M and its “XT” form factor. These are RDNA 3 GPUs with 28 and 32 compute units respectively, which gives them shader counts of 1,792 and 2,048 respectively. AMD didn’t disclose clock rates, but said the GPU can produce 28 and 32 TFLOPs of FP32 computing. With those specs, these GPUs didn’t match the math for us with performance, so we’ve asked AMD for further clarification.
AMD’s spec sheet (reproduced at the end of this article) shows that these GPUs use 16 Gbps (for the RX 6700M) or 18 Gbps (for “XT”) GDDR6 memory. 8GB is a lot for a mid-range GPU like this, and the relatively high transfer rates give them 256GB/s and 288GB/s memory bandwidth – solid specs for these engines designed to handle 1080p gaming.
Representatives from the company told us that the Radeon RX 7600M XT can approach the performance of the mobile Geforce RTX 3080 in some tests. While that may be true, the company’s own figures compare the new GPU to an 8GB version of the GeForce RTX 3060 in a laptop, as well as a 12GB desktop version.
AMD’s newer offerings often top these numbers, but laptop GPU performance is often a function of processor configuration, as well as power budget and cooling. Without knowing the power budget or test environment, we’ll refrain from drawing any concrete conclusions until we’ve tested it on a retail machine.
In a somewhat odd product naming decision, the other two Navi 33-based products are the Radeon RX 7700S and RX 7600S. These appear to be just slightly tighter power limits applied by the RX 7600M XT and RX 7600M.
AMD has used the “S” suffix to designate GPUs with optimized performance for low-power, low-thermal-budget configurations. In that sense, it’s a bit like how NVIDIA has used the Max-Q branding in the past.
If you’re confused, we’ll explain. The Radeon RX 7700S is a slower, lower power version of the Radeon RX 7600M XT, and the Radeon RX 7600S is a slower, lower power version of the Radeon RX 7600M. Does that help?
AMD’s promise of “high FPS gaming at 1080p in a thin and light laptop” sounds like a promising prospect. After all, while your hardcore PC gamer will turn your nose up at 1080p resolution, it will look much better on a smaller laptop monitor. The performance numbers of the Radeon RX 7700S in the benchmarks are almost identical to those of the aforementioned RX 7600M, which is probably not surprising given that they are essentially the same GPU.
Upcoming Laptops with AMD Radeon RX 7000
AMD showed off upcoming laptops from four vendors, which we’ve reproduced in this barely recognizable collage that you can Click to view full resolution. It’s encouraging to see AMD find more market partners, as previous-generation Radeon mobile GPU products can be hard to find.
Complete AMD Smart Notebook Performance Technologies
All four are “AMD Advantage” models, meaning they come with AMD hardware to handle CPU and GPU duties. It also means they can enjoy all of AMD’s “smart” technologies like Smartshift and SmartAccess.
Speaking of Smartshift, there is a new mode called Smartshift RSR. RSR is probably “Radeon Super Resolution”, which is the fancy name for a GPU upgrade done with FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) at the driver level. Essentially, you run the game at a lower resolution, and the GPU uses FSR to upscale it to the display resolution to improve performance at similar visual fidelity.
Well, Smartshift RSR is a new hybrid graphics mode that does all the rendering on your fast discrete GPU, then sends it to the integrated GPU to be scaled up before being displayed on the screen. This eases the upgrade burden on the discrete GPU and theoretically improves gaming performance, but we have to wonder how it works if your laptop includes a MUX that connects directly to the GPU and its display. It will be interesting to see how this works in practice, but sounds promising.
AMD’s complete 2023 mobile GPU lineup
Finally, here’s the full spec sheet for this year’s AMD mobile GPUs. Clearly, the new silicon solution is in the white box. As AMD points out, the power limit here doesn’t take into account the extra 25 watts the GPU gets in AMD Advantage laptops by using Smartshift to draw power from the system CPU. This means the Radeon RX 7600M XT could be a 145W GPU.
We asked AMD when Navi 33 would be coming to desktops, and the company declined to answer. That’s unfortunate, because an affordable GPU like this is exactly what the desktop GPU market needs right now. Let’s hope the company starts bringing these GPUs to PC graphics cards sooner rather than later.
If you like what you see from Navi 33, you won’t have to wait long. Laptops with these GPUs should start appearing in February, alongside the launch of its Dragon Range mobile processors, AMD said.