Radeon 6700 XT

An awesome GPU, released in 2021 on a 7nm process. I bought this to replace my ageing R9 285, a GPU released in 2014 on a 28nm process.

I paid $455.78USD for it including shipping and taxes. A little higher than I wanted, but still much better than the cryptocurrency inflated prices of a short while ago. Mine is the Powercolor Fighter version, which is a little smaller than other cards with the same chip.

This GPU is massively underrated. It experienced horrifically bad press at launch, with its competition beating it handily in real and synthetic benchmarks at the time, and to this day everyone seems to want nVidia's RTX 3000 series cards. Times have now changed, and I think more people should snap this up instead.

Shortcomings

No DLSS. AI upsampling is the amazing technique of increasing the size of an image while adding in missing detail. This is a huge talking point for videogames in 2021 and 2022, particularly as gamers (including myself) want high FPS at 4K resolution which is extremely difficult to achieve...unless you have AI upsampling through DLSS. The 6700 XT cannot do nVidia's DLSS, thus I'm limited to simpler algorithmic upsampling rather than AI upsampling.

That's all, there's no other shortcomings I've found so far. On to the fun stuff!

Why it's awesome

The 3rd most powerful GPU in the world per-watt. Drawing just 215 watts, it delivered 112FPS average across a suite of 9 games. Compare this to the much more popular RTX 3080, which requires 333 watts but only delivered 142FPS average across the same games.^[1] Is 25% more FPS worth 54% more wattage? For those of us with computer cases that are not the size of furniture, I think not!

Compact. With the RTX 3000 series of cards from nvidia, gamers across the world seem to have accepted GPUs that are longer, taller, fatter, and heavier. They've accepted larger cases, more intimidating cooling solutions and clever installation gadgets to support all the weight and torsion force. The 6700 XT in comparison is extremely svelte and requires no such trickery.

Ray tracing! This is my first GPU with ray tracing, which looks incredible in the games that have it, like CP2077 and Quake II RTX . Light bounces off of multiple surfaces in realistic ways, and casts more realistic shadows and reflections.

Quiet. At the aforementioned 215 watt power draw, the GPU often runs so cool the fans do not even spin.

If you got this far, you might be interested in the rest of my my computer, or the videogames I've been playing.