Gigabyte Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming OC review - Introduction

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 lavish 479 USD. Thus, you can expect board partner cards with custom designs and cooling to sit above the 500 USD marker. At the time of writing, we cannot make any sense of price levels as to where NVIDIA increases pricing. AMD now follows suit. Unfortunately, prices are now at such ludicrous 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.  The Gaming OC is carrying an MSRP of 579 USD but currently starts at a ludicrous 800+ USD in retail.

Gigabyte Radeon RX 6700 XT GAMING OC

Gigabyte returns to the table with their rather traditional Windforce 3X based cooler. This is not intended to be a premium product like you can find in the Aorus series; it's a lot of plastic and a somewhat simpler design; however, they perform well in gaming and cooling and noise levels. The Windforce cooler is based on three aluminum fin masses and five 6 mm-thick copper heat pipes with direct contact with the GPU base cooling plate. The cooler extends a bit longer than the PCB; this way, the third fan's airflow flows out through a gap in the backplate. We test the OC model spotted under product codename GV-R67XTGAMING OC-12GD (SKU), and that means the card has a slight factory tweak. It is based on a triple-fan cooler and a 2.7-slot design with a duo of power connectors, 6- and 8-pin. The card has 11 power phases, nine for GPU and two for the memory subsystem. The modified RX 6700 XT graphics card has an outspoken black and silver design with a backplate. In the I/O area, the card includes two DisplayPort 1.4 ports and two HDMI 2.1. Clock frequencies are listed as being a 2622MHz Boost. However, the Boost frequency isn't a fixed setting anymore these days and can even vary per card a little—the 12GB GDDR6 memory clocks in at 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective). The most bitter pill to swallow is the price, $579, a price currently far higher in retail. The card has a length of close to 28cm, weighs in at just 890 g. Let's take this RX 6700 XT for a spin.