PowerColor Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil review

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Introduction

PowerColor  Red Devil  Radeon RX 6900 XT
The devil made me do it ...

In this review, we'll take a look at PowerColor's latest 6900 XT Red Devil graphics card, which is primarily targeted at the GeForce RTX 3080 (Ti) and 3090.  Join us in this extensive review; this 6900 XT version shows a bit more TLC as it has been fitted with custom cooling. The result is a graphics card that looks both handsome and is silent as well. The card was fabbed around a custom PCB, premium components, triple-fan-based cooler, increased clock frequencies, as well as an increased power limiter. The 6900 XT, which we will analyze in this review, has 80 active CUs multiplied by 64 shading cores, for a total of 5120 shading processors. This card features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory connected through a 256-bit memory bus, not to be confused with the GDDR6X memory used by NVIDIA's RTX 3080 and 3090 graphics cards. That equates to a memory bandwidth of 512 GB/s. This product's reference TDP is 300 watts. The boost clock of 2340 MHz (2250 MHz = reference) is quite fast. Similar to its two brothers, the card features a 128 MB 'infinity cache' (which we'll refer to as L3 cache). The card will compete against NVIDIA's current best, the GeForce RTX 3090. This graphics card will cost you ... 1500 USD in this configuration.

AMD and their board partners will equip all 6800/6900 GPUs with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. That is true for all three cards. Thus, a 256-bit wide memory bus is required. AMD, on the other hand, has a few architectural tricks up its sleeve, as they incorporated a large phat whopper of an L3 cache inside the GPU. RDNA2-based graphics processors are compatible with DirectX Ultimate, a term that refers to additional feature levels such as DirectX Raytracing (DXR), Variable Rate Shading (VRS), Mesh Shaders, and Sampler Feedback.  

 

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AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series reference specs
RX 6900 XTRX 6800XTRX 6800RX 6700 XTRX 6600 XTRX 6600
GPU Navi 21 XT(XH) Navi 21 XT Navi 21 XL Navi 22 XT Navi 23 XT Navi 23 XL
Cores 5120 4608 3840 2560 2048 1792
TMUs 320 288 240 160 128 112
ROPs 128 128 96 64 64 64
Infinity Cache 128 MB 128 MB 128 MB 96 MB 32 MB 32 MB
Boost Clock 2250 MHz 2250 MHz 2105 MHz 2581 MHz 2359 MHz -
Memory Clock 16 Gbps 16 Gbps 16 Gbps 16 Gbps 16 Gbps 16 Gbps
Memory 16 GB GDDR6 16 GB GDDR6 16 GB GDDR6 12 GB GDDR6 8 GB GDDR6 8 GB GDDR6
Memory Bus 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 192-bit 128-bit 128-bit
Bandwidth 512 GB/s 512 GB/s 512 GB/s 384 GB/s 256 GB/s 256 GB/s
TBP 300W 300W 250W 230W 160W -
MSRP 999 USD 649 USD 579 USD 479 USD 379 USD -
Launch Date December 2021 November 2021 November 2021 March 2021 August 2021 August 2021

PowerColor Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil

You will have noticed that Powercolor will be releasing two revisions in the series, a normal, OC, and Ultimate SKU. The OC one we test runs a faster boost clock and this brings in a notch more performance. Other than that, the hardware and components are 100% identical. The ultimate card is based on that XTXH GPU, it's designated to have an operating frequency of Boost: 2235-2425MHz, it's all a bit confusing sure, but essentially that is a further binned GPU qualified for best performance. As you can see the Red Devil series is receiving the same cooler that you will have noticed on the premium products, aside from an aesthetic tweak that is. The NVIDIA cooler is all dark-themed, the Devil revision has dark-colored insert elements. Other than that, you can expect a product with a nice fast Turbo at 2340 MHZ (2250 MHz reference) and, of course, that 16GB of graphics memory. The product is a bit of a novel because it offers a three fan cooler cooling down all primary elements, that's GPU, DRAM, and the entire VRM segment. The card has a length of 32cm (320x135x62mm) and uses a 2.7 slot design. It holds extensive triple 8-pin PCIe power connectors; so if you do the math here you'll end up at 150+150+150+75(PCIe) yes, 525 Watts of board power. It comes fitted with a backplate and the right amount of RGB bling. In the I/O area, the card includes three DisplayPort 1.4 ports, one HDMI 2.1 connector. The 16GB GDDR6 memory clocks in at 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective). We have to talk pricing as well, these cards should be spotted in a whopping 1000 USD marker, but they will be hard to find, we do expect prices to hover upwards of 1500 USD due to that. Yeah I know, there's little else we can say on the matter of pricing. We'll talk more about this in conclusion. As always, we have a lot to talk about and show you; next page, please.

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