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After the launch of AMD's RX 6700 XT earlier this month, today we are checking out Sapphire's RX 6700 XT Nitro+. A huge triple-fan card, it comes factory overclocked with dual-BIOS functionality and a dedicated heatsink for the GDDR6 memory. We put it to the test against the reference design to find out how much better it really is.
We've already reviewed one Sapphire Nitro+ card this generation, specifically the RX 6800 XT. This RX 6700 XT Nitro+ is almost identical in terms of appearance, but it's not the exact same PCB and cooler. The PCB used here is slightly thinner for instance, and the dedicated memory heatsink is lacking a heatpipe which is present for the RX 6800 XT model.
Still, the RX 6700 XT is a lower power GPU compared to the 6800 XT, and this cooler still looks more than big enough to deal with the heat, so let's dive in and find out how it got on in our testing.
| RX 6900 XT | RX 6800 XT | RX 6800 | RX 6700 XT | RX 5700 XT | |
| Architecture | RDNA 2 | RDNA 2 | RDNA 2 | RDNA 2 | RDNA |
| Manufacturing Process | 7nm | 7nm | 7nm | 7nm | 7nm |
| Transistor Count | 26.8 billion | 26.8 billion | 26.8 billion | 17.2 billion | 10.3 billion |
| Die Size | 519 mm² | 519 mm² | 519 mm² | 336 mm² | 251 mm² |
| Ray Accelerators | 80 | 72 | 60 | 40 | n/a |
| Compute Units | 80 | 72 | 60 | 40 | 40 |
| Stream Processors | 5120 | 4608 | 3840 | 2560 | 2560 |
| Game GPU Clock | Up to 2015MHz | Up to 2015MHz | Up to 1815MHz | Up to 2424MHz | Up to 1755MHz |
| Boost GPU Clock | Up to 2250MHz | Up to 2250MHz | Up to 2105MHz | Up to 2581MHz | Up to 1905MHz |
| Peak SP Performance | Up to 23.04 TFLOPS | Up to 20.74 TFLOPS | Up to 16.17 TFLOPS | Up to 13.21 TFLOPS | Up to 9.75 TFLOPS |
| Peak Half Precision Performance | Up to 46.08 TFLOPS | Up to 41.47 TFLOPS | Up to 32.33 TFLOPS | Up to 26.43 TFLOPS | Up to 19.5 TFLOPS |
| Peak Texture Fill-Rate | Up to 720 GT/s | Up to 648.0 GT/s | Up to 505.2 GT/s | Up to 413.0 GT/s | Up to 304.8 GT/s |
| ROPs | 128 | 128 | 96 | 64 | 64 |
| Peak Pixel Fill-Rate | Up to 288.0 GP/s | Up to 288.0 GP/s | Up to 202.1 GP/s | Up to 165.2 GP/s | Up to 121.9 GP/s |
| AMD Infinity Cache | 128MB | 128MB | 128MB | 96MB | n/a |
| Memory | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 | 12GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 512 GB/s | 512 GB/s | 512 GB/s | 384 GB/s | 448 GB/s |
| Memory Interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 256-bit |
| Board Power | 300W | 300W | 250W | 230W | 225W |
RX 6700 XT is built using the Navi 22 GPU, a physically smaller die than Navi 21, measuring 336 mm². It houses 40 Compute Units (CUs), with 64 stream processors per CU, giving a total of 2560. RX 6700 XT features a fully populated Navi 22 GPU, but we can expect cut-down versions to appear with the RX 6700, and potentially RX 6600 XT if that comes to market.
RDNA 2 houses one ray accelerator per CU, so there's a total of 40 with the RX 6700 XT. Four texture units per CU gives a total of 160, while there's also 64 ROPs. The reference 6700 XT has a rated game clock of 2424MHz, but Sapphire has increased this to 2548MHz.
As for the memory configuration, AMD has opted to use a 192-bit memory interface paired with 12GB of GDDR6 memory. Using 16Gbps modules, total memory bandwidth hits 384 GB/s, which is lower than its predecessor, the RX 5700 XT. RDNA 2 GPUs, however, have the benefit of AMD's Infinity Cache, with a 96MB cache used here.
Lastly, reference total board power (TBP) is rated at 230W, but Sapphire has increased this to 260W when using the Performance BIOS. This is something we test later in the review.
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