ASUS Radeon RX 6900 XT STRIX OC LC Review - Final words and conclusion

Final words

I gotta say, I was not expecting a STRIX LC model of the 6900 XT, and certainly not this soon. The product is sitting in a very compact niche, and if manufacturers even can get their hands on a couple of GPUs, they'd often not go extremely premium with it. Then again, if (as a manufacturer) you can create a very premium product albeit limited on GPU availability, then you can charge the living bejeezus out of a product, and in return, get more margin on your sales. And yeah, I think that is the aim for this product series, as it'll be priced somewhere in that 1500 USD marker, and with limited availability, prices even higher. 

Everything and anything it's all about gaming price, performance, and, of course, rendering quality. If we dilute performance from that equation, we see a product offering 5% more performance over the reference card, with vastly increased power consumption being at least a third more expensive. So yes, that is a tough sell in my book concerning rational purchasing decisions. That says, Hilbert sure does like it's share of premium WAP product, and admittedly, the 6900 XT STRIX LC is just that. And for that, we applaud it as we like manufacturers that do bally stings with their hardware.  

Cooling & noise levels

The STRIX LC offers good results in even stressed conditions, all thanks to the LC cooler, of course. Performance mode hits 38~39 DBa, and while not noisy, you can hear it at times. Temperatures are a bit trivial in the two BIOS modes. I mean, ~53 C is lovely for that PERF BIOS mode to offer, but is 56 Degrees C considered immoral for SILENT mode? We doubt that very much, as such silent BIOS mode is the preferred choice as there is no game performance difference. FLIR imaging shows the card is hardly bleeding heat, but a bit more so in silent mode (which can be expected). Overall, we're very comfortable with what we observe.

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; 300 Watts in energy consumption equals close to 300 Watts in heat as output. This is the basis of TDP. AMD is listing them at 250 (6800) to 300 (6800/6900 XT) Watts for the flagship products, which is okay at best for a graphics card in the year 2020 at this performance level. We measure numbers to be close to the advertised values for the XT. We measured 340 Watt while gaming as a typical power consumption; that's total board power, not TGP.

Coil whine

The ASUS card, much like any other card these days, does exhibit coil squeal, moderate amounts of it. Is it annoying? Well, it's certainly at a level you can hear it for sure. 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 high framerates; this can be perceived. It was louder for the STRIX than the other cards we have tested; we think the coil whine resonates a bit inside that cooler, being amplified. Some coil whine is definitely there.

Pricing

I feel I said enough about it already, of course, 1500 USD (likely even more in etail). We're certain that in etail and low availability, we'll see prices even rise to 1750~200 USD. It is a kind of price level that makes you barf a little into your mouth and then swallow it back in, bitter and a little sweet. Up-to that 1500 USD, we could perhaps understand and justify your purchase; anything after that, just no. The reference design cards are silent, perform less than 10% worse, but offer you far more value for money, and that is the truth. But of course, we also acknowledge that this is the premium segment in graphics cards where prices always are somewhat trivial.

Tweaking

AMD does enforce limits on the memory subsystem, limiting your GDDR6 memory overclock. We don't like that as we feel we could have gone a notch further. Results will vary per board, brand, and even card due to cooling (GDDR6/GPU/VRM). GPU tweaking wise we'd reach a really proper 2700 MHz on AMD's finest and biggest enabled GPU. That's without anomalies and crashes whatsoever. Depending on load, game/app, and board assigned power, we now see the dynamic clock frequency hovering in the 2675 MHz range. That's pretty darn impressive.  All that tweaking and extra energy consumption will bring you a max of ~5% extra performance at best, but seen from reference, you just gained roughly 10% perf in Ultra HD gaming accumulated. Also, and let me reiterate this, for an overclock to be successfully listed here, it needs to pass 4 game runs (different games) in ultra HD to be deemed stable.

Conclusion

While not a PowerColor product, ASUS once again releases a bit of a red-colored devil here. Yes, it is way too expensive even if you could get your hands on one. Realistically we really like manufacturers thinking outside the box that share our appreciation of the premium products. See, from a hardware point of view, ASUS really is pulling everything they can from this GPU with properly designed hardware matching all our needs and requirements that you need to appreciate. Performance is disputable; I mean, if you gain 5% in perf, does that justify that price premium? Many of you will disagree with that, while the others will have no problem with it. See if you find this product too expensive, you have choices as you can buy a reference card, or if you like to stay in the ASUS eco-system; TUF. But we cannot dismiss the quality that ASUS outs here concerning acoustics, extra features like dual-BIOS (just flick the tracker at silent BIOS mode and be done with it), temperatures, and aesthetics, of course. So overall, I am absolutely impressed by this product, aside from the price point. The tweaking experience on this board managed to fascinate me as well. Once again, the fan cabling could have been done a bit nice sleeved or running inside that tubing sleeve, and yep, this card manifests coil whine. But as far as RX 6900 XT cards will come and go, there won't be many products out there that offer this kind of in its niche segment. With pricing filtered out, this has to be a top pick.

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