AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Review: Impressive 1440p PC Gaming

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards represented in this article on a MSI X570 Godlike motherboard, equipped with a Ryzen 9 5950X CPU and 16GB of G.SKILL DDR4 RAM clocked at 3,200MHz. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" defaults, then we disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's clock was dialed in to its optimal performance settings using its XMP profile and the solid state drive was then formatted and Windows 10 Professional x64 was installed and fully updated. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, games, applications and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests. For all of the tests, Radeon RX 6000 series cards were tested using their "Balanced" performance profile with Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) enabled.

HotHardware's Test System Intel Core i9 Powered

Hardware Used: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (3.4GHz - 4.9GHz, 16-Core) MSI X570 Godlike (AMD X570 Chipset) 16GB G.SKILL DDR4-3200 Samsung SSD 970 EVO Integrated Audio Integrated Network NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT AMD Radeon RX 6800

Relevant Software: Windows 10 Pro x64 (20H2) AMD Radeon Software (Mar. 3 Beta) NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v461.64 Benchmarks Used: VRMark 3DMark (Time Spy, Fire Strike, Port Royal, DXR) Unigine Superposition Crytek Neon Noir Metro Exodus Red Dead Redemption 2 Gears Tactics FarCry: New Dawn

Unigine Superposition Pseudo-DirectX / OpenGL Gaming

Superposition is the latest benchmark from Unigine, powered by the UNIGINE 2 Engine. It offers an array of benchmark modes, targeting gaming workloads as well as VR, with both DirectX and OpenGL code paths. There is an extreme hardware stability test built-in as well. Unigine Superposition uses the developer’s unique SSRTGI (Screen-Space Ray-Traced Global Illumination) dynamic lighting technology, along with high quality textures and models, to produce some stunning visuals. We ran Superposition in two modes using the DirectX code path – 1080p Extreme and VR Future -- to compare the performance of all of the graphics cards featured here.

Unigine Superposition

AMD's new Radeon RX 6700 XT finished ahead of the GeForce RTX 2070 Super and smoked the Radeon RX 5700 XT here, but just missed the mark set by the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. The small delta separating the 6700 XT from the 3060 Ti, however, falls within the margin of error for this benchmark -- for all intents and purposes, they're tied here.


Superposition's VR Future benchmark has the new Radeon RX 6700 XT outpacing the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and nearly catching the GeForce RTX 2080 Super, but falling well short of the GeForce RTX 3070. As you can see though, despite having similar core counts, and the 6700 XT technically having lower peak memory bandwidth, it significantly outpaces the Radeon RX 5700 XT.

UL VRMark Testing Rift And Vive Readiness

UL's VRMark is designed to test a PC’s readiness for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets. The benchmark does not, however, require that one of the headsets is attached to the PC to run and it uses an in-house graphics engine and content to ensure comparable results between different platforms. We ran the "Blue Room" VRMark test at defaults settings here, which is currently the most taxing test offered by the tool.


VRMark's Blue Room benchmark tells essentially the same story as Unigine Superposition's VR benchmark. Here, the Radeon RX 6700 XT edges out the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti slightly, but can't catch the RTX 2080 Super or RTX 3070 Founders Edition.

UL 3DMark Time Spy Direct X 12 Performance

In the DX12-based 3DMark Time Spy benchmark, the Radeon RX 6700 XT lands just behind the GeForce RTX 3070 in terms of its overall score. If you check out the individual results though, you'll see the two cards traded victories in Game Tests 1 and 2.

UL 3DMark Fire Strike Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Fire Strike has multiple benchmark modes: Normal mode runs at 1920x1080, Extreme mode targets 2560x1440, and Ultra mode runs at a 4K resolution. GPU target frame buffer utilization for normal mode is 1GB and the benchmark uses tessellation, ambient occlusion, volume illumination, and a medium-quality depth of field filter. The more taxing Extreme mode targets 1.5GB of frame buffer memory and increases detail levels across the board. Ultra mode is explicitly designed for high-end and CrossFire / SLI systems and cranks up the quality even further. GT 1 focuses on geometry and illumination, with over 100 shadow casting spot lights, 140 non-shadow casting point lights, and 3.9 million vertices calculated for tessellation per frame. GT2 emphasizes particles and GPU simulations.

3DMark Fire Strike


3DMark Fire Strike Details - AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT

The new Radeon RX 6700 XT put up some particularly strong numbers in 3DMark's DX11-based Fire Strike Ultra benchmark. The Radeon RX 6700 XT pulled ahead of the GeForce RTX 3070 here and trails only the higher-end Radeon RX 6800. The much bigger, more powerful GPU on the RX 6800 does boost performance significantly though.

UL 3DMark Port Royal DXR Ray Tracing Benchmark

Port Royal was released earlier this year as an update to UL’s popular 3DMark suite. It is designed to test real-time ray tracing performance of graphics cards that support Microsoft DirectX Raytracing, or DXR. Although DXR is technically compatible with all DX12-class GPUs, the graphics card must have drivers that enable DXR. 3DMark's Port Royal benchmark requires DXR-enabled drivers, so the Radeon RX 5700 XT drops out of these charts. As we've mentioned in some of our initial Radeon RX 6000 series coverage, this is AMD's first foray into hardware accelerated ray tracing, which is evidenced by these results. The Radeon RX 6700 XT falls in just behind the previous-gen GeForce RTX 2070 Super and can't keep pace with the Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or RTX 3070.

We also played with the DirectX Ray Tracing Feature test, which was recently released as an update to 3DMark. This test requires dedicated ray tracing hardware and software as well...

The Radeon RX 6700 XT drops down a rung in this ray tracing test and finishes behind the GeForce RTX 2060 Super.