AMD has finally announced its latest addition to the Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards, the Radeon RX 6700 XT. Unlike the previously announced RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6800, the RX 6700 XT falls on the more affordable category of the Radeon RX 6000 series cards but still capable of delivering an exceptional 1440p performance as what AMD.
The RX 6700 XT is built on 7nm process technology and AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture just like the RX 6800 series, but with fewer cores count and Infinity cache in order to fit into the lower price point. Features-wise, the RX 6700 XT offers the same features as the rest of the existing RX 6000 series, i.e Smart Access Memory, Radeon Anti-Lag, Radeon Boost, FidelityFX, and of course, the much-hyped DirectX Raytracing.
In the announcement, AMD confirmed that the new Radeon RX 6700 XT will be available for purchase starting from March 18th, 2021 at the price of $479 onwards. Both reference design and custom design from the board partners will be available on the same day as well.
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Specifications
| Model | AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT | AMD Radeon RX 6800 |
| Compute Units | 40 | 60 |
| Stream Processors | 2560 | 3840 |
| Ray Accelerations | 40 | 60 |
| Game Clock | 2321 MHz | 1815 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 2425 MHz | 2105 MHz |
| Memory | 12GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Clock | 16Gbps | 16Gbps |
| Infinity Cache | 96MB | 128MB |
| Memory bus width | 192-bit | 256-bit |
| Bandwidth | 384 GB/s | 512 GB/s |
| TDP | 230W | 250W |
| Suggested PSU | 650W | 650W |
| Power Connectors | 1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin | 2 x 8-pin |
| Display Outputs | 1 x HDMI, 3 x DisplayPort | 1 x HDMI, 2 x DisplayPort, 1 x USB Type-C |
| MSRP | $479 | $579 |
| Launch date | 18th March 2021 | 18th November 2020 |
Now if we take a look at the specifications, we can see that AMD going for a beefy 12GB GDDR6 memory, slightly lower than the 16GB GDDR6 on the higher-end Radeon RX 6000 series cards but still more than what the competitors are offering at the moment. The display outputs come with 1 x HDMI port and 3 x DisplayPort, which is kind of sad to see that AMD decided to not include the USB Type-C port on the RX 6700 XT.
Its power requirement is slightly lower than the RX 6800, but you will still need a 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connector for the RX 6700 XT. From the looks of it, the lower cores count but a slight reduction in power requirement makes it a little bit awkward for the RX 6700 XT, power efficiency-wise.
We can’t really confirm its actual performance until we get our hands on one to test but according to the internal testing for 1440P gaming by AMD, the RX 6700 XT seems to be on par and if not, faster than the GeForce RTX 3070 in most of the titles tested. Of course, that’s only for the non-raytracing performance.
If everything goes just as well as what AMD has announced today, the RX 6700 XT seems like a pretty decent choice for gamers who game on 1440P, or perhaps those who can’t get their hands on the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 at this point of time. Though you might want to lower the expectations on ray tracing performance for now, until AMD finally releases their own alternative for DLSS, the FidelityFX Super Resolution.
