ASUS Radeon RX 6700 XT STRIX OC review - Final words and conclusion

Final words

She's a sexy little minx, that STRIX. To date the fastest card we tested, it's got the looks and the sheer silence to accompany it. Overall the Radeon RX 6700 XT is a funky little card in that WQHD (2560x1440) resolution domain for gaming, however, very expensive. In the past two years, we've seen incredible price hikes where mainstream series graphics cards have been repositioned as high-end once, with accompanying price levels. NVIDIA has started that trend, and where AMD always had a little more value to offer, this year that tide has turned. It might be so that the reference RX 6700 XT sits close to RTX 3060 Ti and sometimes 3070 performance, but only in shading performance. Raytracing performance is just quite a bunch slower than the competition offers. I can also not apprehend that AMD still has not implemented any form of machine learning super-sampling, dedicated in hardware much like NVIDIA offers Tensor cores. For these two reasons (RT perf and lacking MLAA) we cast doubt as to why AMD is trying to justify a price of 479 USD as really the true competitor here is the RTX 3060 Ti with its 399 USD MSRP. NVIDIA introduced its Tensor cores back in the summer of 2018 (!). You can also argue that while the Infinity cache works most of the time, it's designed to be a workaround to fill a flaw in the choice of memory type (GDDR6 opposed to GDDR6X), the current AMD GPUs are memory bandwidth deprived, even with GDDR6 at 16 Gbps, but especially running over a 192-bit wide memory bus.

So what am I trying to say here? Well, of course, you can opt for a different route in architecture, dismiss MLSS/DLSS, the somewhat lackluster Raytracing performance, and limited memory bandwidth, really that's fine up to a certain point. But what you then cannot do is price your product like it has all that. Performance overall from the rasterizer/shading point of view in that WQHD domain is lovely, make no mistake .. but again that staring price of 479 USD folks ... for a graphics card aimed at the WQHD resolution domain?

Performance spread reference and AIBs

We've been quite busy the past week or so as we have lined up six Radeon RX 6700 XT reviews, actually seven but we're still awaiting a Gigabyte sample.  So from top to bottom the differences certainly are not huge, have a peek: 

So the chart above is arbitrary in the sense that results can deffer a single % here and there, less so in fillrate limited situation, more so in GPU bound situations. But from reference to the fastest AIB cards, you're looking at 3 to 4% differentials (depending on game and resolution).

Cooling & acoustic

ASUS does it well. You've seen the FLIR images; it's hardly even lighting up. You have two BIOS modes at your disposal; the performance BIOS gets this card to ~54 Degrees C, the Silent BIOS mode to ~60 Degrees C. Both modes offer the very same performance. Temps will vary a bit based on chassis and airflow. Acoustics wise there is only one set to consider, silent BIOS mode, as it is just that silent. The perf mode makes little sense tbh if there isn't an additional performance to gain from.

Energy

Heat output and energy consumption are closely related to each other, as (graphics) processors and heat can be perceived as a 1:1 state; 250 Watts in energy consumption approaches close to 250 Watts in heat as output. This is the basis of TDP. AMD is listing the card at 230W, which is okay at best for a graphics card in the year 2021. We measure the entire power consumption of the card spot on close in at 238 Watt with minor spikes towards 260W and in IDLE the card consumes 14 Watts.

Coil whine

Compared to the reference Radeon RX 6700 XT, the STRIX card exhibits far less coil squeal. It's at a level you can hardly hear it. In a closed chassis, that noise would fade away in the background. However, with an open chassis, you can hear coil whine/squeal. Graphics cards all make this in some form, especially at higher framerates; this can be perceived. 

Pricing

We haven't received a final MSRP just yet, but likely it's gonna make you hurl. We expect 569 USD as MSRP, but again we have no confirmation from ASUS on this.

Tweaking

The Radeon RX 6700 XT series is limited to that 192-bit wide memory bus. It thus likes more memory bandwidth. You can add it by dialing up the memory frequency towards 17.2 Gbps, AMD enforces limits on the memory subsystem, limiting your GDDR6 memory that maximum overclock. We don't like that as we feel we could have gone a notch further. The clock frequency reach is spectacular, after selecting 2900 MHz the GPU was settling at 2570~2800 MHz due to the power limiters you'll have gained a handsome 7~8% additional performance.

Conclusion

We do fancy the STRIX very much, it's just an elegant, perhaps even totally-over-engineered graphics card for the Radeon RX 6700 XT series of products. It offers extra features (dual BIOS, RGB/Fan connectors, etc, cooling, and a factory tweak (for the OC model) plus the ability to tweak it a notch further. It's just that pricing eh? The core design of the RX 6700 XT is fine, ASUS added to that a more superior PCB design, component choice as well as a muscular cooler. That formula is working well, however bringing just 3 to 4% faster than reference performance. You'll retrieve a nice performing product in that WQHD range at very acceptable temperatures and acoustic levels. Aesthetically the card looks grand, a bit large perhaps. As stated it's a lovely Full HD, and Quad HD card with abilities at Ultra HD as well, albeit more limited. Raytracing performance on this generation RDNA2 cards is more average, and of course, AMD lacks something DLSS, bigtime. All that could be forgiven if the product was priced right, and it isn't as the card will very likely cost well over 550 USD/EUR, we cannot justify such an illogical price level. That's not ASUS's fault, it's AMD pricing this series too high. 

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- Hilbert, LOAD"*",8,1.