The RX 6700 XT will be available from March 18, although you’ll be lucky to pick one up at its retail price, as European availability is rumoured to be limited to just a few thousand. Aside from that disappointment, the card’s reported performance at AMD’s announcement and in recently leaked 3DMark scores, where it outperformed the RTX 3070 in some tests, is promising.
AMD are aiming for the RX 6700 XT to be the best graphics card for high refresh rate, 1440p gaming – a perfect match for the best gaming monitor. Plus, that 12GB of VRAM on offer – a significant increase over the 8GB we see on Nvidia’s rival 3070 – could mean a card that’s somewhat future proof, with newer games gobbling up more and more VRAM.
But, benchmarks aren’t the best measure of a GPU’s performance. Reviews for the RX 6700 XT have started to pop up online, showing us the real-world performance offered by the $479 card. Could it be one of the top mid-range graphics cards to slot into the best gaming PC?
These are some of the performance figures reviewers have been getting out of the RX 6700 XT. All reviewers are using the reference design card, so comparisons should be similar, minus variations between test rigs.
- TechRadar – Solid 1440p performance / Poor ray tracing performance compared to Nvidia
- KitGuru – 10% slower than the RTX 3070 at 1440p / Good thermals on reference card
- IGN – Will be better once AMD’s answer to DLSS is launched / 7% slower than the RTX 3070 at 1440p
- PCGamer – 144Hz achievable in most titles / Mostly lags behind the RTX 3070
- Engadget – Worse ray tracing performance than cheaper RTX 3060 Ti / A great 1080p/1440p card
While the card lags behind Nvidia’s similarly priced RTX 3070, especially when it comes to ray tracing performance, that may change once AMD releases its FidelityFX super sampling technology. Some reviewers also note that with Smart Access Memory-compatible rigs, the performance gap between the 6700 XT and the 3070 could’ve been closed further. However, the opinion that the $479 MSRP is a little too high is shared across multiple reviews.
None of these shortcomings detract from the fact that the RX 6700 XT still looks like a brilliant card for 1080p and 1440p gaming. And with graphics cards so hard to come by, you could try your luck picking one up on March 18. Provided you can find one near that $499 MSRP, it’ll be a bargain compared to some of the resold GPUs already out there.