How Much Does It Cost?
This is where AMD makes its power move, as the 6900 XT costs “only” $999 or around £770 here in the UK. That’s a lot less than what you’ll be paying for the Nvidia RTX 3090 cards, which are currently around £1400… or to put it more bluntly, double the price. They sure as heck aren’t half the performance of the Nvidia cards either, and AMD even set a fair few new records for our testing today. So, while it is expensive, it’s seriously good value for money given how it stacks up against the flagship Nvidia card.
Overview
While the 6900 XT is bloody fast, and insanely good value for money vs what Nvidia is doing, AMD are their own worst enemy. Actually, Nvidia suffers from the same issue. The RTX 3090 isn’t that much faster than the RTX 3080, it just has a lot of expensive VRAM in it. AMD hasn’t gone nuts with the VRAM on their flagship, but again, it’s not THAT much faster than the model down. If anything, the 6900 XT shows us just how much value you’re getting from the AMD Radeon RX 6800. It’s always going to be a case of diminishing returns for the flagship models though, paying a lot more to get a bit more performance.
Gaming
There’s no compromise here, the 6900 XT is extremely fast. The card set a new record score in FireStrike, Watchdogs, Dirt 5, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Tomb Raider, Horizon Zero Dawn and even one in Metro. Unsurprisingly, the ones it didn’t win are games that were optimised for Nvidia, but it still maintained competitive performance with the top Nvidia cards. It never felt like it was holding us up.
1080p, well yeah, obviously. Any settings, any frame rate, you’ll get there. 1440p, also a breeze, and massive refresh rates are still no issue. Even at 4K, you’re looking at some of the best all-round performance we’ve ever seen. An RTX 3090 out paced it in some tests, but not by much and was even beaten in a fair few tests too.
Nvidia does have dominion over the RTX performance, but AMD needs time for their drivers to mature, and they will. Remember, when we tested RTX, it was SLOW, a few driver and game updates later, and things swiftly changed. AMD will get there. However, they did get a new record score in Dirt 5 RT, so we know this card has the power to get the job done.
Hardware
This high-end 6900 XT is beautifully engineered, and that can be seen both in the design, it’s also something you can feel while holding the card; it feels like a quality product. However, it’s also visible in the performance. At full load the card hit 73c, which is decent given the level of performance, and only 3c above the performance of the 6800 XT. It was only putting out 44.7 dBa at load too, slightly more than the 6800 XT, but still one of the quieter cards we’ve ever tested.
Should I Buy One?
While I find it difficult to recommend anyone to buy a card that costs (effectively) $1000, the 6900 XT is surprisingly good value for money compared to its main rival. I think for your modern enthusiast gamer, the RX 6800 XT is a damn fine option. However, if you need that performance edge in your life, or even in your work flow, it’s going to be hard to beat what AMD is offering right now.
