Radeon RX 6900 XT Review: AMD's Most Powerful Gaming GPU Ever

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards represented in this article on a MSI X570 Godlike motherboard, equipped with a Ryzen 9 5950X and 16GB of G.SKILL DDR4 RAM clocked at 3,200MHz. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" defaults, then we disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's clock was dialed in to its optimal performance settings using its XMP profile and the solid state drive was then formatted and Windows 10 Professional x64 was installed and fully updated. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, games, applications and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests. For all of the standard tests, the Radeon RX 6000 series cards were tested using their "Balanced" performance profile. "Rage" mode was enabled for a sampling of tests present in the overclocking section of this article, however. The new Radeons were also tested with and without Smart Access Memory enabled, in an attempt to paint the most complete picture of performance.

HotHardware's Test System Intel Core i9 Powered

Hardware Used: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (3.4GHz - 4.9GHz, 16-Core) MSI X570 Godlike (AMD X570 Chipset) 16GB G.SKILL DDR4-3200 Samsung SSD 970 EVO Integrated Audio Integrated Network NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT AMD Radeon RX 6800 AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

Relevant Software: Windows 10 Pro x64 (v2004) AMD Radeon Software v20.8.3 NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v457.30 Benchmarks Used: IndigoBench v4 LuxMark v4_alpha0 SiSoft SANDRA 2020 VRMark 3DMark (Time Spy, Fire Strike, Port Royal, DXR) Unigine Superposition Crytek Neon Noir Metro Exodus Red Dead Redemption 2 Gears Tactics F1 2020 FarCry: New Dawn

SiSoft SANDRA 2020 Scientific Analysis And Image Processing OpenCL Performance Tests

SANDRA's GPGPU Image Processing benchmark runs through an array of filters on its reference data and offers up an aggregate score, derived from a multitude of individual results. The Scientific Analysis benchmark runs though an array of General Matrix Multiply (GEMM), N-Body Simulations (NBDY), and Fast Fourier Transformation ops and reports the overall speed in FLOPs. CUDA and OpenCL code paths are available in these tests, but we used OpenCL on all cards to keep the playing field level. Previously, using the CUDA code path with NVIDIA GPUs resulted in better performance, but OpenCL actually outperforms it in these tests now...

The scales tipped in favor of NVIDIA in SANDRA's Scientific Analysis tests, however. Here, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT trails the GeForce RTX 30-series cards across the board -- by large margins. It only manages to pull ahead of the Titan RTX in the N-Body simulation, but even then, it's my the slimmest of margins.

IndigoBench GPU Rendering Performance

The Radeon RX 6900 XT's performance was mixed in IndigoBench as well. Here, the Radeon RX 6900 XT puts up the best score of the bunch with the more complex Bedroom model, but it ends up trailing the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti with the Supercar model, not to mention the higher-end NVIDIA GPUs, which jumped out to some big leads.

Unigine Superposition Pseudo-DirectX / OpenGL Gaming

Superposition is a relatively new benchmark from Unigine, powered by the UNIGINE 2 Engine. It offers an array of benchmark modes, targeting gaming workloads as well as VR, with both DirectX and OpenGL code paths. There is an extreme hardware stability test built-in as well. Unigine Superposition uses the developer’s unique SSRTGI (Screen-Space Ray-Traced Global Illumination) dynamic lighting technology, along with high quality textures and models, to produce some stunning visuals. We ran Superposition in two modes using the DirectX code path – 1080p Extreme and VR Future -- to compare the performance of all of the graphics cards featured here.

Unigine Superposition

Unigine Superposition's 1080P Extreme test had the new Radeon RX 6900 XT outpacing every other card in the stack, except for the more expensive GeForce RTX 3090. The GeForce RTX 3080 is right on its heals, though.


Superposition's VR Future benchmark tells the same story. Here, the Radeon RX 6900 XT once again edges out the GeForce RTX 3080, but it couldn't catch the GeForce RTX 3090.

UL VRMark Testing Rift And Vive Readiness

UL's VRMark is designed to test a PC’s readiness for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets. The benchmark does not, however, require that one of the headsets is attached to the PC to run and it uses an in-house graphics engine and content to ensure comparable results between different platforms. We ran the "Blue Room" VRMark test at defaults settings here, which is currently the most taxing test offered by the tool.


Starting to see pattern yet? Our results with VRMark look very much like Unigine's VR Future benchmark above. AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT clearly outpaces the GeForce RTX 3080 (and everything below it), but the GeForce RTX 3090 remains the king of the hill.

UL 3DMark Time Spy Direct X 12 Performance

In the DX12-based 3DMark Tme Spy benchmark, the Radeon RX 6900 XT once again outpaces every other card we tested, save for the pricier GeForce RTX 3090.

UL 3DMark Fire Strike Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Fire Strike has multiple benchmark modes: Normal mode runs at 1920x1080, Extreme mode targets 2560x1440, and Ultra mode runs at a 4K resolution. GPU target frame buffer utilization for normal mode is 1GB and the benchmark uses tessellation, ambient occlusion, volume illumination, and a medium-quality depth of field filter. The more taxing Extreme mode targets 1.5GB of frame buffer memory and increases detail levels across the board. Ultra mode is explicitly designed for high-end and CrossFire / SLI systems and cranks up the quality even further. GT 1 focuses on geometry and illumination, with over 100 shadow casting spot lights, 140 non-shadow casting point lights, and 3.9 million vertices calculated for tessellation per frame. GT2 emphasizes particles and GPU simulations.

3DMark Fire Strike


Radeon RX 6900 XT Fire Strike Ultra Details

Score one for AMD. In the DX11-based Fire Strike Ultra 4K benchmark, the Radeon RX 6900 XT outperformed every other card we tested, including the GeForce RTX 3090.

UL 3DMark Port Royal DXR Ray Tracing Benchmark

Port Royal was released earlier this year as an update to UL’s popular 3DMark suite. It is designed to test real-time ray tracing performance of graphics cards that support Microsoft DirectX Raytracing, or DXR. Although DXR is technically compatible with all DX12-class GPUs, the graphics card must have drivers that enable DXR. 3DMark's Port Royal benchmark is a stark reminder that the Radeon RX 6000 series is AMD's first foray into real-time, hardware accelerated ray tracing. While the Radeon RX 6900 XT is clearly able to outrun the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 3070, the high-end GeForce RTX 30-series cards are significantly faster.

We also experimented with the recently released 3DMark DirectX Ray Tracing Feature test, but the results were even less kind to AMD...

The Radeon RX 6900 XT just barely edges out the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti here, but ends up trailing the GeForce RTX 3070 (which has a 50% lower MSRP). The GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 simply crushed the Radeon RX 6900 XT here.