After building a PC, the one thing we couldn’t secure is the GPU because its pretty much an issue all over the world due to shortages, scalpers and bitcoin miners. I didn’t want to put my build back into the box. Instead, we reached out to AMD and another brand to review their GPUs – yep, we are slowly getting into the component space. With that said, in this review, we are looking at one of the recent Radeon announcements: the RX 6700 XT, a GPU, AMD claims that it can go head-to-head with the RTX 3070 and has good potential with 1440p gaming – which we of course test in this Quick Review.
Looks and Finish
The reference Radeon RX 6700 XT comes in this signature red with grey finish and the “R” logo slapped onto the fans. It follows the same design as the 6800 and the 6900 cards, except for the fact that this card only has two fans on it. These fans are custom designed Dual Axial Fans, and they have Zero RPM Fan Mode to run quiet under heavy loads. In between the PCB and the fans, you will notice that the GPU has a pretty thick heat pipe and Fins to dissipate the heat in the system.
What I do like about the GPU as I hold in my hands is that: it is solid, all thanks to the die-cast aluminum frame that’s used to hold everything in place.
Configuration
The Radeon RX 6700 XT is focused on being more of a mid-tier GPU, but then claims to go head-to-head with the 3070 from Team Green. But that aside, the RX 6700 XT has the following specification:
Performance
Since this is our first rodeo with GPUs and review them – we are going to keep it simple and focus on the important aspect for the most users purchasing this GPU, that is gaming. In order to test this GPU, we used the following specification as our test bench:
Here’s how we did the GPU Benchmark – we used 8 game titles which includes new and some recent titles that’s popular currently, and tested in 3 different resolutions: 4K, 2K, FHD and all the games were set to Ultra Settings.
From the scores above, you can see that the GPU has no issues dealing with games in 1080p and given that GPUs these days has the potential to run well in 1080p, it shouldn’t come off as a surprise. The scores are pretty justifiable with games ranking with scores above the 60-fps mark, in the Ultra Settings. Now, ultra-settings bring the rich graphics to life in games, and we really wanted to test with that.
Moving onto the 1440p, this is where the consumer market are aiming for a better performance, given that it looks beautiful when you pair it with a much powerful monitor. That said, the scores are alright too but it isn’t something that’s going to blow consumers away as the contender card – the RTX 3070 puts up a better show.
Finally, in 4K Gaming – you can see this GPU struggle through and through, it hits the peak performance at 90%+ percentage in most games with Ultra settings. You can play but the card struggles a fair bit to put up a good show. Score ranges from the 50 mark till the 80 mark and only in one game, that is Riftbreaker, it touches an average frame rate of 121, respectively.
In Comparison with RTX 3070
Below you can see three different benchmark scores based on the resolution and the Graphics settings, in comparison with the RTX 3070. In most of the scores, you can see that the RTX 3070 leads the pack with no sweat, and you might wonder that the RTX 3070 has 8GB of GDDR6 Memory. But the GPU has better Memory interface width coming at 256-bit as compared to the 128-bit in the 6700XT and Ampere Architecture has matured enough that even games with Ray Tracing looks great where AMD falls short with lack of support.
Unfortunately, we did not have an RTX 3060 in hand to compare with the Radeon RX 6700XT but this should give an idea that the 6700XT may come close and perhaps beat the 3060 but not the 3070.
Conclusion
Based on the gaming performance, the Radeon RX 6700 XT does put up an okay show with the 1080p game and an average at best gaming performance in 1440p but in no means, it dethrones Team Green’s offering but perhaps the 3060 is a good contender. Unfortunately, if you want more detail in your games in the format of Ray Tracing and DLSS, you best bet NVIDIA still holds the throne as AMD still falls short in quite several games in the list which includes titles like Cyberpunk, Metro Exodus and so much more.
For now, even if you could buy one (well, you can’t unfortunately), it’s better to opt in for team Greens GPU that is – detail and precision matters the most. But if you want a GPU that just works for gaming and 1080p is all that matters then the Radeon RX6700 XT isn’t a bad choice entirely. One thing we couldn’t really test is the card’s potential with FidelityFX, for that we have to wait till June but let’s see, if we can get hold of the card later.
Special Thanks to AMD Malaysia for providing the Radeon RX 6700XT for us to do this review.
