AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT review: Nvidia wins this round

AMD and Nvidia are pretending to live in a fantasy world, where you can buy a state-of-the-art video card for less than $ 700. Hell, a fantasy world where you can buy a new AMD GPU no way – although AMD has repeatedly promised to stock additional RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT video cards on its website for $ 579 and $ 649 respectively, I have seen no evidence that the company has ever replenished those supplies since these cards were first launched four months ago.

Today, the company is launching a GPU that can change that: the $ 479 Radeon Radeon RX 6700 XT. The Verge will have “significantly more GPUs available”. If that’s true – if this is the moment when the clouds clear, the GPU shortage decreases, and you can actually buy an RX 6700 XT for $ 479 for a limited time – you absolutely should. It is a solid performance at 1440p.

But interestingly, in the fantasy world, where we pretend that a $ 400 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and a $ 500 RTX 3070 still exist, the RX 6700 XT actually seems to have fewer weapons. It is not the clear competitor of Nvidia that you expected.

The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT comes with a simple proposition: a way to maximize your 2560 x 1440 monitor with the latest games at maximum settings, all for $ 100 less than the RX 6800 I reviewed last year. If that sounds familiar, it is because it is the same manual that Nvidia used last fall, where its $ 400 RTX 3060 Ti exceeded the $ 500 RTX 3070 by the same amount.

Therefore, in our fantasy world, where these prices remain, this would be the configuration of the terrain:

Given these prices, I would expect a $ 480 AMD card to outperform a $ 400 Nvidia card. (That’s what the $ 580 Radeon RX 6800 did with the $ 500 RTX 3070, after all.) I would also expect it to be within walking distance of the $ 500 Nvidia card if there was only a $ 20 bill between the two.

But running the AMD card through my 15 game challenge on my own 1440p monitor, the new AMD card sometimes lost to Nvidia’s Ti 3060 – sometimes for a much – and may even lose to the $ 329 Nvidia vanilla RTX 3060 in tests where I had lightning tracking enabled.

As you will see in the chart above, AMD has some victories and, in many cases, fulfills its promise of maximum configurations at 1440p. Shadow of the Tomb Raider looks glorious on my G-Sync / FreeSync monitor at an average of 105 frames per second with all the attractive looks and the difference between 120 and 114 frames in Call of Duty: Warzone at maximum settings (probably) it is not worth discussing.

With a more robust processor, you should be able to get more than 60 frames per second at a maximum Cyberpunk 2077 experience too – I’m still testing it with my old Core i7-7700K, which is more than good enough for most games on this list (SotR shows that I’m 100 percent tied to the GPU), but some titles like Microsoft Flight Simulator and Cyberpunk are still notoriously limited by the CPU and more cores could help. As another example, my colleague Tom Warren saw frame rates identical to mine in Watch Dogs: Legion and Metro Exodus pair the 6700 XT with a much newer Intel chip, but slightly higher in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

But look at Valheim. Look at the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Look at the To control. How is AMD performing poorly or just tying these low-level cards? Things are no longer excited about 4K resolution, in case you’re wondering: although I still recommend the Nvidia 3070 for entry-level 4K, the 6700 XT just doesn’t have the same dynamism. In games like To control and Metro Exodus, I had to lower the settings to a comparatively boring “low”, where the 3070 managed to play those games in 4K and medium specs without any problems. And, of course, AMD still doesn’t have a DLSS competitor if you’re a fan of AI-enhanced resolution.

It is not as if AMD is winning in any other particular way. Although I really like the company’s new two-slot design (clearly inspired by a certain muscle car from the late 1960s) and I don’t mind much having three to two axial fans, the RX 6700 XT is just as robust and almost as power hungry as the RX 6800 (230W vs. 250W) without much to show for it. AMD still recommends a 650W power supply, an expensive proposition for those of us with tall PC cases, and you’ll need 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe connectors, while comparable Nvidia cards are content with a single 8 pins.

I also saw the 6700 XT reach 89 degrees Celsius on one occasion. Although I don’t have enough evidence to say this is a problem, I still haven’t seen the Nvidia 3070 cross 82 degrees C, even with the case fans disconnected.

But, as I mentioned in my introduction, very little of that will matter if you can really find this card for $ 479.

In December, I reported that the true selling price of a $ 399 Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti was actually $ 675, and that the street price of a $ 499 RTX 3070 was $ 819. These were the average prices that people actually paid on eBay that month.

If you think this sounds unbelievable, listen to this: the street price of the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 is now approaching $ 1,200 each. People are paying triple for what should have been Nvidia’s most economical video card now, and the launch of a “$ 329” RTX 3060 didn’t slow that down. no way.

To me, this indicates two things: first, AMD will probably not be able to produce enough RX 6700 XTs to reach the price of $ 479 for the vast majority of buyers, even if it produces “significantly” more cards. I wouldn’t expect it to be any different today than any previous GPU launch since the pandemic began. It is a well-established standard now. Second, none of these fantasy land prices will necessarily prevent the RX 6700 XT from being successful if there is an offer. As you can see from the similar street prices of the 3060 Ti and 3070, the market has a way of balancing prices.

If you miraculously see this card at the list price, buy it, because you won’t get anything better around that price in the near future. But it looks inferior to all Nvidia GPUs that can be compared – and I wouldn’t trade my 3060 Ti for one.