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.
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.
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
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.