Launching Today: AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XT – A Whole Lot of…

This morning AMD is releasing the ultimate and most elusive member of their preliminary wave of Radeon RX 6000 sequence playing cards: the Radeon RX 6900 XT. The flagship half for AMD’s new RDNA 2 GPU structure, the 6900 XT is all of the Radeon AMD may muster for this technology, and maybe a bit extra. Marking how far AMD has are available a single technology, the RX 6900 XT is their first actual shot on the very high of the market in years; and whereas AMD doesn’t fairly attain that aim, they’ve nonetheless succeeded at placing collectively an attention-grabbing and highly effective video card for the $1000 market.

Like the Radeon RX 6800 XT and 6800, the 6900 XT was introduced again at AMD’s GPU keynote in November, the place AMD gave the world the complete story, spec. So though the 6800 XT launched first, it might not be the ultimate phrase from AMD; AMD had another video card within the pipeline – much more highly effective than the 6800 XT – and with it they might be capping off what has been a busy fall season for video playing cards.

Under the hood, AMD’s new flagship video card is predicated on the identical Navi 21 silicon that has pushed all the opposite RX 6000 sequence playing cards thus far. Separating the brand new flagship from its earlier siblings, the brand new video card makes use of a fully-enabled model of the Navi 21 chip, permitting AMD’s lead RDNA2 structure GPU to lastly put its greatest foot ahead close to efficiency. This is coupled with some additional binning on AMD’s half implies that the 6900 XT not simply the quickest Radeon but, but in addition that AMD has left no stone unturned of their quest to maximise their efficiency.

The result’s, as alluded to earlier, a little bit of a moonshot. AMD will get the benefit of being the second mover – watching NVIDIA after which reacting to them – which has helped AMD to determine what it may and might’t do. NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3090 is extremely quick, however because the launch of the RTX 3080 and RX 6800 XT have since confirmed, it’s not solely out of attain. So AMD has determined to have a go at it – to compete for the flagship spot and the coveted efficiency crown – by constructing one of the best card they may.

The flip facet to that, is that it means the 6900 XT might be residing as much as being the cream of the Radeon crop in multiple means. By requiring a fully-enabled and binned Navi 21 chip, AMD is reaching deep into their yields to assemble their card, and people chips are going to be comparatively uncommon. Not it is a new drawback for a GPU producer by any means, however it takes on an extra diploma of problem when these chips are 519mm² slices of a really worthwhile 7nm wafer. Ultimately, the $1000 price ticket implies that it is a video card that many will need and few can afford; however that may nonetheless be sufficient to maintain AMD and TSMC busy for months to return.