We take our noise measurements with the sound meter positioned 1 foot from the graphics card. I measured the noise floor to be 32 dBA, thus anything above this level can be attributed to the graphics cards. The power supply is passive for the entire power output range we tested all graphics cards in, while all CPU and system fans were disabled. A reading under load comes from running Cyberpunk 2077 for 30 minutes.
Moving onto noise levels, default behaviour saw the two fans spin up to 49%, or around 1680rpm. That means the 6700 XT is fractionally quieter than the RX 6800, but only by 1dBa. Either way, for a reference card it is a solid result and marks a 10dBa reduction in noise compared to the RX 5700 XT, so AMD's coolers have clearly come a long way from the blower-style cards of old.