RX 6700 XT Review and Benchmarks

JS_MC

AMD has just released the RX 6700 XT, their latest of the RX 6000 Series. AMD is positioning the 6700 XT as the cutting edge GPU for 1440p gaming, stating that it delivers “ultra-high frame rates and maximum 1440p gaming.” In this overview, we’ll take a look to see how the 6700 XT performs in some in-game benchmarks. If you’re curious to see how your system stacks up against the 6700 XT, you can run these benchmarks at home.

Specifications

The 6700 XT lists some very impressive specifications that set the stage for it to shine brightly, especially over the previous generation’s specs. 

AMD's RDNA 2 architecture continues to deliver significant improvements in performance over the previous generation, and we’re glad to see it across the entire 6000 series lineup. Specifically for the 6700 XT, the higher clock speeds and four additional gigs of VRAM, for a total of 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM, are the standout improvements. While the additional VRAM may not be required, it’s great to have. This allows for some future-proofing with games and other software that may require additional resources. At this time, all the games that we tested did not need this much memory, and at 1440p, this matches our expectations, but it’s still good to have the headroom. 

Benchmarks

The AMD RX 6700 XT benchmarks are promising, and AMD came through and achieved their goal of 1440p gaming at maximum settings. In the games that we tested, we saw a very playable experience at 1440p, and the 6700 XT even offers a playable 4K gaming experience in some titles.

In our benchmarking, we set every possible setting to the maximum to thoroughly test this card's capabilities.  Our test bench was a base Maingear Vybe 2, which includes a Ryzen 9 3900X, 32GB of 3200Mhz RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD, and we swapped out the GPU with an RX 6700 XT. Our tests specifically use a PowerColor RX 6700 XT Red Devil. 

We are using a pre-release driver for this GPU; because of this, some results may vary over time, but you'll typically see better results as the drivers continue to mature. It should also be mentioned that we are using DirectX 11 for these benchmarks as that is the API that the majority of players will use when playing these games.

Frametimes are as follow, 1080p; 10.9ms | 1440p; 14.9ms | 4K; 27.9ms

Frametimes are as follow, 1080p; 6.97ms | 1440p; 7.67ms | 4K; 11.15ms

Frametimes are as follow, 1080p; 11.4ms | 1440p; 14.2ms | 4K; 19.7ms

Note: The consistent 1% low FPS across resolutions is likely caused by an engine bottleneck or caused in the scene transitions during the benchmark. 

Frametimes are as follow, 1080p; 11.2ms | 1440p; 14.3ms | 4K; 25.1ms

Frametimes are as follow, 1080p; 3.1ms | 1440p; 4.7ms | 4K; 10.2ms

Frametimes are as follow, 1080p; 12.0ms | 1440p; 18.6ms | 4K; 38.6ms

Overview

All in all, the RX 6700 XT offers a great experience at 1440p, as AMD has promised, and in some titles even provides a very playable experience at 4K. However, you may have to reduce some settings to stay consistently above 60 FPS. We were thoroughly impressed with the way that this card handled the games that we benchmarked here. If you’re looking to play games at 1440p, the RX 6700 XT might be your answer.