MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming X TRIO review - Introduction

MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming X TRIO 16GB

There's a new flagship in town, the MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming X TRIO is just blazingly fast. As AMD refreshes its rDNA 2 graphics card portfolio with a new family of cards in 2022, this card series now comes with 18 Gbps memory and even faster clock frequencies. And paired with a power limiter tweak, this beast seems to be up to 20% faster than a 6900 XT. The year 2022 is roughly halfway and AMD now revamps its RDNA 2 graphics card portfolio with a new family of graphics cards. All are rehashed and thus reconfigured products and that means this is not a new generation of cards, but rather an incremental improvement based on the same RDNA 2 architecture. The main difference here is the usage of quicker memory. All three graphics cards include up to 18Gbps GDDR6 memory chips, up from 16Gbps on non-50 versions. Some AIBs will configure the 6650 XT at 17.5 Gbps though with OC models configured at 18 GBps.  All graphics cards also use a comparable GPU seen from their predecessor but will arrive with increased memory and boost/game clock rates. As such the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT will sit above the Radeon RX 6900 XT, and the Radeon RX 6750 XT will sit above the Radeon RX 6700 XT. of course the Radeon RX 6650 XT will sit above the Radeon RX 6600 XT. Consider this to be AMD's own 'SUPER'; however, the shader and RT count remain identical without any big advancements. The lineup is intended to provide performance enhancements ranging from 5-to-10%, and memory will play a significant role in meeting these performance objectives. Once again, the new lineup would be as follows:

• Radeon RX 6950 XT: 5120 SPs, 16GB GDDR6 (18Gbps), 256-bit bus, 335W TBP
• Radeon RX 6900 XT: 5120 SPs, 16GB GDDR6 (16Gbps), 256-bit bus, 300W TBP
• Radeon RX 6750 XT: 2560 SPs, 12GB GDDR6 (18Gbps), 192-bit bus, 250 TBP
• Radeon RX 6700 XT: 2560 SPs, 12GB GDDR6 (16Gbps), 192-bit bus, 230W TBP
• Radeon RX 6650 XT: 2048 SPs, 8GB GDDR6 (18Gbps), 128-bit bus, 180 TBP
• Radeon RX 6600 XT: 2048 SPs, 8GB GDDR6 (16Gbps), 128-bit bus, 160W TBP

AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series
	RX 6950 XT	RX 6900 XT	RX 6750	RX 6700 XT	RX 6650 XT	RX 6600 XT
GPU	Navi 21 XT(XH)	Navi 21 XT(XH)	Navi 22 XT	Navi 22 XT	Navi 23 XT	Navi 23 XT
Cores	5120	5120	2560	2560	2048	2048
TMUs	320	320	160	160	128	128
ROPs	128	128	64	64	64	64
Infinity Cache	128 MB	128 MB	96 MB	96 MB	32 MB	32 MB
Boost Clock	2310 MHz	2250 MHz	2600 MHz	2581 MHz	2635 MHz	2359 MHz
Memory Clock	18 Gbps	16 Gbps	18 Gbps	16 Gbps	17.5 Gbps	16 Gbps
Memory	16 GB GDDR6	16 GB GDDR6	12 GB GDDR6	12 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6
Memory Bus	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	192-bit	128-bit	128-bit
Bandwidth	576 GB/s	512 GB/s	432 GB/s	384 GB/s	280 GB/s	256 GB/s
TBP	335W	300W	250W	230W	180W	160W
MSRP	1099 USD	999 USD	549 USD	479 USD	399 USD	379 USD
Launch Date	May 2022	December 2021	May 2022	March 2021	May 2022	August 2021

   

This week we'll have a wide selection of graphics cards from that new 6x50 series to show you. This particular review will look at the MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming X TRIO. MSI will release multiple iterations of the series, the Gaming TRIO and the Gaming X TRIO. The latter of the two we tested has a quicker boost clock and TDP, which results in an increase in performance. Apart from that, the hardware and components are similar. As you can see, the TRIO series receives the same cooler as their premium devices, with the exception of a cosmetic adjustment. While the similar-looking TRIO NVIDIA cooler is entirely black, the AMD model features silver-colored insert pieces, which we find a little distracting. You may also anticipate a device with a pretty fast Turbo clock speed of 2454 MHz (2310 MHz = reference clock speed) and, of course, 16GB of graphics RAM. But yeah that's almost a 150 Mhz tweak all by itself there. The product is quite innovative in that it has a TRIO TriFrozr cooler that cools all key components, including the GPU, DRAM, and the whole VRM sector. The card is 32.4cm in length and features a 2.7-slot design. It houses three enormous 8-pin PCIe power connections; so, if you do the accumulation, you'll arrive with a board power rating of 150+150+150+75(PCIe), or 525 Watts. It includes a backplate and the appropriate amount of RGB bling. The card's I/O section features three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors and one HDMI 2.1 connection. The 16GB GDDR6 memory operates at a speed of 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective). We also need to discuss pricing; these cards should be around the 1000 USD range, but because they will be scarce for several months, we anticipate costs to dawdle around 1250 USD. True, there is little else we can say. We'll discuss this more in conclusion. As usual, we have a lot to discuss and show you; please proceed to the next page.