RX 6900-XT

The RX 6900-XT assumes the flagship position in AMD’s latest RX 6000 series of GPUs which deliver a huge generational jump in performance. The $1,000 USD 6900-XT offers a small improvement (11% more compute units) over the already launched $650 USD RX 6800-XT. AMD have upgraded the single fan cooler to a more efficient triple fan solution, perhaps indicating a shift in focus from benchmark busting headlines to user experience. Following the widespread issues that users faced with the 5000 and Vega series, we are cautiously optimistic that AMD have taken steps to ensure driver and hardware stability. Given the value for money now offered by both Nvidia and AMD, with the 3070 and 6800-XT, it is difficult to recommend any thousand dollar graphics cards to most gamers. 16GB of VRAM is a key feature of the 6900-XT. At higher resolutions and detail settings, performance can bottleneck without sufficient GPU memory. AMD's marketers often cherry pick obscure games with high res/settings, the details of which are rarely disclosed, then compare the results with cards that have less memory. In that scenario, the cards with less memory look weaker than they would at 1080p. The 1080p results are sometimes omitted, or worse, partially omitted and frame drops are conveniently ignored. Most users will see little benefit in gaming at high resolutions. Without drastic price cuts (MSRP $1000 USD) and miraculous marketing via countless promo videos and sponsored reviews, the 6900 XT will struggle to compete, partly because it lacks RTX+DLSS which is required for the best gaming experience in class leading titles such as Cyberpunk 2077. Users should be wary of AMD’s army of social media accounts, they aim to dupe shoppers any way they can. ^{[Dec '20 GPUPro]}