Radeon RX 6700 XT examined: 5 key stuff you prefer to know

The wait is over. Today, we are in a position to expose you what we judge about AMD’s $480 Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card, sooner than its March 18 birth date day after at present. Our entire Radeon RX 6700 XT overview covers the entire lot you prefer to know regarding the cardboard, whereas our RDNA 2 deep dive explains the GPU architecture that powers it.

Everyone is aware of now not all individuals has the time (or the inclination) to parse hundreds of words and dozens of performance graphs. Right here are 5 key stuff you prefer to know regarding the Radeon RX 6700 XT, distilled from the lengthy hours we’ve spent benchmarking the graphics card.

1. It presents enormous gaming performance

Brad Chacos/IDG

The Radeon RX 6700 XT presents drool-noteworthy 1440p and high-refresh-rate 1080p performance in in vogue video games, maintaining pace with Nvidia’s rival GeForce RTX 3060 Ti across most of our suite. It will’t withhold with the $500 GeForce RTX 3070 in most scenarios, though. Quiz to hit the golden 60-frames-per-2nd comparable earlier at 1440p in all nonetheless essentially the most demanding titles, and on the entire well above it.

2. Reminiscence won’t be an misfortune

Whereas Nvidia’s RTX 3060 Ti and 3070 every reach with 8GB of onboard GDDR6 memory, AMD stuffed the Radeon RX 6700 XT with an astronomical 12GB of RAM, bolstered by the corporate’s modern on-die Infinity Cache. Handiest a pair of video games can exceed 8GB at 1440p resolution, and simplest for these that crank the graphics knobs to 11. Reminiscence demands had been increasing right this moment now not too lengthy ago, on the choice hand, and may per chance possess to quiet doubtless continue to keep so given the 16GB ability now found within the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. The Radeon RX 6700 XT’s 12GB buffer presents you masses of room for assert with future video games.

3. Dazzling Rep admission to Reminiscence is awesome

AMD debuted Dazzling Rep admission to Reminiscence as a diagram to let in vogue Ryzen CPUs get entry to the rotund memory buffer of Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs. Can possess to that you just may per chance well possess the hardware compulsory to dawdle it, you’ll for sure are looking out to turn on this characteristic to get some further performance.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Dazzling Rep admission to Reminiscence’s frame rate boost varies from sport to sport, resolution to resolution, and even looking out on what graphics settings you’re the utilize of, nonetheless overall it’s price activating. We retested our entire video games suite with SAM vigorous: Whereas a pair of video games misplaced a frame or two, half of the titles observed some form of uplift. Borderlands 3 leaping forward an phenomenal 16 percent at 1080p resolution. Dazzling Rep admission to Reminiscence’s further juice helps the Radeon RX 6700 XT dawdle sooner than Nvidia’s RTX 3060 Ti (which doesn’t reinforce the characteristic yet) and customarily resolve on even the 3070.

4. Ray tracing isn’t

Don’t resolve the RX 6700 XT for these that’re hyped about real-time ray tracing.

Brad Chacos/IDG

The smaller “Navi 22” GPU interior the Radeon RX 6700 XT sports simplest 40 ray accelerators, and AMD doesn’t yet offer a dapper performance-boosting characteristic devour Nvidia’s DLSS to augment frame rates with the strenuous lighting fixtures outcomes vigorous. You won’t be ready to hit 60 fps even at 1080p resolution in many titles except you dial support the quality of every specific ray tracing parts and the usual fidelity of the sport itself. It’s a critical bummer in a $480 graphics card that ostensibly targets 1440p gaming.

Nvidia holds a critical income here. The RTX 3060 Ti and 3070 can every play ray-traced video games at 1440p resolution with DLSS vigorous, no problemo.

5. The associated rate is painful

Indirectly, the associated rate is simply too high—nonetheless it no doubt makes enormous industry sense for AMD.

Most gaming rigs won’t possess the hardware needed to activate Dazzling Rep admission to Reminiscence. With out SAM, the $480 Radeon RX 6700 XT basically falls factual within the support of the $400 RTX 3060 Ti in performance. Oof. On paper that stinks, nonetheless in at present’s agonizing market most graphics playing cards are promoting for twice their MSRP on resale websites, if they’re even made on hand. The RTX 3060 Ti is currently going for $800 or extra on Ebay and Craigslist, for instance. 

Brad Chacos/IDG

So sure, in a sane world we would’ve beloved the Radeon RX 6700 XT to designate $100 less, nonetheless pricing it elevated lets AMD get in on a number of the motion in assign of leaving the entire price-gouged profits to retail outlets and scalpers. You’ll doubtless pay worthy bigger than $480 on the streets for these that aren’t ready to snag a reference card stock tumble on AMD.com.

You may per chance possess to quiet quit a ways from shopping for a graphics card correct now if possible. I’d even suggest taking half in video games on Nvidia’s PC-friendly GeForce Now streaming carrier over tremendously overpaying for a GPU for these that can. The Radeon RX 6700 XT is a huge 1440p and 1080p gaming option for these that’re bored sitting round your dwelling and possess a wad of stimulus money burning a hole to your pocket, though.

That wraps issues up. Construct particular to verify up on our exhaustive Radeon RX 6700 XT overview for a rotund breakdown of the entire lot that issues (including an diagnosis of AMD’s pricing in at present’s GPU market), or our recordsdata to the handiest graphics playing cards for these that prefer to possess insight about worthy extra hardware you in all probability shouldn’t resolve correct now.

Senior editor Brad Chacos covers gaming and graphics for PCWorld, and runs the morning recordsdata desk for PCWorld, Macworld, Greenbot, and TechHive. He tweets too.