AMD’s mid-gen Radeon 6000 refresh, announced today, comprises of three new graphics cards: the $399 RX 6650 XT, the $549 RX 6750 XT and the $1099 RX 6950 XT. Each offers small boosts to memory speeds (18GBps versus 16GBps for the 6750 XT against the OG 6700 XT) and slightly higher power draw (250W versus 230W). That should translate into modest frame-rate gains, but this is very much a card that slots in to replace the older RX 6700 XT rather than sitting in its own distinct power band – despite a rise in asking price. You can think of it like the Ryzen 3000 XT CPUs that debuted a few months before Ryzen 5000 – a last hurrah before the true next generation arrives.
We’re looking at the middle child today, courtesy of PowerColor who provided us with the RX 6750 XT Red Devil. It’s an attractive card with a thick thermal solution, three fans and the usual port arrangement: three DisplayPort 1.4 ports and one HDMI 2.1 port. As the name suggests, it lights up in a hellish red colour, and requires two eight-pin auxiliary power inputs.
On our unit, one of the card’s three fans seemed to have been damaged in shipping, as it knocked into the side of the shroud at low fan speeds. Thankfully, the card has a zero RPM mode at idle and doesn’t knock once it hits around 50 percent fan speed, so this didn’t affect performance and the card’s temperatures remained low (and clock speeds high) throughout.
1 of 4 Caption Attribution Our test rig for the RX 6750 XT tests, featuring the Core i9 10900K on an Asus Maximus motherboard.
| AMD GPU Specs | CUs | Boost Clock | VRAM | Mem Interface | TDP | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RX 6950 XT | 80 | 2250MHz | 16GB GDDR6 18Gbps | 256-bit + 128MB IC | 335W | $1099 |
| RX 6900 XT | 80 | 2250MHz | 16GB GDDR6 16Gbps | 256-bit + 128MB IC | 300W | $999 |
| RX 6800 XT | 72 | 2250MHz | 16GB GDDR6 16Gbps | 256-bit + 128MB IC | 300W | $649 |
| RX 6800 | 60 | 2105MHz | 16GB GDDR6 16Gbps | 256-bit + 128MB IC | 250W | $579 |
| RX 6750 XT | 40 | 2581MHz | 12GB GDDR6 18Gbps | 192-bit + 96MB IC | 250W | $549 |
| RX 6700 XT | 40 | 2581MHz | 12GB GDDR6 16Gbps | 192-bit + 96MB IC | 230W | $479 |
| RX 6650 XT | 32 | 2416MHz | 8GB GDDR6 17.5Gbps | 128-bit + 32MB IC | 180W | $399 |
| RX 6600 XT | 32 | 2416MHz | 8GB GDDR6 16Gbps | 128-bit + 32MB IC | 160W | $379 |
We’ve used our standard testing methodology here, which is based around a Core i9 10900K test system, locked to 5GHz on all cores and kept cool by an Eisbaer Aurora 240mm AiO. Other components include 16GB G.Skill DDR4-3600 CL16 RAM, a Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB SSD provided by Box, an Asus Maximus Hero 13 Z590 motherboard and a 1000W Corsair PSU.
Scroll on for the full DF review treatment – in one page for your viewing enjoyment – or use the quick links below to jump to whatever you’re most interested in.
Doom Eternal, Control, Borderlands 3Death Stranding, Far Cry 5, Hitman 2AC Odyssey, Metro Exodus, Dirt Rally, AC UnityRT: Control, Metro Exodus, Battlefield 5RX 6750 XT: The Digital Foundry Verdict
Let’s move immediately into the gaming benchmarks. As usual, we’ll start with four games that normally are the best occasion for new GPUs to distinguish themselves against older-generation alternatives, thanks to modern game engines using DirectX 12 or Vulkan to properly make use of our 10-core 20-thread processor and push GPU utilisation to the maximum.