AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT en RX 6750 XT – Review

Today AMD introduces three video cards that are part of the RX 6000 series as a refresh. Existing chips are used, but with faster memory and modified firmware, the RX 6950 XT, RX 6750 XT and RX 6650 XT should still distinguish themselves from the video cards that follow them.

Same chips, higher clock speeds

Rumors about the next generation of video cards are growing, but that hasn’t stopped Nvidia and AMD from releasing faster variants late in the lifecycle of the current generation. The RTX 3090 Ti recently appeared, a maximally screwed-up Ampere card that stood out mainly due to its enormous energy consumption. This time it’s AMD’s turn, which doesn’t seem to make a big deal on paper, but does use higher TGPs on the three new Radeons. These are a direct result of the slightly increased clock speeds and the faster video memory.

The Radeon RX 6950 XT is positioned as the new flagship above the RX 6900 XT and consumes a maximum of 335 watts according to the reference specifications, eleven percent more than the RX 6900 XT. It complements the portfolio and therefore does not replace the RX 6900 XT, but with both a higher clocked GPU and GDDR6 memory, the performance should come out on top. On the RX 6750 XT, the specified maximum reference power consumption with 250 watts is also higher than the 230 watts of the RX 6700 XT. These two cards will also continue to coexist in AMD’s lineup. This is different with the RX 6650 XT, which completely replaces the RX 6600 XT. The latter card will disappear completely, according to AMD, as soon as the current stocks are used up.

Faster memory

The three new Radeons have in common that they all have faster GDDR6 memory than the previously released RX 6000 series, which is also the most obvious difference. The new video memory has a speed of 18Gbit per second, slightly faster than the 16Gbit per second that the cards of the current RX 6000 series have. The speed of video memory is a determining factor for performance with modern GPUs. With the further development and evolution of GDDR6, AMD now sees the opportunity to make its current graphics chips perform slightly better in games without too much intervention. That potential improvement is somewhat smaller with the RDNA2 architecture specifically, because these chips use Infinity Cache, a memory buffer that reduces dependence on fast video memory by storing frequently used data on the chip.

RX 6950 XT and RX 6750 XT: tested with custom models

In this review, we used MSI’s Gaming X Trio cards to test the RX 6950 XT and RX 6750 XT. Unfortunately AMD decided not to send us reference cards, forcing us to use custom cards. Moreover, these two models could not be set according to reference specification, which can distort the picture of how much faster the new cards are exactly.

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