AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Spied Again In New Benchmark Leak Prior To This Week's Launch

First noticed by leaker and data scavenger @TUM_APISAK on Twitter, an Ashes of the Singularity (AOTS) benchmark has surfaced with a Radeon RX 6900 XT running the Crazy_1080p preset. The RX 6900 XT system scored 10100 points, with the average FPS sitting around 102FPS, as shown by the image below.
We can compare this data to another system with the same specs, but with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 swapped in. Again, on the Crazy_1080p preset, the NVIDIA system scored 10,400 points with an average framerate around 105FPS throughout the benchmarks. However, this sort of comparison is a little bit disingenuous, as Ashes of the Singularity is a CPU-bound game.
Being CPU-bound means that even though a CPU may be fast, the GPU is faster, which can cause issues for gamers or people running benchmarks. As Jacques van Rhyn at the Microsoft DirectX blog explains, “the GPU is able to make quick work of the instructions it is given, which means there are times during which the GPU is idle” and then “the frame rate is being limited by how fast the CPU is able to generate instructions for the GPU.” This is where the term “bottlenecking” comes into play, as the CPU is bottlenecking the GPU.

While the information that is slowly trickling out is interesting, it is hard to make direct comparisons of GPUs in CPU-bound games. The takeaway from the data, though, is that the AMD Radeon RX 6900XT is not significantly falling behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090. If the AMD card were significantly behind, we would have a different story on our hands. Ultimately, the AOTS benchmarks do not show the GPUs' full power, so we will have to wait and see what other benchmarks come out in the following days for a fuller picture.