for $500 over reference you can put up a kick ass loop to cool your whole system, plus the joy of tweaking. i do applaud Asus for thinking outside the box, but honestly a 140mm in push/pull would do the job given the temps shown reducing cost (shipping, manufacture, and retail) and aiding in case compatibility. but those are nit picks, i want one but ain't gonna pay for one (or steal LOL)

I wonder why they bother releasing all these new cards when nowhere has stock of them......its like 'heres what you could have won.........'!?

More expensive than a 3090 and slower in every way. Hard Pass.

So officially fastest rasterization performance.

Looks like the test bench is cpubound in 1080 in some games. Maybe tweak the memory or do some all core overclocking to take away the bottleneck?

Jonny Manc:

I wonder why they bother releasing all these new cards when nowhere has stock of them......its like 'heres what you could have won.........'!?

Because no company wants to spend money and not make money.

spine:

More expensive than a 3090 and slower in every way. Hard Pass.

Uhhh wat??? o_O. Can you just not read, or are you so bad at math you can't compare two numbers & tell which is bigger? At 1080p & 1440p the AIB RX 6900 XT is more often than not just as fast OR the outright faster card vs the RTX 3090 Founder's Edition (aka both are factory OC'd). For a 1440p @ 144/240Hz gamer in particular (as well as any SUPER serious competitive 1080p/360Hz players), the RX 6900 XT is more often than not, the fastest raw rasterization GPU around. ESPECIALLY in the most modern titles/engines (where the difference can sometimes be stark, suggesting VERY good things for the "every game also on consoles is optimized for RDNA 2" future). The only places it notably loses are at >=4K, where a decent little ≈+5-10% perf gap opens up in the 3090's favor, & in current hybrid ray-tracing implementations, where the 6900 XT generally lands in-between a 3070 & 3080 (both of which anyone with half a brain should have expected). But the RX 6900 XT tying or outright WINNING at the lower resolutions LITERALLY makes your "slower in every way" vs the RTX 3090 claim nothing but a massive pile of bulls**t.

spine:

More expensive than a 3090 and slower in every way. Hard Pass.

Of course it's slower than the 3090 as the reference 6900 XT is also slower. Just releasing a watercooled card doesn't make it faster if it's slower at reference level, the only difference is when it is 1-2%. The extra cash is for the cooling itself. Need to mention, performance difference is only 6-8% at reference level, so with this ASUS WC, it's only 3-4% from the ref 3090 and you get a superior WC solution. Of course you get a vastly superior RT performance with the 3090, so for $1500, I would definitely take a cheaper air cooled 3090 than a WCd RX 6900XT. However, at a $1000-1500 price gap, I would go for a 6900XT since I don't care for RT as it's still not present in enough games and in enough quality to justify the performance loss, plus DLSS 2.0 (which gives much better quality than DLSS) is also present in too few titles. And even the 3090 can suffer in RT games where all RT features are present, like Control, where you can only get RT on with enough fps (~70) on 1440p without DLSS. 4K 34ish average fps is lame for a $1500+ card. And I believe most people are not paying $1500 to step back in resolution (with RT I mean). Not to speak of Cyberpunk with 4K RT maxed out and DLSS on @ 40 fps. LOL Anyway, it would be fair to compare a WCd 3090 with this, which is also $400-500 extra to the MSRP.

Cooe:

Uhhh wat??? o_O. Can you just not read, or are you so bad at math you can't compare two numbers & tell which is bigger. At 1080p & 1440p it's more often than not just as fast OR the outright faster card. For a 1440p @ 144/240Hz gamer, the RX 6900 XT is more often than not, the fastest raw rasterization GPU around. ESPECIALLY in the most modern titles/engines (where the difference can sometimes be stark, suggesting VERY good things for the "every game also on consoles is optimized for RDNA 2" future). The only places it notably loses is at >=4K & in current ray-tracing implementations (which anyone with half a brain should have expected). But the RX 6900 XT tying or outright WINNING at the lower resolutions LITERALLY makes your "slower in every way" vs the RTX 3090 claim nothing but a massive pile of bulls**t.

He didnt read the review and commented on it so yeah.

BReal85:

Of course it's slower than the 3090 as the reference 6900 XT is also slower.

@spine is wrong but this also makes no sense lol

BReal85:

Of course it's slower than the 3090 as the reference 6900 XT is also slower. Just releasing a watercooled card doesn't make it faster if it's slower at reference level, the only difference is when it is 1-2%. The extra cash is for the cooling itself. Need to mention, performance difference is only 6-8% at reference level, so with this ASUS WC, it's only 3-4% from the ref 3090 and you get a superior WC solution. Of course you get a vastly superior RT performance with the 3090, so for $1500, I would definitely take a cheaper air cooled 3090 than a WCd RX 6900XT. However, at a $1000-1500 price gap, I would go for a 6900XT since I don't care for RT as it's still not present in enough games and in enough quality to justify the performance loss, plus DLSS 2.0 (which gives much better quality than DLSS) is also present in too few titles. And even the 3090 can suffer in RT games where all RT features are present, like Control, where you can only get RT on with enough fps (~70) on 1440p without DLSS. 4K 34ish average fps is lame for a $1500+ card. And I believe most people are not paying $1500 to step back in resolution (with RT I mean). Not to speak of Cyberpunk with 4K RT maxed out and DLSS on @ 40 fps. LOL Anyway, it would be fair to compare a WCd 3090 with this, which is also $400-500 extra to the MSRP.

It's not a reference specced RTX 3090 it's being compared against here though, but the factory OC'd Founder's Edition, so AIB vs AIB results comparisons are 100% fair game. Also even with that considered, the AIB RX 6900 XT STILL tends to win/tie more than it loses at 1080p/1440p. It only definitively loses at >=4K & if you turn on hybrid ray-tracing effects in current titles (which have all been designed on/with & optimized for Nvidia's "RT Cores" so far). And it only gets DESTROYED in the minuscule number of fully path traced Nvidia tech demos disguised as games (a massive part of which I imagine is all the low level engine & renderer code design/optimization work being done exclusively on/for Nvidia's "RT Cores"/their arches).

Denial:

@spine is wrong but this also makes no sense lol

Ah'yup. And the RTX 3090 being used/tested against isn't even reference spec anyways but ALSO factory OC'd. (It's an Nvidia Founder's Edition, which get some of the best binned chips you can get). Not to mention that even the reference RX 6900 XT could often pull out the edge, or at least tie the RTX 3090 FE at 1080p/1440p in modern titles. It only becomes the definitively slower card (reference or AIB) when the resolution is pushed to at or beyond 4K or you start turning ray-tracing effects on in already existing games. (That, or everything you play are old games/engines, but in that case they should already run MORE than fast enough for just about anyone regardless, making the 3090's advantage here pyrrhic at best).

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

Anyone in for some WAG (Wett Ass GPU)? ASUS just submitted their Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card for review, and much like the 6800 XT this one shows a bit more TLC as it has been fitted with hybrid c... Review: ASUS Radeon RX 6900 XT STRIX OC LC

I really liked that you added additional results with SAM and I hope for more

:(:(o_Oo_O in my country: 1 USD($) = ~40 MAURITIAN RUPEES(Rs) https://compuspeed.mu/shop/msi-parts/geforce-msi-rtx-3090-gaming-x-trio-24g/ (Rs 96000) https://compuspeed.mu/shop/msi-parts/msi-geforce-rtx-3090-ventus-3x-24g-oc/ (Rs 92000) https://compuspeed.mu/shop/msi-parts/graphics-nvidia-msi-rtx2080-ti-gaming-x-trio-11-gb-gddr-6/(Rs 72000) https://compuspeed.mu/product-category/graphic-card/ https://store.fastclick.mu/computers-accessories/computers/computer-parts-components/graphic-card/nvidia-geforce/1070/ (Rs 17000) Weird... Thinking of reselling my MSI 1070 Ti Titanium (got punks for Rs 15000)......still good..:p

Is there a way to increase the power limit? My block arrived and i'm planning to add mine to the loop, would want to get more than this out of it. NVM, found out about morepowertool.

spine:

More expensive than a 3090 and slower in every way. Hard Pass.

I do not find RX 6900 XT STRIX OC LC but let's put an extra 200 euros or even 250 and so it is cheaper at least here in Greece

Thanks for the nice review. I would like to ask: Is there any difference in FS2020 when SAM is activated? Codemasters F1 charts show DX12, typo? I wonder, FS2020 compared to all the other DX11 games, we all know, is heavily CPU bounded, but why then is there so much of a fps performance drop in 4k resolution compared to a RTX3090? This is something only FS2020 4K chart shows, can someone try to explain, maybe because of RAM speed, size? BTW: if a 6900XT WC is same price as a RTX3090FE AC let´s say $1500.-, I would prefer the 3090 because of 24GB RAM (not because of RT).

Well I'm very happy to have an ASUS Rog Strix 3080 OC in my new gaming computer, 1905 MHz but with 1935 MHz available within the ASUS Tweak software. It's very quiet with its triple fan 2.9 slot design, why would I be better off with the complication of a full WC loop (my 10700K 5GHz has a Corsair Pro 360 to cool it)? I paid approx £900 for the card and it was the only card I wanted for the new system (the last one was 7 years old with EVGA 780's in SLI). I also bought an ASUS PG35VQ with £700 reduction in the Amazon Black Friday sale to replace my 10 year old Dell U2711 1440 IPS 60 Hz monitor (now given away to a friend's teenager). I've set the PG35VQ to 144Hz with 10 bit colour and wow it's an amazing gaming screen, TFT Central have an excellent review which provides great set-up advice. The reviews prove there's no point in paying a huge premium for a 3090 for gaming use. Although AMD has done better to close the gap with NVidia this time the FPS data Hilbert posts prove that NVidia is still best for 3440 & 4K gaming. I started 1440 gaming 10 years ago and wanted to move on to an Ultrawide which will last for the next two card refreshes. As for the terrible supply of the new cards & AMD's processors, what a shocking misjudgement by both NVidia & AMD. How to p**s off thousands of customers, is this part of business school/MBA teaching?

One of the most beautiful cards I have seen. People with brain might have a better use for it than just gaming and maybe they dont even care 3090 being a better card for the price, or maybe even getting a 6800 and watercooling system for the same price.

brogadget:

Thanks for the nice review. I would like to ask: Is there any difference in FS2020 when SAM is activated? I wonder, FS2020 compared to all the other DX11 games, we all know, is heavily CPU bounded, but why then is there so much of a fps performance drop in 4k resolution compared to a RTX3090? This is something only FS2020 4K chart shows, can someone try to explain, maybe because of RAM speed, size? BTW: if a 6900XT WC is same price as a RTX3090FE AC let´s say $1500.-, I would prefer the 3090 because of 24GB RAM (not because of RT).

MS Flight Sim 20-20 is a junk mess because instead they,M$$$,should build the game on Dx12 API they bring the game with Dx11 junkyard. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQUpo_kpFUb2MD8dp3r9WPzFh4kbhJfeGFQk2YDWbLCPEY0d7dgWlzHG6RGsw&s Do Not try to test Fs2020 in this time,its useless Dx11 junkatry.