Introduction
ASUS ROG Radeon RX 6700 XT STRiX OC edition
ASUS is back with their STRIX OC edition, meet the fully customized Radeon RX 6700 XT with an extensive tweak, dual BIOS, and exquisite cooler. In Silent BIOS mode you can't even hear this card mate! Armed with 12GB of graphics memory, will it be enough? In this review we start off with of overview and analysis, we'll be discussing the Radeon Series 6700 XT from AMD that stems from the RDNA2 architecture. It certainly took a while for AMD to release it, back in July 2019 AMD announced the NAVI-based Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT. a product series that ever since has been well respected. The 5700 series does offer some good performance. However from there onwards, things were pushed back for various reasons like all COVID-19 related, in the world of graphics technology, also a new dynamic was added, Raytracing. Or, I should say DirectX Raytracing (DX-R). NVIDIA was pioneering two years ago with their RTX 2000 series already, and AMD made the call to delay that for the original Navi GPU. As the graphics landscape changed somewhere done the line, so this the roadmap for AMD change. Microsoft and Sony consoles embedded with AMD technology revealed that Ray tracing was going to be supported. And that did set the trend for the desktop graphics card we see announced today as well.
Radeon RX 6700 XT
AMD announced the card at their 'Where Gaming Begins epi3' presentation (March 3, 2021). As earlier indicated, only one NAVI22 SKU is released at this time. The Radeon RX 6700 XT. A Non-XT version may follow at a later date. The RX 6700 XT will be commercially available starting on the 18th of March 2021. Reference cards and customs cards launch on the same date. Navi22 XL, the GPU that resides on the 6700 XT graphics card series has been paired with 12 GB of GDDR6 graphics memory Armed with RDNA2 architecture and 40 CUs this offers 2560 shading processors, the same amount as the Radeon RX 5700 XT, the architecture, however, is much faster. The memory makes use of a 192-bit wide memory bus. The reference boards use 11 phases of power. It will have a base clock of 2321 MHz, a game clock of 2424 MHz, and a boost clock of 2581 MHz. The graphics card features 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and 40 Raytracing cores for raytracing hardware acceleration. The graphics card is equipped with a high-quality PCB with an 8-pin and 6-pin power connector. The official TDP is listed at 230W.
Desktop | ||||||||
GPU | Stream Processors | RT Cores | Max Boost GPU clock (MHz) | RAM type | RAM volume (GB) | RAM bandwidth (GB/s) | RAM width | TDP (watts) |
Radeon RX 6900 XT | 5120 | 80 | 2250 | GDDR6 | 16 | 512 | 256-bit | 300 |
Radeon RX 6800 XT | 4608 | 72 | 2250 | GDDR6 | 16 | 512 | 256-bit | 300 |
Radeon RX 6800 | 3840 | 60 | 2105 | GDDR6 | 16 | 512 | 256-bit | 250 |
6700 XT STRIX | 2560 | 40 | 2669 | GDDR6 | 12 | 384 | 192-bit | 230 |
Radeon RX 6700 XT | 2560 | 40 | 2581 | GDDR6 | 12 | 384 | 192-bit | 230 |
Radeon RX 5700 XT | 2560 | 1605 | GDDR6 | 8 | 448 | 256-bit | 225 | |
Radeon RX 5700 | 2304 | 1465 | GDDR6 | 8 | 448 | 256-bit | 180 | |
Radeon VII | 3840 | 1400 | HBM2 | 16 | 1024 | 4096-bit | 300 | |
Radeon RX Vega 64 | 4096 | 1247 | HBM2 | 8 | 484 | 2048-bit | 295 | |
Radeon RX Vega 56 | 3584 | 1156 | HBM2 | 8 | 410 | 2048-bit | 210 | |
Radeon RX 590 | 2304 | 1469 | GDDR5 | 8GB | 256 | 256-bit | 185 |
All 6000 cards released by AMD and their board partners will be fitted with GDDR6 memory, the 6700 XT however sees 12 GB of it. And that means a more bandwidth-limited 192-bit wide memory bus. However, AMD has got that trick up their sleeves architecture-wise, as they added an L3 cache into the GPU. All RDNA2 based graphics processors are DirectX Ultimate compatible, a naming placeholder for extra feature levels such as DirectX Raytracing (DXR), Variable Rate Shading (VRS), Mesh Shaders, and Sampler Feedback.
Pricing
The Radeon RX 6700 XT reference is to cost a rather excessive 479 USD. You can thus expect board partner cards with custom designs and cooling to sit above the 500 USD marker. At the time of writing, we just cannot make any sense of price levels as to where NVIDIA increases pricing, AMD now follows suit. Unfortunately, prices are now at such ridiculous levels that people will flee to consoles far more easily. Traditionally the Radeon RX x700 Series should have been mainstream to high-end product. Coming from the last-gen 5700 XT, AMD increased pricing by 80 USD. By doing so they priced their product close to the GeForce RTX 3070. Premium AIB products will be even more expensive, we expect this product to cost 569 USD, however, this has not been confirmed by ASUS.
ASUS ROG Radeon 6700 XT STRIX OC edition
Meet the ASUS ROG Gaming OC. The premium card comes paired with 12GB GDDR6 graphics memory at 192-bit running at 16 Gbps. Muscled up with triple-fan cooling, this card is equipped with a dual-bios design with performance and silent mode; the three fans start to spin and cool once the GPU warms up. The card has a dual (6+2) pin power header. Armed with a BIOS that offers a 2669 MHz Turbo (2581 MHz = reference) in the performance BIOS setting and a cooler that you'll bow to. This card manages to produce 33 Dba noise levels at temperatures at give or take 60 Degrees C in a Silent BIOS mode. These are incredibly silent acoustics when under load. At performance mode, the fan RPM ramps up and brings that value below 55 Degrees C even. The card is rated by us at 238 Watt power as a typical draw. We test the factory tweaked OC model, it still overclocks quite well bringing, and accumulated it makes this product a notch faster than founder edition specifications for the base model. We have a lot to talk about, have a peek at what is reviewed today. One the next two pages some in-house photos, after which we then head onwards into the review.