Conclusion
We finally got our first look at what a retail custom-built video card with a beefy heatsink can do on the Radeon RX 6700 XT. The MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT GAMING X is MSI’s highest-tier offering in its Radeon RX 6700 XT lineup. MSI has outfitted it with its TWIN FROZR 8 cooling solution, given it, a slight factory overclock, and provided the means to overclock.
Performance
AMD has positioned the Radeon RX 6700 XT as a “1440p gaming” video card. Pricing, though, is interesting. The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT MSRP is $479, which places it just shy of MSRP pricing on the GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition. However, in our testing, the performance more closely competes with the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition. We found this to be true in our initial launch review, as we also found it to be true in today’s testing.
First to the 1440p gameplay claim. Yes, we can say the MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT GAMING X provides a good 1440p gameplay experience. This is definitely a 1440p video card. It can pull off that resolution in today’s games, even the most demanding ones like Cyberpunk 2077. In Cyberpunk 2077 it allowed a decent experience at “Ultra” settings at 1440p. In Watch Dogs Legion it allowed over 60FPS gaming. In Red Dead Redemption 2 it also offered 60FPS gaming. In the rest of the games, it provided very high framerates, 70’s, 80’s, even near 100FPS.
This mostly put it in competition with the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, where it was faster. However, the GeForce RTX 3070 FE still took the lead over the MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT GAMING X. Until we overclocked it. When we overclocked the MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT GAMING X it was able to come close to GeForce RTX 3070 FE performance. Even matching it in some games performance for performance. However, it did take that overclocking to even come close to RTX 3070 FE performance.
The Ray Tracing performance is lacking overall. We could not get a playable experience in most games even at 1080p. However, the one exception was Dirt 5 which was very fast even at 1440p with Ray Tracing enabled on the MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT GAMING X. Still, turn on DLSS in games that support it, and the GeForce RTX video cards will walk all over it in Ray Tracing performance.
Overclocking
We had a very easy time overclocking the MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT GAMING X. We were able to increase the Power Limit by +10, though we wished for more. We were ultimately limited by the memory overclock only allowing up to 2150MHz versus 2000MHz. This was the same limitation imposed by the reference video card. We wish we could have tried higher frequencies because we think the memory could take it. We were also limited by not being able to raise the GPU Voltage. At the default Voltage, we managed to overclock the Core Clock to 2840MHz. This ended up being higher than we were able to get it set on the reference AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT. The result gave us around a 2737MHz average clock speed.
As we saw from the results, this overclock really did help performance big time at 1440p. It made the card more competitive with the GeForce RTX 3070 FE. It needed that overclock to do it. The overclock on the MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT GAMING X was ultimately higher than what we got out of the reference AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT. That means it ultimately provided a higher gameplay experience when overclocked. It also did it at a much quieter operation, as we did not even need to raise the fan speed.
The Final Points
It is a good thing the MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT GAMING X offers more than the reference AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT can provide. The official MSRP is quite high for US buyers. MSI quoted us $789.99 as the official US price due to the fact of 25% tariffs taxed when entering through customs for the US only. All we can say to that is that hopefully, that can change in the future. There is the possibility that either it changes, due to tariff changes, or the street prices change. We will have to leave that topic open-ended.
As for the video card, the MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT offers a great cooling solution that keeps the card quiet during gaming. It keeps the GPU well cooled and with the slight factory overclock provides the best gaming frequency it can. It also has the headroom for overclocking, and overclocking will bring you up to another 6-7% in performance. It offers better-overclocking performance than the reference card with the reference cooler. It also does so quietly. The quality of this video card is top-notch.
If you are looking for an enthusiast-level Radeon RX 6700 XT, look no further than the MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT GAMING X.
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