When AMD announced its first RDNA 2 video cards for PC in late 2020, it deviated from its usual strategy of trying to dominate the midsize market. Instead, it announced three GPUs designed to compete directly with the best that NVIDIA had to offer at the time. The newest graphics card from AMD is a kind of return to form. For $ 479, the RX 6700 XT is $ 100 more affordable than the RX 3800 and slots between NVIDIA’s two best-value GPUs, the $ 399 RTX 3060 Ti and the $ 499 RTX 3070. It’s also the successor to AMD’s most important graphics card in recent years, the RX 5700 XT.
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The 6700 XT offers 40 computing units, a game clock of 2,424 MHz and 12 GB of GDDR6 RAM, consuming 230 watts of power. How does this compare to the RX 6800? The latest from AMD features 20 less computing units and 4GB less RAM. A downgrade, to be sure, but in practical terms, these features translate into a GPU that stands out at 1440p, the ideal spot for PC games.
According to AMD benchmarks, the RX 6700 XT can consistently deliver over 60 frames per second in graphically demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla when rendering them at maximum settings. In some cases, it can even outperform the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 – although there are almost as many games in which the latter easily outperforms it. Furthermore, in competitive snipers like Overwatch and Valorant, AMD claims that the RX 6700 XT can deliver more than 200 frames per second at 1440p, making it more than capable of handling the latest crop of QHD monitors that have refresh rates better than 144Hz.
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As with other AMD-based RDNA 2 GPUs, hardware-accelerated ray tracing is on the table. The RX 6700 XT also supports AMD’s intelligent access memory technology. This is a feature that allows 5000 Ryzen series CPUs – and now most 3000 series processors as well – to gain full direct access to high-speed VRAM on the RX 6700 XT. Depending on the game, you can get up to 16% better performance.
The Radeon RX 6700 XT will be available from AMD board partners such as Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and XFX on March 18. Of course, announcing availability and actually delivering on that promise are two separate things – as AMD itself has consistently shown since the launch of its Zen 3 processors. Like its NVIDIA counterparts, the RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 were almost impossible to buy since they were launched.
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For what it’s worth, an AMD spokesman told Engadget that he will have “significantly more” inventory of RX 6700 XT at launch than he had from his first RDNA 2 cards last year. The company also said it is taking additional steps – without elaborating on what they entail – to deal with the shortage of inventory.