AMD RX 6900 XT Review

1. Introduction2. AMD RX 6900 XT3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy5. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing6. Borderlands 37. Control8. Death Stranding9. The Division 210. F1 202011. Far Cry New Dawn12. Gears 513. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint14. Metro Exodus15. Middle Earth: Shadow of War16. Red Dead Redemption 217. Shadow of the Tomb Raider18. Total War Saga: Troy19. Watch Dogs: Legion20. Performance Summary (14 Game Average)21. Cost Per Frame Analysis22. Ray Tracing - Control23. Ray Tracing - Shadow of the Tomb Raider24. Ray Tracing - Watch Dogs: Legion25. Productivity Benchmarks26. Clock Speed27. Temperatures28. Acoustics29. Noise-Normalised Temperatures30. Power Consumption31. Performance Per Watt32. Overclocking33. Closing Thoughts34. View All Pages

For our temperature testing, we measure the peak GPU core temperature under load. A reading under load comes from running the 3DMark Time Spy stress test for 30 minutes.

Looking at thermal performance, despite using the same cooler design as the 6800 XT, we saw the 6900 XT run fractionally cooler in terms of the edge temperature, hitting a peak of 79C, with a steady state of 78C, so it's a couple of degrees cooler than the 6800 XT.

This may be puzzling initially, as we'd expect the 6900 XT to be the GPU running a little hotter, but the answer comes down to the default fan curve. In our testing, the 6800 XT would typically run its fans about 200rpm slower, resulting in the higher temperatures we are seeing from that GPU.

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