AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT: The RTX 3090 killer

The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT was publicly announced, marking Team Red’s boldest attempt yet to steal high-end GPU market from arch rival Nvidia’s. Although AMD has focused on budget and mid-range GPUs over the past several years, the latest AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is targeted specifically at gamers who want the best ultra-high-definition gaming experiences, and it is set to compete against the powerful RTX 3090 GPU of Nvidia. 

Here’s all we know so far about AMD’s latest GPU.

Radeon RX 6900 XT release date

As the Radeon RX 6900 XT was released by AMD, it also sent Techradar a release date for when they could purchase it: December 8, 2020.

That’s a couple of weeks after the announcement of the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and AMD Radeon RX 6800 GPUs on November 18, targeting more mainstream gamers.

So, if you want the most powerful gaming GPU from AMD, you need to hold tight for a little longer. Hopefully, there will be enough stock for everyone who wants one to get one when December 8 comes around. A continuation of the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 launches is something we don’t want to see, where it was almost impossible to get your hands on one of those GPUs. 

Radeon RX 6900 XT price

The RX 6900 XT is pitched by AMD against Nvidia’s RTX 3090. The card, starting at $1,499 (£1,399, about AU$2,030) for Nvidia’s Founders Edition, it is one of the most expensive GPUs you can buy.

The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is priced a little below that at $999 (about £770, AU$1,400), as expected, maintaining AMD’s habit of undercutting Nvidia. 

 One thing to remember is that while Nvidia’s GPUs come in different versions from other manufacturers, there is only one RX 6900 XT model from AMD itself at the moment, so the GPU won’t have different price points. 

Radeon RX 6900 XT specs and performance

Like the other major Navi GPUs AMD has unveiled, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is based on the RDNA 2 architecture of AMD, which AMD says would deliver up to 65% improved per watt output with the 6900 XT than the last RDNA gen (which gave a 50% improvement over its predecessor itself). So, you can see a big jump in efficiency if you’re upgrading from an older AMD GPU. 

It looks like the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT does a decent job of matching the RTX 3090 in most games from AMD’s own tests, providing better framerates at 4 K and at the highest graphical settings in Battlefield V, Borderlands 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Forza Horizon 4 and Gears of War 5, while being neck and neck with Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein: Young Blood and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. 

These are the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT specs:

• 80 compute units
• 2,015MHz game clock
• 2,250MHz boost clock
• 128MB Infinity cache
• 16GB GDDR6 memory
• 300W total board power

Interestingly, the cache and memory are the same as the Radeon RX 6800. Instead, the upgrade between the RX 6900 XT and the RX 6800 is seen by the computing units (80 vs 60) and clock speeds (2,015MHz vs 1,815MHz game and 2,250MHz vs 2,105MHz boost). 

As with the Radeon RX 6800 XT, instead of GDDR6X memory used in the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, the graphics card comes with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. To radically minimize memory latency, AMD seems to be betting on the Infinity Cache technology over faster VRAM. 

If the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, though being cheaper and less power-hungry, will really go toe-to-toe with the RTX 3090, then Nvidia might be in for a major wake-up call.