AMD RX 6950 XT, 6750 XT & 6650 XT Review ft. Sapphire

1. Introduction2. Sapphire RX 6650 XT Nitro+3. Sapphire RX 6750 XT Nitro+4. Sapphire RX 6950 XT Nitro+ Pure5. Testing Methodology6. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy7. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing8. Assassin's Creed Valhalla9. Cyberpunk 207710. Dying Light 211. F1 202112. Far Cry 613. Forza Horizon 514. God of War15. Horizon Zero Dawn16. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy17. Red Dead Redemption 218. Resident Evil Village19. Total War: Warhammer III20. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)21. Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk 207722. Ray Tracing: Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition23. Ray Tracing: Resident Evil: Village24. Clock Speed25. GPU Temperatures26. Acoustics27. Power Draw: 1080p28. Power Draw: 1440p29. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)30. Performance per Watt: 1080p31. Performance per Watt: 1440p32. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)33. Total System Power Draw34. Overclocking35. Closing Thoughts36. View All Pages

Today sees the launch of AMD's latest GPUs – the RX 6950 XT, 6750 XT and 6650 XT. Based on the same RDNA 2 architecture and 7nm process as the rest of the RX 6000 series, this launch is best described as a mild refresh, with the core GPU make-up remaining unchanged. Instead, we are simply getting higher clock speeds and faster memory modules – so just how much more performance is on offer from these new models?

Unlike previous AMD launches, today we are not focusing on an ‘MBA' reference design. Instead, Sapphire sent us its Nitro+ design for the RX 6650 XT and 6750 XT, while we are looking at the brand-new Nitro+ Pure for the RX 6950 XT.

These are factory overclocked models, with increased power limits and dual-BIOS support, which are all features that enthusiasts will be interested in. Let's find out just how good these cards are.

	RX 6950 XT	RX 6900 XT	RX 6750 XT	RX 6700 XT	RX 6650 XT	RX 6600 XT
Architecture	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA 2
Manufacturing Process	7nm	7nm	7nm	7nm	7nm	7nm
Transistor Count	26.8 billion	26.8 billion	17.2 billion	17.2 billion	11.1 billion	11.1 billion
Die Size	519 mm²	519 mm²	336 mm²	336 mm²	237 mm²	237 mm²
Ray Accelerators	80	80	40	40	32	32
Compute Units	80	80	40	40	32	32
Stream Processors	5120	5120	2560	2560	2048	2048
Game GPU Clock	Up to 2100MHz	Up to 2015MHz	Up to 2495MHz	Up to 2424MHz	Up to 2410MHz	Up to 2359MHz
Boost GPU Clock	Up to 2310MHz	Up to 2250MHz	Up to 2600MHz	Up to 2581MHz	Up to 2635MHz	Up to 2589MHz
ROPs	128	128	64	64	64	64
AMD Infinity Cache	128MB	128MB	96MB	96MB	32MB	32MB
Memory	16GB GDDR6 18Gbps	16GB GDDR6 16Gbps	12GB GDDR6 18Gbps	12GB GDDR6 16Gbps	8GB GDDR6 17.5Gbps	8GB GDDR6 16Gbps
Memory Bandwidth	576 GB/s	512 GB/s	432 GB/s	384 GB/s	280 GB/s	256 GB/s
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	192-bit	128-bit	128-bit
Board Power	335W	300W	250W	230W	180W	160W

Before diving into the review, it's worth quickly recapping the core spec of the new cards. In essence, AMD has simply taken the existing RX 6900 XT, 6700 XT and 6600 XT, and added a factory overclock alongside faster memory modules. As you can see, the fundamental makeup of each GPU is unchanged – core count, RT cores, ROPS and Infinity Cache is all the same. It just comes down to GPU and memory frequency.

That does also necessitate an increase to power draw, with the RX 6950 XT rated at 335W, the 6750 XT at 250W and the 6650 XT at 180W. All three Sapphire cards we are looking at today have even higher power limits though, but we are on hand to utilise our best ever GPU power testing methodology in this review, so read on for our most detailed power testing yet.

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