Review and testing of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT video card: Test | Specs | CPU | Config

Review-and-testing-of-the-AMD-Radeon-RX-6900-XT-video-card-Test-Specs-CPU-Config

Review and testing of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT video card: Test | Specs | CPU | Config

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is the flagship graphics adapter based on the RDNA 2 microarchitecture and, according to the manufacturer’s own estimates, should compete with the other flagship Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090. At first glance, the most productive graphics card from AMD seems to be the most interesting product among the graphics adapters of the “red manufacturer” based on the RDNA architecture 2, but is it really so, let’s try to find out from this review. First, let’s take a close look at the technical characteristics of the new product. 

So, AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (Big Navi GPU) is manufactured by AMD at 7nm at TSMC facilities. The number of transistors is 26.8 billion, the chip area is 519.8 mm2. In the case of the Radeon RX 6900 XT, all 80 CUs are active,  something  gives 5.120 stream processors operating at clock frequencies of at least 2250 MHz. The GPU RX 6900 XT is equipped with a 256-bit memory interface. It is connected to 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, the memory chips operate at a frequency of 2000 MHz, which gives a bandwidth of 512 GB / s.

The thermal package of the video card remained within 300 W, despite the larger option for the expansion of the chip. What we see, and we see this, the RX 6900 XT is identical in characteristics to the RX 6800 XT, all the differences are reduced only to the number of  shader ALU and texture mapping units (TMU), the top solution RX 6900 XT gets a full set of 80 Compute Units versus 72 in the RX 6800 XT, and that’s all, the differences between them end.

But is this possible and we missed something and there are still  some  differences between these two video cards,  after all,  AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is still an absolute  top classbut no, everything is correct, the differences between the RX 6900 XT and the RX 6800 XT are only in the number of Compute Units. Another point, AMD, to justify the high cost of the video card, which is almost $ 1000 versus $ 350 for the RX 6800 XT, offers practically no other specifications available for premium video cards, such as increased memory or a special design of the printed circuit board.

The RX 6900 XT video card is built on the same motherboard as the RX 6800 XT and RX 6800, albeit with minor differences. Actually, with regard to its own video memory, its volume and standard are the same as in the Radeon RX 6800 XT, we have the same 16 GB of GDDR 6 standard  as  in the representatives of the series – RX 6800.

Architectural features

The Navi 21 GPU, also known as Big Navi, is based on the RDNA 2 architecture, which was designed to be as energy efficient as possible, while also incorporating the missing functionality that the competitor has in the DirectX 12 Ultimate specification. At the start of the Navi 21 chain are command processors for shaders and general-purpose computing, a geometry processor, and a hardware scheduler that Windows has recently learned to use.

There is also a DMA block that serves for direct access to GPU memory via the PCI Express bus as part of the joint work of several accelerators, as well as certain innovative features of Navi 21: Smart Access Memory on the Ryzen 5000 platform and DirectStorage support. However, the main qualitative change in the GPU front-end is still related to the way Navi 21 handles geometry processing. For hardware acceleration of ray tracing, specialized Ray Accelerator blocks were implemented in RDNA 2.

This is very important, as tracing appears in more and more games, it is also present in some console games and in projects supported by AMD (Godfall and Dirt 5). But these blocks in Big Navi, although hardware and dedicated, they are somewhat simpler than RT cores in GPUs of the Ampere and Turing families of Nvidia, and in general they cope with work slower, especially in the case of a large number of incoherent beams, since separate MIMD cores specifically for tracing are better suited. Therefore, with complex and numerous effects using ray tracing, AMD graphics cards lose significantly more performance than Nvidia graphics cards, and this applies to comparison with both Ampere and Turing.

The most important innovation in the RDNA 2 architecture is the local memory stack, which includes a huge L3 cache. All other storages closest to shader ALUs have undergone almost no changes compared to what was already done in the first generation Navi chips. This cache is called Infinity Cache, its capacity is 128 MB, this approach to organizing the cache can be called an innovation in many respects, since we get another level of caching that has not been previously seen on a GPU in this form.

To make Infinity Cache work as optimally as possible. 128 MB of cache are connected over 16 channels, each provides transfer of 64 bytes per clock. Infinity Fabric operates at 1.94 GHz, which gives a bandwidth of 0.9933 Tbps. As a result, AMD has managed not only to increase the effective bandwidth, but also to reduce power consumption. 

Design

Outside, the Radeon RX 6900 XT does not differ from the Radeon RX 6800 XT, the video cards are identical in design and dimensions. The flagship Big Navi graphics card is also 267mm long and 120mm high. The casing of the video card is made of dark gray, silver plastic from the end of the video card you can see the highlighted Radeon logo, the backlight of which can be configured using a special utility. At the back, AMD has installed a solid metal plate to help dissipate heat and provide rigidity to the entire structure. Under the casing there is a cooling system consisting of a radiator and an evaporation chamber.

The RX 6900 XT radiator is blown by three 80 mm fans. To focus the air flow in the axial direction, the blades of each fan are gripped by a ring. At low GPU load, the fans stop rotating, and the device is passively cooled. The main radiator, judging by its weight, is made of copper alloy (and painted). On one side it is soldered to the evaporation chamber, on the other it is in contact with the casing.

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The ribs are made in the transverse direction, so hot air is blown out through the long ends of the video card upwards from it and downwards onto the motherboard. The evaporation chamber is in direct contact with the GPU and with a large frame (via a thermal interface), which already has its own platforms for cooling memory chips and VRM power converters.

The back plate is purely protective (although it is metal, not plastic). Note that a graphite thermal interface is used for the GPU – again, this is in AMD’s tradition, because for evaporation chambers it is better to have a thicker interface than a layer of liquid thermal paste. We did not find any special surprises on the slot cover. It has two DisplayPort 1.4 ports, one HDMI 2.1 output and one Type C. The configuration is identical to the Radeon RX 6800 XT.

The video card is assembled on the same board as the two junior representatives of the 6000 series, but unlike the Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT, the top model is fully equipped with VRM components. To power the GPU, 13 phases are allocated, and under the control of a single PWM controller – the expensive 16-phase Infineon XDPE132G5D chip. They also did not save on the power stages of the regulator, choosing the International Rectifier TDA21472 assemblies with a nominal current of 70 A. Three-phase power supply for GDDR6 chips is organized using the popular International Rectifier IR35217 PWM controller.

Interestingly, we managed to place all the memory chips on the front side of the board, which made it possible to simplify the cooling system for the back side of the video card. The card has 16 GB of GDDR6 SDRAM located in 8 16 Gbit chips on the front side of the PCB. Thermal package for the Radeon RX 6900 XT is 300 watts. Therefore, two 8-pin plugs are more than enough.

Specifications

CPU
 Navi 21 XTX (Вig Navi)
Microarchitecture
RDNA 2
Technical process
7 p.m.
 GPU frequency 
2015 – 2250 MHz
 Stream Processors (Shading Units)
5120
 Texture Units (TMUs)
320
 Raster Operations Pipelines (ROPs)
128
Tensor kernels
RT cores
80
 Memory type
GDDR6
Memory bus width
Page 256
Memory size
16 GB
 Memory frequency
2000 MHz 
 DirectX
 12
 Interfaces
1×HDMI 2.1, 2×DisplayPort 1.4a, 1×USB Type-C (USB 3.2 Gen2)
Power consumption (TDP)
300 watts
Additionally
Infinity Cache 128 MB  

Testing

Power-saving CPU technologies are disabled in all tests. Testing the performance of video cards was carried out in a closed case of the system unit on a system with the following configuration:

Test configuration

  • Processor: Intel® Core ™ i7-10700K
  • Motherboard: MSI MPG Z490 GAMING CARBON (Wi-Fi)
  • ОЗУ: 4 x 16GB HyperX Predator RGB DDR4-3200
  • Data storage: SSD 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus
  • ОС: Windows 64 bit

3DMark 

3DMark Fire Strike is a beautiful and popular application with DirectX 11 API support for testing computers with high-performance gaming graphics cards in the Windows environment. 3DMark Fire Strike results help you evaluate the comparative performance of a video card and its suitability for the most demanding PC games. 


3DMark Fire Strike Ultra – Graphics


AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

13450

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

12376

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

12033

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

10667

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

10272

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

8485

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

8117

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 

6505

AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT

6060

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super

6028


Literally FPS stands for “Frame per second”, or frames per second. Accordingly, the larger this number, the smoother the picture will be on the display during the game. How much FPS is needed for a comfortable game? It is difficult to unequivocally answer this question, if only because in different game engines with the same number of frames per second, the image quality can be different. However, there is a widespread belief that 30 FPS will be enough for a smooth game. 

Game tests

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Is a multi-platform computer role-playing game developed by the Polish studio CD Projekt RED based on the series of novels The Witcher by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, a sequel to the computer games The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. The final part of the trilogy. According to the developers, the third part of the series will combine a non-linear storyline and a multi-regional open game world, which will be thirty times larger than the world of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. For movement, you can use various vehicles, such as a horse or a ship.

The passage of the main storyline will take about 50 hours of the game. Side quests will take about the same amount. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was developed on the RedEngine 3 game engine, which is focused on next generation platforms and will ultimately break the boundaries between game graphics and CGI videos.

The fundamental difference between RedEngine 3 compared to its predecessor is that REDengine 3 is built to support open world games. RED Engine 3 focuses not only on graphics and physics, but also on building a non-linear quest system, allowing you to make the gameplay even more close to real life. RED Engine supports dynamic shadows, normal mapping and parallax.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has both basic and advanced graphical settings. Any user can customize the game to their liking, based on the performance of the existing system. that REDengine 3 is built to support open world games. RED Engine 3 focuses not only on graphics and physics, but also on building a non-linear quest system, allowing you to make the gameplay even more close to real life. RED Engine supports dynamic shadows, normal mapping and parallax.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has both basic and advanced graphical settings. Any user can customize the game to their liking, based on the performance of the existing system. that REDengine 3 is built to support open world games.

RED Engine 3 focuses not only on graphics and physics, but also on building a non-linear quest system, allowing you to make the gameplay even more close to real life. RED Engine supports dynamic shadows, normal mapping and parallax.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has both basic and advanced graphical settings. Any user can customize the game to their liking, based on the performance of the existing system. and advanced graphical settings. Any user can customize the game to their liking, based on the performance of the existing system. and advanced graphical settings. Any user can customize the game to their liking, based on the performance of the existing system.

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Settings: display resolution 2560 x1440 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 11


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

194

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

175

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

174

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

164

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

138

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

136

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

134

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

116


Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 11


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

122

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

104

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

108

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

97

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

85

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

82

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

80

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

69

Cyberpunk 2077  Is an action-adventure RPG set in the metropolis of Night City, where power, luxury and body modification are valued above all else. You play as V, a mercenary in search of a device that allows you to gain immortality. Cyberpunk 2077 has received the fourth version of the REDengine game engine, which is an improved and improved version of the “native” CD Projekt RED engine. The improved engine actually allows the game to display amazing facial detail, slightly outperforming things like Horizon Zero Dawn. Thoughtful original design and high attention to small details – these are the two pillars of the visual beauty of Cyberpunk 2077. Not least, CD Projekt did not pursue new heights of polygonal detailing of objects or the introduction of some fundamentally new graphic technologies.


Settings: display resolution 2560 x1440 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 11


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

90

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

75

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

76

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

68

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

60

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

63

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

59

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

56


Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 11


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

49

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

38

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

40

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

34

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

31

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

31

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

30

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

28


Settings: display resolution 2560 x1440 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 11


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

82

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

97

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

76

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

92

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

80

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

63

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

64

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

60


Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 11


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

60

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

63

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

51

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

59

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

51

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

44

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

40

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

28

Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Shadow of the Tomb Raider takes place after the events depicted in RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER. This time Miss Croft travels to Latin America, where she travels through the ruins of an ancient civilization (including the Mayan and Aztec pyramids), discovers the secrets of the Order of the Trinity, and learns more about her father’s research. The story is more mature than in previous games. To portray Lara as a more advanced adventurer, the developers set out to make her face the consequences of the decisions she made.

Rise of the Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses a new game engine called the Foundation Engine. Shadow of the Tomb Raider includes improved subsurface scattering on Lara, volumetric lighting, and beams of light shining through foliage.

Also, the new game uses advanced anti-aliasing – TAA, instead of SMAA. In addition, the effects of water have improved and the waves from movement now have a three-dimensional shape, and in general the interaction with water is better. Tessellation is present in both games, but it is used for different purposes. 


Settings: display resolution 2560 x1440 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 11


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

185

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

187

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

169

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

173

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

149

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

130

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

131

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

114


Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 11


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

100

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

96

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

91

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

89

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

78

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

68

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

68

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

57

Battlefield V  is a first-person shooter in which the gamer will visit different parts of the world during the Second World War. The gameplay is extremely varied and interesting, and therefore this game is loved by millions of people.

The game is based on the Frostbite Engine 3.5. Frostbite Engine is a game engine developed by EA Digital Illusions CE; it is used both in its own development and in projects of other branches of Electronic Arts. When it comes to visuals, Battlefield V sets new standards for shooter picture quality, powered by the improved Frostbite engine. It is hardly possible to find another such beautiful military shooter, no matter how trite it may sound.

The single-player campaign also stands out nicely, because for multiplayer, EA and DICE have chosen a trade-off between performance and appearance. This is not to say that the picture is much worse, but still the developers focused on performance. The only negative point concerns the level of detail depending on the viewing distance. Regardless of the selected graphics quality level, objects are always drawn at a certain distance – although they could appear much earlier / further.


Settings: display resolution  2560×1440 pixels, detail: Ultra, Raytracing ON, DLSS OFF


FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

107

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

88

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Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

92

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

84

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

73

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

65

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

73


Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, Ultra detail, Raytracing ON, DLSS OFF


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

64

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

55

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

32

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

28

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

38

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

40

Metro: EXODUS Is a first-person shooter made by the 4A Engine studio based on the novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky, most likely the last part and the likely ending of the Metro 2033 franchise series. The plot takes place on the territory of the post-apocalyptic Russian Federation, where survivors of a nuclear war managed to hide in the big Moscow metro and are trying to survive under the onslaught attacks of evil mutant predators, as well as warring factions. 4A Engine is a game engine developed by the Ukrainian company 4A Games for use in their computer game Metro 2033, published by THQ on March 16, 2010.

The game does not contain preset image detail modes, although they are in the utility that runs the built-in benchmark – from low to ultra-high. Among the individual settings, only the overall “quality” of the image can be adjusted, the sample size of pixels for anisotropic filtering, the intensity of motion blur, and the depth of tessellation of geometric primitives. As the main method of full-screen anti-aliasing, the game uses its own kind of temporal algorithm (TAA – Temporal Anti-Aliasing) – it cannot be disabled, but judging by the information from NVIDIA, TAA works very smoothly here and probably has little effect on overall performance.

As with most games of the caliber of Metro Exodus, the engine allows you to scale the image quality over a wide range, with the difference between low, medium and ultra-high detail profiles being extremely pronounced. As the main method of full-screen anti-aliasing, the game uses its own kind of temporal algorithm (TAA – Temporal Anti-Aliasing) – it cannot be disabled, but judging by the information from NVIDIA, TAA works very smoothly here and probably has little effect on overall performance.

As with most games of the caliber of Metro Exodus, the engine allows you to scale the image quality over a wide range, with the difference between low, medium and ultra-high detail profiles being extremely pronounced. As the main method of full-screen anti-aliasing, the game uses its own kind of temporal algorithm (TAA – Temporal Anti-Aliasing) – it cannot be disabled, but judging by the information from NVIDIA, TAA works very smoothly here and probably has little effect on overall performance. As with most games of the caliber of Metro Exodus, the engine allows you to scale the image quality over a wide range, with the difference between low, medium and ultra-high detail profiles being extremely pronounced. 


Settings:  display resolution 2560 x1440 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 12


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

164

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

156

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

150

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

145

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

125

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

119

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

115

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

100


Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 12


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

106

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

93

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

96

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

86

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

74

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

72

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

71

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

63

Red Dead Redemption 2 Is an open-world action-adventure and third-person shooter video game developed and published by Rockstar Games. Red Dead Redemption 2, decorated in the spirit of a western, takes place in 1899 in the Wild West, in the territory of several fictional states of the United States. The plot of the game is built around the adventures of Dutch Van der Linde’s gang; the player is controlled by Arthur Morgan, one of the gang members. After a botched ferry robbery, the bandits are forced to hide in the wilderness from federal agents and bounty hunters. Red Dead Redemption 2 is based on the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine.

Rockstar Advanced Game Engine is a fully featured game engine that contains graphics engine, physics engine, sound engine, animation engine, game artificial intelligence, networking, scripting language and other components. Since the engine was focused on use in games that have an “open, seamless world,” the main advantage of the engine is its ability to efficiently handle large game spaces. 


Settings:  display resolution 2560 x1440 pixels, Maximum detail, DirectX 12


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

101

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

93

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

93

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

89

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

79

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

71

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

73

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

63


Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, detail Maximum, DirectX 12


 FPS – average number of frames per second 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

72

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

63

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 

65

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

63

AMD Radeon RX 6800 

54

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

49

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 

50

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

42

Conclusion

AMD’s release of the Radeon RX 6900 XT is primarily a showcase for the new RDNA 2 architecture and the Navi 21 GPU in all its glory. It must be admitted that the Radeon RX 6900 XT is very fast and energy efficient. By its performance AMD Radeon RX 6900 XTOf course, it is inferior to the GeForce RTX 3090, although it allows you to play games comfortably in 4K resolution at maximum graphics settings.

We can say that the Radeon RX 6900 XT is another attempt by AMD in the fight for the first place in high graphics performance and, as it turned out, unfortunately, not entirely successful, since there is little practical sense in buying a Radeon RX 6900 XT for ordinary gamers, because the cost The RX 6900 XT is twice as expensive as AMD’s next oldest model, the Radeon RX 6800 XT.

The Radeon RX 6900 XT could be recommended for purchase only if the performance of the RX 6900 XT was significantly superior to that of the Radeon RX 6800 XT. 


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