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TekSpek 's
AMD Radeon RX 6700XT
Date issued:
Hot on the heels of the November launch for brand-new 'Big Navi' PC graphics cards encompassing the Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT, AMD is now extending the same RDNA 2 goodness further down the stack by releasing the Radeon RX 6700 XT today.
Radeon RX 6700 XT is available in both Made By AMD (MBA) reference and custom boards from at least eight partners. Priced from $479 (£449), it is designed to go up against rival NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti GPUs.
AMD says the card's characteristics lend themselves to playing the latest games at a 2,560x1,440 (QHD) resolution, common on 27in monitors, with high frame rates and all the eye candy turned up to maximum, so expect to see in excess of 100fps in many titles.
A keener perusal of the specs will show how AMD has managed to create the Radeon RX 6700 XT, so let's take a look.
From Navi 1x to Navi 2x |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Radeon RX 6900 XT | Radeon RX 6800 XT | Radeon RX 6800 | Radeon RX 6700 XT | Radeon RX 5700 XT | Radeon RX 5700 | |
| Launch date | December 2020 | November 2020 | November 2020 | March 2021 | July 2019 | July 2019 |
| Codename | Navi 21 | Navi 21 | Navi 21 | Navi 22 | Navi 10 | Navi 10 |
| Architecture | RDNA 2 | RDNA 2 | RDNA 2 | RDNA 2 | RDNA | RDNA |
| Process (nm) | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| Transistors (bn) | 26.8 | 26.8 | 26.8 | 17.2 | 10.3 | 10.3 |
| Die Size (mm²) | 519 | 519 | 519 | 336 | 251 | 251 |
| Full Implementation of Die | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Hardware Raytracing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Infinity Cache (MB) | 128 | 128 | 128 | 96 | No | No |
| Compute Units | 80 | 72 | 60 | 40 | 40 | 36 |
| Processors | 5,120 | 4,608 | 3,840 | 2,560 | 2,560 | 2,304 |
| Texture Units | 320 | 288 | 240 | 160 | 160 | 144 |
| ROP Units | 128 | 128 | 96 | 64 | 64 | 64 |
| Boost Clock (MHz) | 2,250 | 2,250 | 2,105 | 2,581 | 1,905 | 1,725 |
| Game Clock (MHz) | 2,015 | 2,015 | 1,815 | 2,424 | 1,755 | 1,625 |
| Peak GFLOPS (SP) | 23,040 | 20,736 | 16,166 | 13,215 | 9,750 | 7,950 |
| Memory Type | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6 |
| Memory Size (GB) | 16 | 16 | 16 | 12 | 8 | 8 |
| Memory Clock (MHz) | 16,000 | 16,000 | 16,000 | 16,000 | 14,000 | 14,000 |
| Memory Bus (bits) | 256 | 256 | 256 | 192 | 256 | 256 |
| Max Bandwidth (GB/s) | 512 | 512 | 512 | 384 | 448 | 448 |
| PCIe Support | Gen 4 | Gen 4 | Gen 4 | Gen 4 | Gen 4 | Gen 4 |
| Power Connectors | 8+8 | 8+8 | 8+8 | 8+6 | 6+8 | 6+8 |
| TDP (watts) | 300 | 300 | 250 | 230 | 225 | 180 |
| GFLOPS per watt | 76.8 | 69.1 | 64.66 | 57.46 | 43.3 | 44.2 |
| Launch MSRP | $999 | $649 | $579 | $479 | $399 | $349 |
Radeon RX 6700 XT is the first RDNA 2-based graphics card to use a smaller, distinct GPU. Whereas the RX 6800/XT/6900 XT trio all uses a die known as Navi 21 that packs in a considerable 26.8bn transistors and occupies 519mm² on the leading-edge 7nm process, RX 6700 XT implements Navi 22. This distinction is important because by housing 17.2bn transistors and measuring 336mm² it ought to be significantly cheaper for AMD to produce.
Running down the specs reveals some obvious truths. The next model up, Radeon RX 6800 XT, has 50 per cent more shaders, texture units, ray accelerators, and ROPs - the building blocks of performance - but RX 6700 XT makes up some of the shortfall by increasing the in-game Boost Clock all the way up to 2,581MHz, which is the highest we have seen from any gaming graphics card.
AMD makes further concessions in the memory department by dropping the framebuffer size to 12GB and uses a narrower 192-bit pathway, leading to 25 per cent less memory bandwidth. AMD further reduces the Infinity Cache from 128MB to 96MB, which is consistent with the cuts made on the rest of the card. These cumulative snips can be understood when set against the backdrop of using a significantly smaller die where space is naturally at a premium.
Even with these snips in place compared to the upper echelons of the RX 6000 Series line, AMD's latest GPU still is a great contender. Internal benchmarks show that the heavily-optimised Navi 22 die powering the Radeon RX 6700 XT 12GB card is still able to produce excellent framerates in eight leading gaming titles. Hitting an average 60fps routinely at maximum quality settings, AMD's architecture can scale all the way up to 118fps in games engines that are particularly partial to the RDNA 2 graphics.
The numbers show that Radeon RX 6700 XT is indeed more than a match for the two NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards it can reasonably be compared to, both in terms of performance and price. What's more, with both Nvidia GPUs only carrying 8GB of onboard memory, AMD has a 50 per cent framebuffer advantage which comes into its own as the resolution and image-quality settings are notched up. RX 6700 XT, then, is a no-compromise solution.
As the RDNA 2 architecture is imbued with ray tracing smarts for amazingly accurate lighting, expect future games to extract the most out of AMD's best-ever design.
A multitude of partners are busy readying their add-in card designs for today's launch. Expect to see various models equipped with even higher speeds than the MBA board produced by AMD. If recent examples of Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT are anything to go by, the new cards ought to be very quiet, cool, and primed for overclocking even farther.
The bottom line is that enthusiast gamers would do well to consider the Radeon RX 6700 XT 12GB graphics card if they typically game at QHD resolutions and have purchased a high-refresh-rate monitor recently.
The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT therefore makes an ideal gaming partner to a 27in QHD monitor equipped with FreeSync technology, ensuring silky-smooth visuals with the best possible image quality. Run on the same RDNA 2 architecture also present in the latest Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox consoles, when you think premium gaming, think AMD.
Scan Computers is proud to list a wide range of AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT 12GB graphics cards. You can peruse our collection right here on the Scan site.