AMD RX 6700 XT Review

1. Introduction2. AMD RX 6700 XT3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy5. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing6. Assassin's Creed Valhalla7. Control8. Cyberpunk 20779. Dirt 510. The Division 211. F1 202012. Gears 513. Hitman 314. Metro Exodus15. Red Dead Redemption 216. Total War Saga: Troy17. Watch Dogs: Legion18. Performance Summary (12 Game Average)19. Cost Per Frame Analysis20. Ray Tracing - Control21. Ray Tracing - Metro Exodus22. Ray Tracing - Watch Dogs: Legion23. Smart Access Memory (SAM) Tested24. Blender25. Clock Speed26. Temperatures27. Acoustics28. Noise-Normalised Temperatures29. Power Consumption30. Performance Per Watt31. Overclocking32. Closing Thoughts33. View All Pages

The RX 6700 XT also offers support for AMD's Smart Access Memory (SAM), which is essentially AMD's implementation for resizable BAR, a PCIe feature that's been around for a few years, but has only just started seeing mainstream adoption.

According to AMD, a Ryzen 3000/5000 CPU is required to use SAM, as is a 500-series motherboard. However, my ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero offers support for resizable BAR on the Z490 platform, so I put it to the test with the RX 6700 XT. To be clear, this hardware combination isn't officially supported by AMD, so the results may vary when compared to a Ryzen-based system, but we can still take a look.

Re-testing the twelve games in our test suite at 1440p, we found performance of the RX 6700 XT increased by up to 6% with SAM enabled, and the only game where performance degraded was in Watch Dogs: Legion, and that was only a difference of a single frame. Gears 5, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Assassin's Creed Valhalla all saw 5% improvements, though three of our games did not see any benefit at all.

Overall, average performance of the RX 6700 XT improved by 2% with SAM enabled. It's hardly a significant difference and certainly isn't enough to change our conclusion, but it is something.

Become a Patron!