AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT review: A curious return to mid-range GPUs

In a radical change of pace, AMD aimed for the high end of the GPU market with its first three RDNA 2 GPUs. The message was clear: It was ready to go toe-to-toe with NVIDIA's best hardware. Before that, AMD had spent the last few years aiming for mid-range and budget video cards, the sort of things most gamers could realistically buy. The $479 Radeon RX 6700 XT is the company's return to mid-range GPUs, albeit one that's $80 more than its predecessor, the 5700XT. On paper, it's a capable new entry, one that can compete directly with NVIDIA's $499 RTX 3070 and $399 RTX 3060 Ti.

But who am I kidding? Those OEM prices are pure fantasy by the time these cards reach retailers. RTX 3070 cards typically sell for upwards of $700 these days, if you can find one in stock at all. And the supposedly affordable RTX 3060 often hits upwards of $600 (based on Newegg's listings). AMD isn't immune to that curse either — the $649 RX 6800 XT often sells for more than $1,000. Scalpers aren't the only problem: The constrained supply chain for chips and other components due to the COVID-19 pandemic has also driven up prices considerably. AMD says it's aiming to deliver more 6700 XT GPUs to retailers than its last batch of cards, and it'll have other (unnamed) strategies in place to avoid stock issues.

AMD

AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT

80

SCORE

Engadget

80

Critics - Not yet scored

N/A

Users - Not yet scored

N/A

Pros

• Solid 1440p speeds
• Can handle a bit of 4K

Cons

• Lackluster ray tracing performance
• Noisy fans
• Availability (and retail pricing) still uncertain

All we can do is hope. For now, we'll judge the 6700 XT based on its supposed launch price, just like we've done for every GPU over the last decade. In that respect, it's pretty compelling: The 6700 XT features 40 compute units, 12GB of RAM and a gaming clock speed of 2.4GHz. In comparison, the $100 more expensive RX 6800 sports 60 compute units, 16GB of RAM and a gaming frequency of 1.8GHz. Clock speed isn't everything, especially when you've got more graphics cores at work, but it's clear that AMD is trying to make up for the 6700 XT's lesser hardware by cranking things up a notch. (Its game frequency is even 400Mhz higher than the top-end $999 RX 6900 XT!)

The card's design, unsurprisingly, fits right in alongside the Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT. The big differences? It's shorter than those beefy GPUs, and consequently it only has two cooling fans. But even though it's cheaper than the rest of the family, the 6700 XT still feels like a premium device. Some may prefer the slightly more refined look of AMD's last-gen GPUs, with their sleek blower coolers. But I'll take a slightly more garish aesthetic if it means the 6700 XT can disperse heat more effectively. As for connectivity, you've got the usual three DisplayPort 1.4 connections and an HDMI 2.1 port.

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

While the RX 6800 and 6800 XT were meant to show off what AMD's RDNA 2 architecture could do for 4K gaming, the 6700 XT is more focused on 1440p gameplay. That, along with its price, makes it the more sensible card for gamers running 1080p or 1440p displays with high refresh rates. On my system, powered by an Intel Core i7-8700K and 32GB of RAM, the 6700 XT managed to run Destiny 2 with maxed out graphics in 1440p between 75 fps and 100 fps. If you occasionally wanted to game in 4K — maybe to pipe your raids over to a living room TV — the AMD GPU comes out ahead with speeds between 50 fps and 75 fps.

The RX 6700 XT clocked about the same 1440p performance in Hitman 2 as RTX 3060 Ti, though once again came out ahead in 4K. That may make it seem like a solid value, but if the RTX 3070 ever comes back down to its $499 price, it would be a far more capable performer in both respects. The 3DMark TimeSpy benchmark (which runs in 1440p) lays out the differences even more strikingly: The RTX 3070 simply blows away AMD's card.

When it comes to ray tracing performance, I really wasn't expecting much from the 6700 XT. That was basically the Achilles heel of both the RX 6800 and 6800 XT, and I couldn't imagine AMD would somehow improve things with an cheaper GPU. In the 3DMark Port Royal benchmark, which specifically tests ray tracing performance, the 6700 XT clocked 1,000 points less than the RTX 3060 Ti, and an astounding 2,000 points less than the RTX 3070. While playing Control, the AMD GPU struggled to keep a steady 40 fps with high graphics settings and ray tracing in 1440p. In comparison, the RTX 3070 was able to reach 50 fps with the same settings, and sailed past 65 fps once I enabled NVIDIA's DLSS feature.