AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU Review Roundup

The brand new Radeon RX 6900 XT from AMD launched today…apparently, and tech journalists from around the world have all taken to the internet to let everyone know what they think about the latest high-end GPU offering from AMD!

the launch comes just a week after Nvidia released their newest budget-friendly GPU the 3060 Ti, and it’s going to be interesting to see how AMD’s latest graphics card stacks up against the 3000 series line up, and how it performs over the 6800 XT.

Anyway, enough preamble, time to find out how the 6900 XT performs!

Before we jump into the different reviews from around the web, here is the bottom line verdict on the 6900 XT: at $999, this is a card that can offer great gameplay performance and traditional GPU features, but don’t expect this card to touch the 3090 in terms of ray tracing or productivity.

When it comes to traditional rasterization, the 6900XT can hold its own against the 3090 in most modern games, with frame rates lagging just behind the Nvidia entries in games like Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, Microsoft Flight Simulator, but the success stories kind of stop here.

Whilst ray tracing is possible, the 6900 XT is outstripped by the 3090 and the 3080 pretty easily when it comes to in-game performance with Ray tracing turned on. In fairness, AMD did tell the world they weren’t focussing on ray tracing in this generation of GPUs, but with it being possible on competing cards it seems amiss to not mention that it isn’t as strong on the 6900 XT as it is even in the likes of the 3080.

You also have to consider the DLSS advantage that Nvidia has over AMD. whilst it may have seemed like a fad or flash in the pan trick when it was first conceived, now DLSS looks to be here to stay, with users relying on it in-game more and more as they make the move to next-gen graphics cards.

You are also going to see the 6900 XT falling short of Nvidia’s benchmarked productivity rates as well, which is definitely disappointing, but remember that this card does cost $999, so you have to expect there to be some kind of dip in performance compared to the much higher price scaling of the 3090.

Some reviewers are also reporting that whilst the power consumption is on the whole stable, it can be susceptible to sudden surges – which might cause an issue with your power supply if it isn’t up to the task of handling those sudden spikes.

All in all, if you are looking for a card that can offer high spec performance in-game, for a decent price that isn’t going to bankrupt you, and you are ok not having ceiling scraping GPU performance then this is the card for you. Otherwise, it’s worth holding onto that cash, and waiting for Nvidia to restock their cards, or even splashing out on a 6800 XT.

Video Reviews:

Linus Tech Tips – Mixed
Gamers Nexus – Mixed
JayzTwoCents – Negative
Joker Productions – Recommended For Gaming

Written Reviews: 

Kitguru – Positive 
‘The problem remains that, across the board, I don’t think the RX 6900 XT is fast enough to justify its asking price, when the RTX 3080 is snapping at its heels (and outpacing it in ray traced workloads) for £250 less cash.’
Dominic Moass- Kitguru

Hexus – Positive 
‘RX 6900 XT is the best that Radeon has to offer, but we’d buy RTX 3080 or RX 6800 XT instead and put the significant remaining cash towards games and upgrades.’
Tarinder Sandhu – Hexus 

Hot Hardware – Positive
‘The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT rocks. Is it the fastest card across the board? No. But it is an immensely powerful and capable GPU, with a beefy 16GB of memory, a leading-edge feature set, and obvious synergy with current-gen game console architectures, which should bode well for game development and optimizations moving forward.’
Marco Chiapetta  – Hot Hardware

Guru3D – Positive
‘Conclusively, RDNA2 is a real thing, granted with mixed results. Overall the picture painted here is positive, as it is a bit of a beast eh? But the higher up you go in resolution, the faster it’ll run out of stamina.’
Hilbert Hagedoorn – Guru3D

PCWorld – Positive 
‘Bottom line? This is a fantastic graphics card, offering a premium metal-clad design, quiet acoustics, and the second-best average gaming performance in the world, for a massive $500 less than the RTX 3090.’
Brad Chacos – PCWorld

Tech Critter – Mostly Positive
‘With that being said, the RX 6900 XT isn’t exactly the RTX 3090 killer as some claimed (just yet maybe) but there’s still no denying that it’s one of the best performing graphics cards that can go almost on part with the RTX 3090 in terms of raw performance but cost $500 less.’
Low – Tech Critter

TechPowerUp – Positive
‘The Radeon RX 6900 XT is AMD’s return to the fight for the high-end graphics performance throne.’
W1zzard – TechPowerUp

Tom’s Hardware – Mixed
‘Overall, however, the RX 6900 XT fails to impress relative to the RX 6800 XT. It’s such an incremental bump in performance that it hardly seems worth the trouble. That’s even assuming that there will be enough cards to meet the demand, which if recent history has taught us anything, there won’t be.’
Jarred Walton – Tom’s Hardware