Radeon RX 6950 XT reviews: 10% faster than the regular RX 6900 XT, but still slower than the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti in 4K

AMD today released the Radeon RX 6950 XT, RX 6750 XT and RX 6650 XT graphics cards.
They are updated Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6700 XT and RX 6600 XT, but with slightly faster GPUs, faster memory and higher TDP.
In the current reality we have to rely on the experience of our western colleagues, who have already had a chance to get acquainted with these cards.
In this article, let's discuss the flagship Radeon RX 6950 XT based on reviews from Tom's Hardware, Guru3D and TechPowerUp resources.Image source: Tom's HardwareThe Radeon RX 6950 XT is built on the same 7nm Navi 21 GPU as the regular Radeon RX 6900 XT, only it is labeled KXTX instead of XTX.
It includes 80 compute blocks with 5,120 stream processors, 320 texture blocks, 128 rasterization blocks and 80 ray trace acceleration blocks.
The GPU has a benchmark gaming frequency of 2100 MHz (85 MHz higher than the RX 6900 XT), and in Boost mode it goes up to 2310 MHz (60 MHz higher than its predecessor).
The novelty is equipped with 16 GB of GDDR6 RAM with 256-bit bus.
The data transfer rate is 18 Gbit/s per pin.
Due to this its bandwidth is not 512 GB/s as it is in regular Radeon RX 6900 XT but 576 GB/s.
It also has a high speed 128 MB Infinity Cache buffer.
Rated power consumption (TGP) of video card at reference frequencies is 335 W, which is 35 W higher than that of Radeon RX 6900 XT.Image source: Guru3DThe novelty is available both in AMD reference design and as proprietary solutions of the company's partners.
Tom's Hardware journalists examined Sapphire Radeon RX 6950 XT Nitro+ Pure (first photo), Guru3D resource got the MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming X Trio (second photo).
TechPowerUp portal was able to get the graphics card in several versions at once.
For coverage, let's take data from Gigabyte Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming OC (in the third photo).
All of them have massive and efficient cooling systems and have additional factory overclocking of the GPU.
The latter, although it adds a few frames per second in games depending on the version of the video card, the overall picture is not affected.
Radeon RX 6950 XT even with reference specifications turned out to be very fast in games.
But only without ray tracing, in which it is inferior even to the model two classes below - GeForce RTX 3080 10GB.
However, more about that below.Image source: TechPowerUpWe have tested Radeon RX 6950 XT in 25 games, the novelty was on average 9% faster than its predecessor.
The resource Tom's Hardware, which tested the gas pedal in 8 games, the difference was 10% in favor of the new card.
Guru3D reports similar results based on tests of 9 games.
If we talk directly about the competitors, on average Radeon RX 6950 XT is 1-2% faster than GeForce RTX 3090, but about 7% slower than GeForce RTX 3090 Ti.
We are, of course, talking about the gas pedal performance in games at 4K resolution and at maximum graphics settings.Games 2160p control-3840-2160.png See all images (16) elden-ring-3840-2160.png GD4SQA2btq23BRR8.png god-of-war-3840-2160.
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png untitled-10.png yrnWkoSKVeHVJGBQ8.png cyberpunk-2077-3840-2160.png See all images (16) The map was also tested in 1440p resolution.
In this case, Tom's Hardware notes that the Radeon gas pedal was on average 3 percent faster than the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and 9 percent faster than the regular Radeon RX 6900 XT.
TechPowerUp and Guru3D data are similar.
The Radeon RX 6950 XT is behind the competition only in some games.Games 1440p 4KpGiKYfZkJ2qyiUv.png See all images (16) 7zaQFwED5esHTSRmY.
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png See all images (16) In the game tests with 1080p resolution the novelty of \"red\" also overtook everyone.
Its average FPS was 184.8, the Radeon RX 6900 XT had 173.2, and the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti had 17