AMD has announced its mainstream RDNA 2-powered GPU, with the RX 6700 XT set to launch on March 18.
This is the most affordable GPU in the 6000 series yet, with specs that target 1440p for maximum performance. This pits it against Nvidia’s RTX 3070 and less powerful RTX 3060 Ti, with AMD nestling in between the two with its $479 MSRP. Of course, if the past few months have been any indication, that figure might not count for anything, considering the inflation of GPU pricing due to stock shortages.
If you can snag one at release for anywhere close to the recommend price, AMD is promising performance on par and, in some cases, exceeding that of the RTX 3070. In its internal benchmarks, AMD has the RX 6700 XT beating its Nvidia rival in many modern titles. What isn’t as clear in the image is that the benchmarks are making use of AMD’s Smart Access Memory boost for increased performance, a feature which Nvidia hasn’t yet rolled out to the RTX 3070.
That could skew metric somewhat, but benchmarks are only truly accurate once consumers start getting a hold of cards anyway. The RX 6700 XT is a powerful one then, sporting a core clock of 2424MHz, 12GB of GDDR6 memory, 40 compute units (just 20 shy of the 60 in the 4K-capable RX 6800 XT), and a TDP of 230W.
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AMD will be launching reference models with its familiar 6000 series dual-fan design, while AIB designs seem to mostly feature triple-fan configuration. Both will be available on March 18, with AMD promising that it will refresh stock on its own website weekly going forward. That might help with the price hikes, but only if AMD can supply enough to satiate demand.
AMD closed off today’s stream with a tease of 6000 series GPUs being prepared for laptops in the near future, so look out for an announcement on that soon.
