AMD has officially announced the fastest Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card, its Big Navi Radeon RX 6900 XT, which is designed to compete against NVIDIA’s flagship, the GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT with the RDNA 2 architecture delivers an insane improvement in performance per watt compared to AMD’s last-generation RDNA 1 graphics architecture & trades blows with the top Ampere graphics cards at 4K resolution.
AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Flagship “Big Navi” Graphics Card Unveiled – Tackles The GeForce RTX 3090 at Just $999 US
AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card is based on the same RDNA 2 GPU architecture that is powering the rest of the Radeon RX 6000 series lineup. The main difference is that the GPU AMD decided to feature on its Radeon RX 6900 XT is the fully enabled variant of the fastest chip they have ever designed for the gaming segment and hence known as “Big Navi”. It’s the biggest gaming chip AMD has ever made on the FinFET 7nm process node and features an upgraded architecture which carries much higher efficiency and performance per watt.
The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is powered by the Navi 21 XTX GPU and will be replacing the Radeon VII as AMD’s flagship gaming graphics card. According to AMD themselves, the Radeon RX 6900 XT is positioned against NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards and feature insane specs, brand new features and stunning price points for the performance they offer.
Following is a look at the specs of the card before we give a breakdown the architectural and feature side.
AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT “Big Navi 21 XT” GPU Powered 16 GB Graphics Card
The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT will come packed with the Navi 21 XTX GPU which is the fully enabled die featuring 80 Compute Units or 5120 SPs. The card will also feature 16 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit bus interface, a 512 GB/s total bandwidth, and clock speeds of 2015 MHz base and 2250 MHz boost at reference specs. There’s also 80 Ray accelerators for ray-tracing enablement on the graphics cards (one RA per Compute Unit). The graphics card will feature a based TBP of 300W with factory overclocked models pushing it above 350W and will arrive at a later date.
In addition to the standard memory, the Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card will also feature 128 MB of Infinity Cache on the GPU die. The cache will help boost bandwidth for higher performance at resolutions beyond 1080p HD. The 128 MB Infinity Cache boosts the standard 512 GB/s bandwidth by 3.25x, delivering an effective bandwidth of up to 1.664 TB/s across all Big Navi GPU based graphics cards.
In the performance metrics shown by AMD, the Radeon RX 6900 XT with Rage Mode and Smart Access Memory enabled, features performance on par and even better in some cases than the NVIDIA’s fastest GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card. The difference here is that AMD’s solution not only features higher performance efficiency but also comes at a $500 US lower price point.
AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series “RDNA 2” Graphics Card Lineup:
| Graphics Card | AMD Radeon RX 6700 | AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT | AMD Radeon RX 6800 | AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT | AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU | Navi 22 (XL?) | Navi 22 (XT?) | Navi 21 XL | Navi 21 XT | Navi 21 XTX |
| Process Node | 7nm | 7nm | 7nm | 7nm | 7nm |
| Transistors | TBA | TBA | 26.8 Billion | 26.8 Billion | 26.8 Billion |
| Compute Units | TBA | 40 | 60 | 72 | 80 |
| Stream Processors | TBA | 2560 | 3840 | 4608 | 5120 |
| TMUs/ROPs | TBA | TBA | 240 / 96 | 288 / 128 | 320 / 128 |
| Game Clock | TBA | TBA | 1815 MHz | 2015 MHz | 2015 MHz |
| Boost Clock | TBA | TBA | 2105 MHz | 2250 MHz | 2250 MHz |
| FP32 TFLOPs | TBA | TBA | 16.17 TFLOPs | 20.74 TFLOPs | 23.04 TFLOPs |
| Memory Size | 12 GB GDDR6 | 12 GB GDDR6 | 16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache | 16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache | 16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache |
| Memory Bus | 192-bit | 192-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Clock | 14 Gbps? | 16 Gbps? | 16 Gbps | 16 Gbps | 16 Gbps |
| Bandwidth | 320 GB/s | 384 GB/s | 512 GB/s | 512 GB/s | 512 GB/s |
| TDP | TBA | TBA | 250W | 300W | 300W |
| Price | TBA | TBA | $579 US | $649 US | $999 US |
AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Series With Triple-Fan Cooling Solution
As for the designs themselves, the Radeon RX 6900 XT flagship cooling design looks amazing with the red and black design. The card features a triple axial-tech fan setup on the shroud and has a large aluminum heatsink that runs beneath it.
The card has a LED-lit Radeon logo on the side and there is a large cut out on the side for the fans to vent out hot air. This design is very reminiscent of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 series Founders Edition cooler. The card will feature dual 8-pin power and display ports would include a USB Type-C (VirtualLink), 1 HDMI, and 2 DisplayPort connectors.
The card also features a fancy backplate along with a retention bracket to hold the cooler in place. The Radeon RX “Big Navi” GPU looks like it will come in the standard 2-slot reference design which is the same as NVIDIA’s flagship RTX 3080 but not as huge as the triple-slot GeForce RTX 3090.
AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Graphics Cards Pricing & Availability
The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards will be available starting 8th of December. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is said to carry a price tag of $999 US and is expected to be a reference only model for this year. AMD has stated that EK Water blocks will be shipping custom loop cooling solutions for the Radeon RX 6900 XT around the same time as launch so at least liquid cooling enthusiasts will be getting some sort of custom cooling availability.