50 PCWorld JANUARY 2021REVIEWS 5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT AMD’S RADEON RX 6900 XT
- IT’S OUTRAGEOUSLY FAST
This is AMD’s first card to challenge Nvidia’s
flagship GeForce offering in many, many
moons, and it’s easy to see why the company
released it: The Radeon RX 6900 XT smokes.
Even with all the eye candy cranked to
maximum in games, AMD’s card is fast
enough to spit out enough frames to keep 4K
displays and high refresh rate 1440p monitors
fed very well. The $1,500 GeForce RTX 3090
is faster, yes—by 9.2 percent at 4K and a mere
2.2 percent at 1440p across our standard
testing suite—but it costs a staggering $500
more. AMD also manages to beat the RTX
3090’s performance flat-out in select games
on our system, including at 4K. (It also loses in
some games by a considerable margin.)
If you want some of the absolute best
1440p gaming possible, the Radeon RX 6900
XT is worth considering, especially given the
RTX 3090’s steep price premium.
Better yet, the Radeon RX 6900 XT can
get even faster when paired with a Ryzen
5000 processor (go.pcworld.com/rz50)
thanks to AMD’s Smart Access Memory
technology. The uplift varies greatly
depending on the game you’re playing, the
resolution you’re playing at, and even the
settings you use, but in our test suite, we saw
performance increase in almost all cases, with
several games gaining 5 to 8 percent more
frames. Some games respond exceptionally
well to Smart Access Memory, however. AMD
claims Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Call of Duty
Black Ops Cold War, Forza Horizon 4, and
Red Dead Redemption 2 can see double-digit
performance gains in the right circumstances.
It’s a killer feature.- MOST GAMERS
SHOULDN’T BUY IT
All that said, most gamers shouldn’t buy it.
The step-down Radeon RX 6800 XT costs
$350 less than the 6900 XT, but the 6900 XT
(go.pcworld.com/rx6x) is only 4.2 percent
faster than the 6800 XT at 1440p resolution
and 6.7 percent faster at 4K. Top-tier graphics
cards like this offer terrible price-to-
performance ratios, and the Radeon RX 6900
XT doesn’t offer a tangibly different
experience than the 6800 XT despite its hefty
53 percent markup. The step-down card
offers great 4K and high-refresh 1440p
Horizon Zero Dawn
Frames per secondLONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCENvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE
AMD Radeon RX 6800
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 FE
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 FE123
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87581006511081131891431440p 4k