- Ow.
Hey! Ow, quit it.
What are you...
Stop! Hey!
- I'm launching paper at you! - What is...
Ah-ha-ha-ha!
I get it!
AMD, you, on the other hand,
I just don't get sometimes.
We're in the middle of one of the biggest chip shortages
in a long time, maybe ever,
and here you are proudly announcing
your newest graphics card to the world.
Is it that you know something I don't?
Because this move feels like a confusing one,
given how people have reacted
to all the other graphics cards
that have launched this year,
with functionally zero stock available to actual gamers.
Maybe there's a method to the madness, though.
Maybe there's a 4D chess game here that we just can't see.
Maybe there's a segue to today's sponsor, Honey.
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(upbeat music)
Our first glimpse at the RX 6700 XT
came just one day before Nvidia launched their RTX 3060,
which seemed kinda like a rotten move,
but you know what they say:
all's fair in love and gaming.
The first-party card has a design
similar to the larger RX 6800 and 6900 series,
except that Team Rocket stole the third fan,
and as soon as that teaser went up,
speculation and leaks began to fly,
leaks that turned out to be rather accurate.
What they got exactly right was the price.
At 479 U.S. dollars,
it's much higher than the RTX 3060 MSRP,
but this card isn't targeting the 3060.
It's landing somewhere between the 3060 Ti and the RTX 3070.
Now, you might be scratching your head, thinking,
"Didn't AMD target the RTX 3070 with the RX 6800?"
Yes, but as AMD points out,
the lower VRAM available to the RTX 3070
can be a potential bottleneck
for more demanding titles at higher resolutions.
And AMD wants 1440p max quality out of this card,
all at a price point that will still be appealing.
Just like this insulated 40-ounce Stealth water bottle
from LTTStore.com.
Ah. Tastes like winning.
Of course, the price AMD targets
matters very little right now
thanks to the one-two punch of a cryptomining boom
and a worldwide silicon shortage.
It's gotten so bad that retailers
are now raffling off the opportunity to buy a card
instead of selling them directly.
Nvidia's attempt to tackle this
involved nerfing Ethereum mining efficiency on their 3060,
nevermind that there are tons of other GPU-mined cryptos,
and launching a separate series of mining GPUs,
while AMD is taking a different approach.
They're going to be selling the cards directly to gamers.
And AMD tells us they'll be releasing the RX 6700 XT
in weekly drops on AMD.com,
giving consumers multiple chances to buy,
this is at suggested pricing,
in spite of the retail landscape.
This could be a viable method
of getting the cards into the hands of actual gamers,
but one of the problems
with announcing when the cards will drop
is that you're still relying on strong protections
against bots and scalping groups,
which is not going to be easy.
And it also doesn't tell us anything
about how many units will be available for each region
or even in each drop.
Fortunately, if you're not into that strat,
it's not just AMD who's gonna be selling these.
So on March 18th, both AMD's cards and their partner boards
will go on sale simultaneously,
which also gives better odds
that they won't all be sold out
as soon as they go live,
and they've also got a host of system integrators
that are geared up and ready to go.
But hold on a minute:
are these things gonna be worth buying?
Well, we will have a full review,
make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it,
but here's what we know so far.
Compared to the RX 6800,
the 6700 XT has a third fewer Compute units,
25% less Infinity Cache,
and four fewer gigs of GDDR6 memory.
To offset that, though,
the game clock is substantially higher
at 2,424 megahertz, a 25% increase.
As a result, we can probably expect
ray tracing performance to be lacking,
even compared to AMD's own higher-end cards.
But as we've seen when we overclocked the RX 6800 XT
to near-6900 XT levels,
higher core clocks can have a huge impact
on the RDNA 2 architecture's raster performance.
With that said, though,
there's a bigger gap in Compute units with the 6700 XT,
so we'll have to see how this all plays out.
Now, AMD didn't mention this in the presentation,
but there's another potential pitfall for the 6700 XT,
and that is memory bandwidth.
Unless AMD is using lower-capacity chips for memory,
which we doubt,
it's likely the memory interface
has dropped from 256-bit to 192-bit.
Now, AMD may be clocking the memory higher
in order to compensate
and we were surprised at how much of a difference
the Infinity Cache makes
in memory-intensive games on the bigger Radeons,
so maybe it won't be such a big deal here,
especially at sub-4K resolutions.
But remember, the Infinity Cache is smaller, too,
so this gives me reason to temper my expectations.
As for what resolution what people will be gaming at,
1440p display adoption, at least according to AMD,
has increased by 44% over last year.
And while that still puts it below high-refresh rate 1080p,
high-refresh rate 1440p displays
have made a 98% jump in sales
thanks to declining prices and improved capabilities.
What this means is that a growing percentage of gamers
are looking to drive fast 1440p panels
and that's exactly what AMD is banking on
for the RX 6700 XT.
On paper, though, high-refresh rate 1440p
looks like a bit of a stretch,
especially in triple-A titles.
But AMD hopes their Radeon Boost
hardware-accelerated adaptive resolution function
in DirectX 11 mode
and variable rate shading in DirectX 12 mode
will make up some of this ground,
that is, as long as you're willing
to give up some image quality
in your peripheral areas and in high-motion scenes.
Curiously missing from the presentation
is any further explanation
as to how and when FidelityFX Super Resolution,
that's AMD's answer to Nvidia's DLSS,
is going to make an appearance.
What they did do is give a few insights, though,
into what's taking them so long.
Apparently, rather than rushing it out the door
on only one new top-end card,
they want it to be cross-platform
in every sense of the word,
so they actually want it running on all of their GPUs,
including the ones inside consoles,
before they pull the trigger.
It would've been nice to have it ready
by the time the cards launched,
but as we saw with Nvidia's DLSS 1.0 versus DLSS 2.0,
it could be for the best.
I mean, lots of people still think that DLSS sucks
thanks to the poor image quality of v1
and Nvidia's confusing marketing
where they actually referred to it
as an anti-aliasing technique,
still more proof if you needed it
that lots of people, and Nvidia for that matter,
can in fact be wrong about things.
Anyway, in the meantime AMD is pointing to Radeon Boost
and FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening
for their upscaling.
Whether that's an acceptable compromise
or whether it's worth it
to wait for FidelityFX Super Resolution
or whether this question is utterly meaningless
until such time as these cards
can be purchased for a reasonable price,
all of that is up to you, the viewer.
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We're gonna have that linked down below.
If you guys are looking for another video to watch,
you can check out our review of the 6800 and 6800 XT,
which might give you an idea of what to expect
from Team Red's latest offering.