RX 6700 XT Vs. 6800 XT: Differences Between AMD’s $479 & $649 Cards

With a focus on performance gaming, AMD recently launched the Radeon RX 6700 XT desktop graphics card, adding another GPU to the Radeon 6000 series lineup, which consists of the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900XT. Given that AMD is touting the RX 6700 XT as the graphics card for Quad HD or 1440p gaming, it does seem like the card packs a punch. But how does it compare with the more powerful RX 6800 XT?

First off, the RX 6700 XT costs $479 for the reference card, while the RX 6800 XT launched for $649. Given the current silicone shortage, though, it is almost impossible to get an RX 6800 XT card for anything close to that price. The RX 6800 XT can cost upwards of $1,000 on Amazon or eBay. Both the RX 6700 XT and RX 6800 XT are built on the same architecture and share tons of similarities, but what separates them is their specs sheet and capabilities.

Straight of the bat, the Radeon RX 6700 XT is built for 1440p gaming. It features 2,560 stream processors, 40 ray-tracing cores, a 192-bit memory bus, and bandwidth of 384 GB/s. The RX 6800 XT, on the other hand, boasts 4,608 stream processors, 72 ray-tracing cores, a 256-bit memory bus, and a bandwidth of 512 GB/s. In most areas, the specs of the 6800 XT are nearly double that of the RX 6700 XT. In addition, the RX 6700 XT is equipped with a 2.4GHz clock speed and 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM, while the higher-end Radeon 6800 XT has more VRAM at 16GB GDDR6, but a lower clock speed of 2.0 GHz.

RX 6700 XT Vs. RX  6800 XT: 1440p Vs. 4K Gaming

In terms of actual gaming, AMD’s benchmarks reveal that the RX 6700 XT can deliver well-above the average 60fps in the latest AAA titles with the resolution set to 1440p. The RX 6800 XT can do pretty much the same thing but ups the ante, pumping out 60-plus fps in 4K resolution. It is worth noting that both cards feature 4K via HDMI 2.1, 4K H264 decoding and encoding, and AV1 decoding. Moreover, the RX 6700 XT also has a lower power draw and higher clock speed than the RX 6800 XT, which should allow the former to gain some ground on the 6800 XT with some overclocking.

But the RX 6700 XT’s narrower memory bus may struggle handling games in 4K resolution. With its limited accelerator count, the RX 6700 XT will also struggle to run games with ray tracing turned on. AMD also didn’t showcase the ray tracing prowess of the card against its nearest Nvidia rival, the RTX 3070. So, maybe users will have to hold out for Super Resolution, AMD’s version of DLSS, to get optimal ray tracing performance out of the RX 6700 XT. Considering the RX 6800 XT has a beefier spec sheet and a higher price tag, it should come as no surprise that it can handle games better than the newly launched RX 6700 XT. However, the price of these two cards should play a major factor in any purchasing decision.

The $170 price gap between the two cards doesn’t seem like a lot, which makes the value question much harder. At its list price, enthusiast gamers who demand the very best performance would want to punt for the RX 6800 XT. For those satisfied running games with frame rates in 1080p and 1440p resolution, the RX 6700 XT would be more than capable of getting the job done. However, while the two cards are quite reasonably priced, the beefier RX 6800 XT is almost impossible to find at its launch price. Until AMD can address the supply shortages of the RX 6800 XT, the current $1,000-plus price tags miss the price-to-performance mark by a long shot. Thereby, significantly increasing the value proposition of the RX 6700 XT.

Source: AMD