52 PCWorld JANUARY 2021REVIEWS 5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT AMD’S RADEON RX 6900 XT
remain not just scarce, but nonexistent.
Unfortunately, the lack of a DLSS
alternative limits the Radeon RX 6900 XT to
1440p gaming with ray tracing active.
Flipping ray tracing on at 4K tanks frame rates
below the smooth 60 fps that PC gamers
expect. We only tested a couple of games
with less strenuous ray-tracing effects as well.
In games that load up with more extensive
ray-tracing effects—like Control, Minecraft
RTX, or the drool-inducing Cyberpunk 2077
(go.pcworld.com/cpnk)—I wouldn’t be
surprised if you’d need to be selective about
what you activate even at 1440p. Hopefully
AMD is pushing to get Super Resolution out
as fast as possible.- THE GEFORCE RTX 3090
MIGHT BE A BETTER OPTION
FOR YOU
AMD positions the Radeon RX 6900 XT as a
take-no-prisoners gaming card. (Well, except
for ray tracing I guess.) It comes awfully close
to toppling the GeForce RTX 3090 and
manages to beat it in several gaming
scenarios. But you may want to spend $500
more for Nvidia’s card anyway.
If you’re a prosumer, Nvidia’s gargantuan
24GB of ultra-fast GDDR6X memory unlocks
some 8K video and real-time editing
capabilities you simply can’t achieve with
other consumer graphics cards, though the
Radeon RX 6900 XT’s 16GB of GDDR6 is no
slouch and capable of 4K video workloads.
Nvidia’s heavy investment into content
creation tools are another significant
advantage, as many popular software suites
support CUDA and Optix optimizations
devoted to speeding up performance on
Nvidia hardware. As we covered in our
GeForce RTX 3090 review (go.pcworld.
com/39bn), CUDA and Optix can drastically
cut down the time it takes to complete
workloads that embrace the technologies.
Deep-pocketed gamers who want the
best gaming performance period may also
opt for the GeForce RTX 3090. The Radeon
RX 6900 XT hangs tough with Nvidia’s
behemoth, sure, and it costs much less, but
there’s no denying that the GeForce card is
faster overall. Nvidia’s cards also hold that key
ray-tracing advantage and can play ray-traced
games at 4K, unlike AMD’s GPU. Again: Most
people should buy a $650 Radeon RX 6800
XT or $700 GeForce RTX 3080 (go.pcworld.
com/nv38). But if you want the fastest
graphics card in the world, you need to pay
the 3090’s daunting premium.- CUSTOM VERSIONS
COULD BE BADASS
AMD says that custom versions of the Radeon
RX 6900 XT are coming soon from partners
like Sapphire, XFX, and Asus. Given what we
know about the reference 6900 XT, those
supercharged hotrods could push back even
harder against the RTX 3090.
The luxurious, quiet reference card often