Conclusion
The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT was released at the end of 2020. It currently represents AMD’s fastest video card offering for desktop PC gamers. It is AMD’s current flagship GPU. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT has an MSRP of $999, making it $350 more than the $649 AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT which exists just below it.
The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT has everything the Radeon RX 6800 XT has but adds the full count of Compute Units to 80. This increases the stream processors to 5,120 versus 4,608 on the Radeon RX 6800 XT and gives it 80 Ray Tracing cores versus 72 on the RX 6800 XT. However, everything else remains the same. They both have 128MB of Infinity Cache. The Radeon RX 6900 XT runs at the same 2015MHz game clock and 2250MHz boost clock as the Radeon RX 6800 XT. It also has the same VRAM configuration with 16GB of GDDR6 at 16GHz on the 256-bit bus. In fact, the TDP between both video cards is the same at 300W.
When we look at the design we also find it to be exactly the same as the Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6900 XT. They both support a thicker heatsink (2.5 slot) and vapor chamber design with three axial fans. The design is aesthetically pleasing but also feels very robust in the hands. The overall wrap-around metal feel of the video card is quite solid. It sits at 10.5 inches long, so it isn’t massively long considering it’s a flagship video card from AMD. It should fit well in most case builds. It also supports DisplayPort 1.4a and HDMI 2.1 as well as a USB Type-C port.
Performance Compared to the Radeon RX 6800 XT
The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT. It is meant to provide the ultimate 4K gaming experience. In terms of pricing, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT has an MSRP of $999 while the Radeon RX 6800 XT is $649 by MSRP, that’s a $350 difference. But what does a $350 difference in price buy you in terms of performance?
Unfortunately, not as much as we had hoped with the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT. It was faster in every regard compared to the Radeon RX 6800 XT, but not as fast as we would have hoped in many situations. At 1440p the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is about 5-9% faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT. That really isn’t a lot and doesn’t buy you a different gaming experience.
At 4K it’s maybe at best up to 10% faster than the Radeon RX 6800 XT, but mostly under 10% in our review. That again is not a big enough bump to make a real difference in gameplay. It also is not near enough of an improvement in performance to make things like Ray Tracing playable at 1440p or 4K.
The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT has a weakness in Ray Tracing performance, like all RX 6000 GPUs. There are some games that do perform well though like Godfall or Dirt 5, but they use very light implementations of Ray Tracing. When you enable something very intense like Global Illumination Ray Tracing in Metro Exodus Enhanced or Cyberpunk, it simply kills even the flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT in performance.
Performance Compared to RTX 3090
In our review today we did compare the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT with a GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING OC video card. The GeForce RTX 3090 is the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT’s primary competition with NVIDIA’s GPU lineup. The GeForce RTX 3090 was launched with an MSRP of $1499 in late 2020. Therefore, by MSRP, the GeForce RTX 3090 is priced $500 higher than the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT. Custom video cards from AIBs will be even higher by price.
In terms of performance, the GIGABYTE RTX 3090 was faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT in pretty much every resolution and every scenario in every game. At 1440p, in rasterization performance, the RTX 3090 is between 8-17% faster in games. There are some games where the performance is closer, but then there are somewhere they are wider as well by quite a margin. In 4K the RTX 3090 is between 9-28% faster depending on the game in rasterization performance, again some closer, some very widely apart.
When we turn on Ray Tracing in games the GIGABYTE RTX 3090 is the clear winner in performance. In Metro Exodus Enhanced it was up to 43-53% faster with Ray Tracing at 1440p and 4K. Cyberpunk 2077 was actually playable on the RTX 3090 at 1440p with “Medium” Ray Tracing, where it was not on the RX 6900 XT. Even in games that did perform well with Ray Tracing like Godfall and Dirt 5, the RTX 3090 was still technically faster at it.
One key feature the GeForce RTX 3090 has is DLSS. The graphs show how DLSS can make gameplay playable at high resolutions like 4K, or Ray Tracing playable. In Cyberpunk 2077 we can play at 4K with Ultra settings using DLSS, and we can also play at 1440p with Medium and Ultra Ray Tracing when DLSS is enabled. DLSS also makes Metro Exodus Enhanced a playable experience at 4K with the highest settings. DLSS is supported in more games currently, so it has that advantage over FSR at this time.
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR)
AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is out now, and we got to test it in Godfall at 1440p and 4K with and without Ray Tracing. FSR is great because it works with every GPU, we experienced it improving performance on both AMD GPUs and the RTX 3090. With FSR turned on with Ray Tracing as well at 1440p you’ll be playing Godfall at 120+ FPS on the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT. FSR really helped more at 4K, it took us from 55FPS to 81FPS with Ray Tracing enabled. This greatly improves the gameplay performance.
The only problem with FSR right now is the number of games that have it. DLSS currently dominates in that field. At least for us though, in the one game we tested that has it, it did seem to improve the gameplay performance at 4K with Ray Tracing, making Ray Tracing playable at 4K on the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT.
Final Points
The best way to summarize the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT for gaming is to remember that it is all about the gameplay experience delivered, not necessarily which one is XX% faster. There were many games where the GeForce RTX 3090 and AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT were very close in raw performance, so close, and at such high framerates, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. They, therefore, provide a similar gameplay experience. In those instances, it makes sense to save money and go for the cheaper Radeon RX 6900 XT if it provides a similar experience.
The gameplay experience was also very high, at 1440p the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT provides very high framerates. It also provides high framerates at 4K sans RT. Every game was playable at 4K except Cyberpunk 2077 and Metro Exodus Enhanced. For those games just turn down the game settings to High or Medium and it should be fine at 4K. Therefore, the Radeon RX 6900 XT does offer the best of the best in terms of 4K performance from AMD.
There are some scenarios where the GeForce RTX 3090 is going to be faster. There are some games that have a wider margin of performance where you can tell the difference. The RTX 3090 is faster at Ray Tracing performance, so if that matters to you then that is the way to go. The RTX 3090 also has DLSS, and it is more widely supported at this current time. DLSS greatly improves performance, and with better image quality compared to FSR. However, it does cost an arm and a leg in pricing compared to the Radeon RX 6900 XT.
We were not impressed with the value the Radeon RX 6900 XT has over the Radeon RX 6800 XT for gaming. For $350 MSRP dollars more you don’t really get an equal upgrade in performance to make a lot of sense. The more sane, and logical choice by value is the Radeon RX 6800 XT. It can achieve performance not far from the Radeon RX 6900 XT, overclock an RX 6800 XT and you are there. There isn’t a lot of extra meat on the bone in terms of features for the Radeon RX 6900 XT to make sense over the Radeon RX 6800 XT. They both support FSR, so when more games start using it they will both benefit. Maybe they should have just made the Radeon RX 6800 XT the 6900 XT and priced it at $699?
Stay tuned as we will overclock the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT next, and see what that does to performance.