JANUARY 2021 PCWorld 53lands within striking distance of the 3090
despite hitting warmer temperatures than all
other enthusiast-class GPUs. The Radeon RX
6900 XT hits 83 degrees Celsius under load,
while most other high-end GPUs top out in
the 70s (and the 3090 runs at an ice-cold 68
degrees). Modern GPUs boost to faster
speeds if there’s more power and thermal
headroom available.
AMD also talked up the Radeon RX 6900
XT’s overclocking abilities to reviewers,
touting its premium 14-layer PCB and
16-power-phase design. A large chunk of
AMD’s reviewers guide was even devoted to
explaining how to tune the graphics card
manually, which I can’t recall seeing before.
The Radeon RX 6800 XT usually has no
problem overclocking to 2,500MHz or more
in competent hands. AMD’s reviewers guide
claims the company
managed to push
the reference cards
to 2,750MHz in
their labs—a huge
increase over the
rated 2,250MHz
boost speed.
With all that in
mind, imagine how
far gigantic, heavily
customized models
of the Radeon RX
6900 XT could fly,
with bespoke
cooling solutions and hefty factory overclocks
like we’ve seen in the XFX Merc 319 (go.
pcworld.com/merc) and Sapphire Nitro+
(go.pcworld.com/ntro) versions of the
Radeon RX 6800 XT. Even a 4- or 5-percent
uplift could be enough to topple the RTX
3090 more consistently, especially if you pair
them with a new Ryzen 5000 CPU to tap into
those sweet, sweet Smart Access Memory
gains. Expect to hear more about custom
Radeon RX 6900 XT models in the coming
weeks, but don’t expect them to come
cheap.
That wraps up the key details you need to
know. For much more comprehensive
information, be sure to check out our Radeon
RX 6900 XT review (go.pcworld.com/69xt)
as well as our RDNA 2 architecture deep-dive
(go.pcworld.com/2rdn).The Radeon RX 6900 XT reference design may not be its ultimate form.