What just happened? AMD has unveiled a new flagship mobile GPU that it claims is its fastest laptop graphics chip yet. The Radeon RX 7900M is based on the RDNA 3 architecture and includes the Navi 31 GPU with 4,608 Stream Processors and a whopping 16GB of GDDR6 memory.
AMD claims that the new card would not only enable gamers to experience 1440p gaming on their laptops, but also allow content creators to render complex 3D environments and animations in real-time. The card is also said to have improved AI accelerators optimized for AI workloads and should deliver better performance than RDNA 2 GPUs in a wide array of applications.
The 7900M features 72 compute units (CU), which is more than double that of the RX 7700S launched earlier this year. While that promises to offer stellar performance, it is more power-hungry than the 7700S as well, with a 180W TGP. In terms of clock speeds, the Radeon RX 7900M has an 1,825MHz game clock, up to 2,090MHz boost clock, a 256-bit memory interface, and 64MB of Infinity Cache.
Add to that the impressive 16GB of VRAM, and the new card could be a great addition to the high-end laptop gaming market. AMD claims it would offer 7 percent faster performance on average than the RTX 4080 at QHD resolution in a range of popular titles, including Starfield, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Resident Evil 4, Far Cry 6, Forza Horizon 5, Spiderman Miles Morales, F1 2022, DOOM Eternal, The Callisto Protocol, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, and more.
Alienware has already announced a new laptop with the latest graphics card. The upgraded m18 R1 is powered by the RX 7900M GPU and the Ryzen 9 7945HX CPU. The existing m81 comes with the Radeon RX 7600M XT, so the new model is expected to be a substantial upgrade. Other hardware specifications for the upgraded model include an 18-inch QHD+ (2,560 x 1,600) display, up to 64GB of RAM, and more.
The Alienware m81 R1 is already available for purchase on Alienware.com for $2,799.99 in the U.S. and CAD 3,799.99 in Canada. Eventually, we expect AMD's new flagship mobile graphics card to find its way to a few other laptops as well, but the company has not officially announced any such plans for now.