AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Flagship “Big Navi” Graphics Card Unveiled For $999 US – The GeForce RTX 3090 Competitor At just 300W

Hassan Mujtaba

AMD has officially announced the fastest Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card, its Big Navi Radeon RX 6900 XT, which is designed to compete against NVIDIA's flagship, the GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT with the RDNA 2 architecture delivers an insane improvement in performance per watt compared to AMD's last-generation RDNA 1 graphics architecture & trades blows with the top Ampere graphics cards at 4K resolution.

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Flagship "Big Navi" Graphics Card Unveiled - Tackles The GeForce RTX 3090 at Just $999 US

AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card is based on the same RDNA 2 GPU architecture that is powering the rest of the Radeon RX 6000 series lineup. The main difference is that the GPU AMD decided to feature on its Radeon RX 6900 XT is the fully enabled variant of the fastest chip they have ever designed for the gaming segment and hence known as "Big Navi". It's the biggest gaming chip AMD has ever made on the FinFET 7nm process node and features an upgraded architecture which carries much higher efficiency and performance per watt.

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The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is powered by the Navi 21 XTX GPU and will be replacing the Radeon VII as AMD's flagship gaming graphics card. According to AMD themselves, the Radeon RX 6900 XT is positioned against NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards and feature insane specs, brand new features and stunning price points for the performance they offer.

Following is a look at the specs of the card before we give a breakdown the architectural and feature side.

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT "Big Navi 21 XT" GPU Powered 16 GB Graphics Card

The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT will come packed with the Navi 21 XTX GPU which is the fully enabled die featuring 80 Compute Units or 5120 SPs. The card will also feature 16 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit bus interface, a 512 GB/s total bandwidth, and clock speeds of 2015 MHz base and 2250 MHz boost at reference specs. There's also 80 Ray accelerators for ray-tracing enablement on the graphics cards (one RA per Compute Unit). The graphics card will feature a based TBP of 300W with factory overclocked models pushing it above 350W and will arrive at a later date.

In addition to the standard memory, the Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card will also feature 128 MB of Infinity Cache on the GPU die. The cache will help boost bandwidth for higher performance at resolutions beyond 1080p HD. The 128 MB Infinity Cache boosts the standard 512 GB/s bandwidth by 3.25x, delivering an effective bandwidth of up to 1.664 TB/s across all Big Navi GPU based graphics cards.

In the performance metrics shown by AMD, the Radeon RX 6900 XT with Rage Mode and Smart Access Memory enabled, features performance on par and even better in some cases than the NVIDIA's fastest GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card. The difference here is that AMD's solution not only features higher performance efficiency but also comes at a $500 US lower price point.

AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series "RDNA 2" Graphics Card Lineup:

Graphics CardAMD Radeon RX 6950 XTAMD Radeon RX 6900 XTAMD Radeon RX 6800 XTAMD Radeon RX 6800AMD Radeon RX 6750 XTAMD Radeon RX 6700 XTAMD Radeon RX 6700AMD Radeon RX 6650 XTAMD Radeon RX 6600 XTAMD Radeon RX 6600AMD Radeon RX 6500 XTAMD Radeon RX 6400
GPUNavi 21 KXTXNavi 21 XTXNavi 21 XTNavi 21 XLNavi 22 KXTNavi 22 XTNavi 22 XLNavi 23 KXTNavi 23 (XT)Navi 23 (XL)Navi 24 (XT)Navi 24 (XL)
Process Node7nm7nm7nm7nm7nm7nm7nm7nm7nm7nm6nm6nm
Die Size520mm2520mm2520mm2520mm2336mm2336mm2336mm2237mm2237mm2237mm2107mm2107mm2
Transistors26.8 Billion26.8 Billion26.8 Billion26.8 Billion17.2 Billion17.2 Billion17.2 Billion11.06 Billion11.06 Billion11.06 Billion5.4 Billion5.4 Billion
Compute Units808072604040363232281612
Stream Processors51205120460838402560256023042048204817921024768
TMUs/ROPs320 / 128320 / 128288 / 128240 / 96160/64160/64144/64128/64128/64112/6464/3248/32
Game Clock2116 MHz2015 MHz2015 MHz1815 MHz2495 MHz2424 MHz2330 MHz2410 MHz2359 MHz2044 MHz2610 MHz2039 MHz
Boost Clock2324 MHz2250 MHz2250 MHz2105 MHz2600 MHz2581 MHz2495 MHz2635 MHz2589 MHz2491 MHz2815 MHz2321 MHz
FP32 TFLOPs23.80 TFLOPs23.04 TFLOPs20.74 TFLOPs16.17 TFLOPs13.31 TFLOPs13.21 TFLOPs11.50 TFLOPs10.79 TFLOPs10.6 TFLOPs9.0 TFLOPs5.7 TFLOPs3.5 TFLOPs
Memory Size16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache12 GB GDDR6 + 96 MB Infinity Cache12 GB GDDR6 + 96 MB Infinity Cache10 GB GDDR5 + 80 MB Infinity Cache8 GB GDDR6 + 32 MB Infinity Cache8 GB GDDR6 + 32 MB Infinity Cache8 GB GDDR6 + 32 MB Infinity Cache4 GB / 8 GB GDDR6 + 16 MB Infinity Cache4 GB GDDR6 + 16 MB Infinity Cache
Memory Bus256-bit256-bit256-bit256-bit192-bit192-bit160-bit128-bit128-bit128-bit64-bit64-bit
Memory Clock18 Gbps16 Gbps16 Gbps16 Gbps18 Gbps16 Gbps16 Gbps17.5 Gbps16 Gbps14 Gbps18 Gbps14 Gbps
Bandwidth576 GB/s512 GB/s512 GB/s512 GB/s432 GB/s384 GB/s320 GB/s280 GB/s256 GB/s224 GB/s144 GB/s112 GB/s
TDP335W300W300W250W250W230W220W176W160W132W107W53W
Price$1099 US$999 US$649 US$579 US$549 US$479 USTBD$399 US$379 US$329 US$199 US$159 US?

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Series With Triple-Fan Cooling Solution

As for the designs themselves, the Radeon RX 6900 XT flagship cooling design looks amazing with the red and black design. The card features a triple axial-tech fan setup on the shroud and has a large aluminum heatsink that runs beneath it.

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The card has a LED-lit Radeon logo on the side and there is a large cut out on the side for the fans to vent out hot air. This design is very reminiscent of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 series Founders Edition cooler. The card will feature dual 8-pin power and display ports would include a USB Type-C (VirtualLink), 1 HDMI, and 2 DisplayPort connectors.

The card also features a fancy backplate along with a retention bracket to hold the cooler in place. The Radeon RX "Big Navi" GPU looks like it will come in the standard 2-slot reference design which is the same as NVIDIA's flagship RTX 3080 but not as huge as the triple-slot GeForce RTX 3090.

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Graphics Cards Pricing & Availability

The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards will be available starting 8th of December. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is said to carry a price tag of $999 US and is expected to be a reference only model for this year. AMD has stated that EK Water blocks will be shipping custom loop cooling solutions for the Radeon RX 6900 XT around the same time as launch so at least liquid cooling enthusiasts will be getting some sort of custom cooling availability.

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Which AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series Graphics Card are you looking forward to the most?
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