Our Verdict
65%
Decent shading power and a regular supply of stock, but the Radeon RX 6700 XT’s poor ray-tracing performance puts it at a disadvantage.
With the ‘Big Navi’ launch now out of the way, AMD is busy fleshing out its line-up of ray tracing-capable GPUs with the launch of a brand new chip. Let us introduce you to the new mid-range AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT.
The new chip is based on the AMD RDNA2 architecture, and is called Navi 22. It measures just 336mm², compared to the 519mm² Radeon RX 6800-series GPUs. This little die contains 17.2 billion transistors and 40 of AMD’s RDNA2 compute units, and the whole chip is fully enabled on the Radeon RX 6700 XT.
At Custom PC, we’ve been reviewing the latest gaming GPUs since 2003, and we run a number of grueling GPU benchmarks in order to gauge performance. Our game tests include measuring the frame rate in Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, and Metro Exodus, with and without ray tracing, and we also test with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. For more information, see our How we test page.
As with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, the Radeon RX 6700 XT also has 12GB of GDDR6 memory attached to a 192-bit memory interface. On paper, this gives the card a total memory bandwidth 384GB/s in conjunction with the 2GHz (16GHz effective) memory.
However, AMD claims that the chip’s 96MB of on-die Infinity Cache will significantly reduce latency here, as the GPU will have quick access to a large pool of memory that’s much faster than the GDDR6 memory.
Each of the chip’s 40 compute units contains a dedicated Ray Accelerator for ray tracing in games, along with 64 stream processors, making for a total of 2,560. What’s more, the GPU has a game clock of 2424MHz – as a point of comparison, the mighty Radeon RX 6900 XT has a 2015MHz game clock.
It’s for this reason that AMD’s quoted board power of 230W isn’t far off the 250W for the Radeon RX 6800 – the Radeon 6700 XT’s small chip might have less parallel processing power than the Navi 21 chip in the Radeon RX 6800, but the high clock speed pushes up the power draw.
AMD says it’s designed this card for gaming at resolutions of 2,560 x 1,440 and below, and for high refresh rate displays. It’s for the former reason that the firm says the card has 12GB of memory. The other option with the way this chip’s 192-bit memory interface works was to give it 6GB, and this wouldn’t be enough memory for 2,560 x 1,440 gaming – our Doom Eternal Ultra Nightmare test won’t even run with less than 8GB.
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT6 reference card
This new GPU also introduces a new reference card from AMD. It’s a neat little dual-slot design measuring 267mm long, with a die-cast aluminum frame and a 10-layer PCB. It has a pair of dual-axial fans, a 6-pin and an 8-pin PCIe power connector on the edge, and a big ‘R’ in the middle (and on the fans), the styling of which makes it look a bit like it’s built for Team Rocket in Pokémon. It’s a good-looking card, it remained generally quiet during testing and its zero-rpm mode means it doesn’t make an annoying noise when idle.
It’s much better than AMD’s old reference blower designs – the only complaint is that, unlike the Radeon RX 6800 XT reference card, you can’t change the color of the red Radeon logo light on the edge. These reference cards are made by AMD for sale on amd.com, but this launch also sees AMD’s third-party board partners launching their cards on the same day in a bid to increase supply. However, we have little faith that this supply will be able to meet current demand.
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT gaming frame rates
The Radeon RX 6700 XT outpaced the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti in all our non-ray-traced game tests, with solidly playable results at 2,560 x 1,440 in Metro Exodus, and it even beat the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla at this resolution.
It didn’t hit our 45fps 99th percentile and 60fps average target in Cyberpunk 2077 at this resolution, but its respective results of 42fps and 52fps are still pretty good – dropping the settings will easily make this smoothly playable.
The Radeon RX 6700 XT also excelled in our Doom Eternal test, with an average of 341fps at 1,920 x 1,080 and 254fps at 2,560 x 1,440 – ideal for playing undemanding games such as esports titles on a monitor with a high refresh rate.
As with the other Radeon cards we’ve tested recently, the main area where the Radeon RX 6700 XT falls down is ray tracing. However, it isn’t quite as uncompetitive as the Radeon RX 6800 here, as the lower-spec GeForce cards can only manage ray tracing at lower resolutions, and you wouldn’t want to enable DLSS at 1,920 x 1,080 on them anyway, as it makes games look blurry.
With this in mind, the Radeon RX 6700 XT’s 99th percentile and average results of 42fps and 66fps in Metro Exodus at 1,920 x 1,080 with High ray tracing aren’t terrible – the RTX 3060 Ti is only a little bit in front without DLSS.
However, the Radeon’s frame rates in Cyberpunk 2077 with Medium ray tracing aren’t even playable at 1,920 x 1,080, while the RTX 3060 Ti can average 58fps with a 50fps 99th percentile at 2,560 x 1,440 with DLSS.
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT pros and cons
Pros
- Faster shading performance than 3060 Ti
- Superb Assassin’s Creed Valhalla performance
- Generally available in stock
Cons
- Struggles with ray tracing above 1080p
- No direct DLSS equivalent
- Overpriced at the moment
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT specs
The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT specs list is:
| Stream processors | 2,560 |
| RT cores | 40 |
| ROPs | 64 |
| Game clock | 2424 MHz |
| Max boost clock | 2581 MHz |
| Memory | 12GB GDDR6 |
| Memory clock | 2 GHz (16 GHz effective) |
| Memory bandwidth | 384 GB/s |
| Memory interface | 192-bit |
| L3 cache | 96 MB |
| Card interface | 16x PCIe 4 |
| Power connectors | 1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin |
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT price
With the current GPU stock shortage, the Radeon RX 6700 XT is currently very expensive.
Price: Expect to pay $700 (£690).
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT review conclusion
It’s hard to give a definitive verdict on a graphics card when we know you won’t be able to buy one at the recommended retail price. In a normal, non-silly world, the Radeon RX 6700 XT would hit the balance about right.
Ray tracing aside, its performance is generally in the same league as the GeForce RTX 3070, and ahead of the RTX 3060 Ti. That’s in line with the recommended retail pricing compared with Nvidia’s Founders Edition cards, and it’s also a solid upgrade over AMD’s previous Radeon RX 5700 XT.
The problem, of course, is that these prices bear no relation to the reality of inflated eBay prices. Also, if ray tracing is a priority then it’s worth stepping up to the RTX 3070, as its stronger ray-tracing performance and DLSS support makes it much more viable, plus it will work in Cyberpunk 2077.
That all said, if you are prepared to pay scalper prices, AMD GPUs generally seem to go for less money than their Nvidia equivalents, likely because they’re not as good at cryptocurrency mining. If a Radeon RX 6700 XT costs $150-200 less than an RTX 3070 on eBay, then it’s worth buying the Radeon instead for gaming.
Since we reviewed the Radeon RX 6700 XT in 2021, stock of the Radeon RX 6700 XT has improved dramatically. AMD has also launched the RDNA 3 architecture, with GPUs such as the Radeon RX 7600, and Nvidia has launched the Ada architecture, with GPUs such as the GeForce RTX 4070. If you’re thinking of buying a new GPU, make sure you read our guide to the best graphics card, where we take you through all the best options at a range of prices.