AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT | Review
Design and technical specifications
On an aesthetic level, the new Radeon RX 6900 XT resumes the lines of the two RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT seen a few weeks ago. Same triple fan cooler with open air design, same red edging on the side and same metal backplate. If we combine design with size, the RX 6900 XT is indistinguishable from the RX 6800 XT; even the latest addition from AMD measures 267 x 120 mm and occupies 2.5 slots, making it suitable for virtually any chassis, except for the smallest Mini-ITXs. From this point of view, the comparison with the RTX 3090 is merciless: the top of the Nvidia range with its 313 x 138 mm occupies 3 slots and is complicated to install, as well as in practically all Mini-ITXs, even in some cases. mid-tower.Speaking instead of technical specifications, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is based on the new RDNA 2 architecture and offers 80 Compute Units, a peak frequency of 2250MHz and 16GB of GDDR6 memory. The memory interface is always 256-bit and the total bandwidth stands at 512GB / s, while the Total Board Power (TBP) is 300W.
Looking at the summary table below, it is easy to see how the only difference with the RX 6800 XT is the number of Compute Units: compared to its younger sister, the new Radeon RX 6900 XT integrates 8 more, which result in more Ray Accelerators (again one for CU) and Stream Processors.
More Compute Units would go hand in hand with an increase in TBP, especially if the frequencies remain the same, but not so is for the RX 6900 XT. AMD has managed to keep TBP within 300 watts by working hard on the card's energy efficiency, however to avoid potential problems the company recommends an 850W PSU, versus the 750W suggested for the RX 6800 XT.
Radeon RX 6900 XT Radeon RX 6800 XT Radeon RX 6800 Architecture RDNA 2 RDNA 2 RDNA 2 Production process 7 nm 7 nm 7 nm Transistor 26.8 billion 26.8 billion 26.8 billion Die size 519 mm² 519 mm² 519 mm² Compute Unit (CU) 80 72 60 Ray Accelerator 80 72 60 Stream Processor 5120 4608 3840 Frequency (game / boost) 2015/2250 MHz 2015/2250 MHz 1815/2105 MHz ROPS 128 128 96 AMD Infinity Cache 128 MB 128 MB 128 MB Memory 16GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 Bandwidth memory 512 GB / s 512 GB / s 512 GB / s Memory interface 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit TBP 300 W 300 W 250 W The new Radeon RX 6900 XT obviously carries all of them the novelties of the RDNA 2 architecture, such as AMD Infinity Cache, Variable Rate Shading, support for AV1 codec and the HDMI 2.1 standard and, of course, AMD Smart Access Memory. We talked about these technologies in more detail in the review dedicated to the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800, so we refer you there for more information.
