The video card market is turned upside down. If you already see a nice video card in stock, the prices are absurd, and used cards from two years ago sell today for more than the original new price. That sets a somewhat sour tone with every new video card that manufacturers release, but does not alter the fact that we would like to know how it compares with the competition.
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
MSRP € 489 (street price from € 750)
Clock speed 2321 MHz (up to 2581 MHz boost)
Memory 12 GB
Recommended nutrition 650 watts
Reference model dimensions 267 mm length, 2 locks thick
Website www.amd.com
8 Score 80 
- Pros
- Excellent performance at 1440p
- Excellent performance at 1080p
- Approx. 30 percent faster than predecessor
- Negatives
- Is a bit short for 4K gaming
- Less interesting for streamers
- Reference card becomes slightly warm
The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT is the successor to the RX 5700 XT, and the smaller brother of the RX 6800 (XT) that AMD released for the higher segment at the end of last year. With a suggested retail price of 489 euros, it competes with the theoretically slightly more expensive Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, and the theoretically slightly cheaper RTX 3060 Ti. We say “in theory”, because the current situation in the market makes it impossible to give really concrete price details. The price point suggests the target audience: this must be a card that offers excellent performance for gaming at 1080p and 1440p resolutions.
Performance where it counts
Gamers with a 4K panel look better at a more luxurious model, the RX 6700 XT is a little short for that, but the larger group of gamers with a 1080p Full HD or a 1440p Quad HD monitor will be provided with excellent results by this new card. All recent games run at 60 FPS or more on high settings, and if you manage to get your hands on this card, you can enjoy a very comfortable gaming experience on such screens.
The slightly more expensive RTX 3070 is just a bit too ambitious, that card is about 5% ahead of this Radeon card. These are not differences that you will notice in practice, but with an equal pricing, the RTX is obvious. On the other hand, the AMD card stays ahead of the RTX 3060 Ti by a comparable margin. Price-wise, he should therefore fall in between.
Warm reference card
Although AMD has developed a chic design for their reference card, its performance is not as impressive as hoped, due to the slightly higher power consumption of this AMD card than its Nvidia counterparts. Not a difference that you will really feel in the wallet, but a factor nonetheless. The menu remains fairly quiet, but it also becomes relatively warm. That is not a problem in a somewhat decent housing, but it is obvious to consider an RX 6700 XT from an AMD board partner. Think of companies such as Gigabyte, ASUS and MSI. That is, if they can be found for modest additional prices.
Waiting for new features
AMD has one big problem, and that is that Nvidia is still ahead of the general feature set. Real Time Ray Tracing is still in its infancy, but it still works better on Nvidia cards than on AMD, where it weighs more heavily on performance. Nvidia also has the advantage for creatives as their hardware encoder offers advantages for content streaming and for working with Adobe Premiere Pro, something that AMD does not yet have a good answer for. AMD cards are therefore interesting if you actually mainly care about gaming.
Conclusion
In itself, the Radeon RX 6700 XT is a fine video card with excellent performance for gamers with 1080p and 1440p monitors. The only question is to what extent the suggested retail price of 489 will actually be achieved, as we suspect that this card will also be difficult to find. Ultimately, there is only one thing you can do if you’re really looking for a video card: take it into consideration, and if you know where to find it, make sure the price matches the performance. That is, it is slightly cheaper than an RTX 3070, and not much more expensive than an RTX 3060 Ti.
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