Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Chart-topping efficiency in lots of video games
- Radeon Super Resolution and Smart Access Memory make it even sooner
- Much cheaper than Nvidia’s rival RTX 3090
- Gorgeous all-white aesthetic and high-quality elements
- Incredibly cool and quiet
- Dual BIOS swap and idle fan cease
Cons
- Massive 3.5 slot design
- Very costly, poor price-to-performance in comparison with Radeon RX 6800 XT
- Power hungry
- Ray tracing efficiency lags behind Nvidia RTX GPUs
Our Verdict
The Sapphire Nitro+ Pure Radeon RX 6950 XT is a cool, quiet, beautiful beast pushed even additional by AMD’s Smart Access Memory and Radeon Super Resolution options—should you can afford it, match it in your case, and feed its deep thirst for energy.
Price When Reviewed
Nitro+ Pure Radeon RX 6950 XT: $1249
After two lengthy, bleak years of heartbreak, graphics playing cards are lastly beginning to change into out there at prompt costs (generally), proper as Intel winds as much as ship its debut Arc discrete desktop graphics cards this summer time. The winds of change are lastly blowing, and AMD determined that is the proper time to roll out a “refresh” of a number of Radeon RX 6000-series graphics playing cards. Today, we’re reviewing the $399 Radeon RX 6650 XT, $549 Radeon RX 6750 XT, and $1,099 Radeon RX 6950 XT.
Each sports activities the identical underlying GPU specs as their vanilla counterparts (the Radeon RX 6600 XT, 6700 XT, and 6900 XT, respectively), however with sooner reminiscence and each clock speeds and energy draw juiced.
Is that sufficient to jockey AMD’s newest choices into pole positions on our roundup of the perfect graphics playing cards and justify their greater value tags? To discover out, we glance to Sapphire’s swanky Nitro+ variations of every mannequin—together with the beautiful new whited-out Nitro+ “Pure” Radeon RX 6950 XT, a premium piece of package that goals to take down Nvidia’s vaunted RTX 3090. Let’s dig in.
Editor’s notice: Our content material system solely permits for one scored overview per article. The Nitro+ Radeon RX 6650 XT and Nitro+ 6750 XT would get 3.5 stars—3 for AMD’s underlying GPU efficiency, and an additional half star for Sapphire’s elegant Nitro+ design and implementation.

The Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 6650 XT, 6750 XT, and Nitro+ Pure RX 6950 XT
Brad Chacos/IDG
AMD Radeon RX “6×50” specs and options
The refreshed Radeon RX “6×50” GPUs don’t reinvent the wheel. Instead, they amplify the already-capable energy of the vanilla variations, pushing the potential of AMD’s killer RDNA 2 architecture to its limits. The Radeon RX 6650 XT, 6750 XT, and 6950 XT all include devoted {hardware} for real-time ray tracing, a radical new on-die “Infinity Cache” that helps pace up gaming efficiency, AV1 decoding (though not encoding), and extra.
Here’s an AMD-supplied have a look at the technical particulars for the reference designs:

AMD
AMD’s chart doesn’t examine the refreshes in opposition to the originals, however there are a number of key (minor) variations to concentrate on:
- The Radeon RX 6650 XT has a mean Game GPU clock of two,410MHz and a Boost clock of two,635MHz, up from 2,359MHz and a couple of,589MHz, respectively, within the 6600 XT. It additionally acquired a reminiscence pace bump, from 16Gbps to 17.5Gbps. The complete board energy draw went as much as accommodate these tweaks, going from 160W within the 6600 XT to 180W within the 6650 XT.
- The Radeon RX 6750 XT has a mean Game GPU clock of two,495MHz and a Boost clock of two,600MHz, up from 2,424MHz and a couple of,581MHz, respectively. It additionally acquired a reminiscence pace bump, from 16Gbps to 18Gbps, and the full board energy draw will increase from 230W within the vanilla 6700 XT to 250W within the 6750 XT.
- The Radeon RX 6750 XT has a mean Game GPU clock of two,100MHz and a Boost clock of two,310MHz, up from 2,015MHz and a couple of,250MHz, respectively. Its reminiscence pace additionally elevated from 16Gbps to 18Gbps. Making these pace will increase on such a giant, badass GPU doesn’t come simply although; this card sees essentially the most vital complete board energy draw will increase of all, going from 300W within the vanilla 6900 XT to 335W within the 6950 XT.
The Sapphire Nitro+ variations we’re reviewing come manufacturing facility overclocked with even greater speeds, which we’ll element within the subsequent part. The reminiscence and core clock pace boosts certainly end in sooner efficiency, although as you’ll see in our benchmark part, they’re pretty modest will increase. This Radeon RX 6×50 refresh is about evolution, not revolution. Don’t count on to see Team Red instantly shoot previous Nvidia’s best-in-class ray tracing efficiency with these.

Activating Smart Access Memory and Radeon Super Resolution provides AMD’s graphics playing cards a large efficiency enhance.
AMD
More thrilling occasions are taking place on the software program facet of issues. AMD has been diligently deploying new software program options over RDNA’s lifetime, and its not too long ago launched Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) feature can drastically improve body charges in nearly any sport, utilizing the ability of upscaling. The firm’s Smart Access Memory (SAM) feature, which lets Ryzen CPUs speak on to the GPU’s onboard reminiscence, may also supercharge efficiency in some video games, although it’s very resolution- and settings-specific. SAM is a lot more practical than Nvidia and Intel’s rival PCIe Resizable BAR help.
In tandem, RSR and SAM can ship efficiency by way of the roof, they usually’re a giant a part of AMD’s worth proposition with these new GPUs, although each include some minor caveats. We’ll briefly wade into that after our commonplace benchmark part.
While most Radeon 6×50 playing cards will ship in third-party customized variations, AMD may even ship reference designs for the Radeon RX 6750 XT and 6950 XT by way of its web site. The firm may even be retiring the unique 6600 XT in favor of the newer, costlier 6650 XT, although all different AMD Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs “will continue to run their natural course based on market demand,” an AMD spokesperson tells me.
Meet Sapphire’s Nitro+

The Sapphire Nitro+ Pure RX 6950 XT
Brad Chacos/IDG
Sapphire despatched over one in all every new GPU to check, all hailing from the corporate’s vaunted Nitro+ lineup, which targets fanatics greater than Sapphire’s mainstream Pulse lineup. We acquired the $449 Nitro+ Radeon RX 6650 XT, $619 Nitro+ Radeon RX 6750 XT, and the beautiful $1,249 Nitro+ “Pure” Radeon RX 6950 XT, which sports activities a brand new cooler design with a slick, imposing all-white aesthetic. The 6650 XT and 6750 XT keep on with Sapphire’s established, eye-catching cyberpunk-esque design.

Sapphire
All three sport Sapphire’s “wave fin” warmth sink design, engineered to cut back air friction (and thus noise), and a V-shaped notch within the warmth sink instantly over the GPU itself to “accelerate and centralize the air flow” in a quest to dissipate warmth extra successfully. Varying quantities of composite warmth pipes snake by way of every—you’ll discover extra within the costlier fashions—however each Nitro+ comes with a standalone reminiscence/VRM cooling module that tames the MOSFETS and chokes alike, whereas the Nitro+ Pure RX 6950 XT features a die-cast aluminum-magnesium alloy body to make sure the cardboard is inflexible sufficient to carry all these fancy cooling elements.

Sapphire
Sapphire additionally outfitted these 6×50 Nitros with new, second-generation “angular velocity” hybrid followers that merge traits from each axial and blower-style followers, bettering airflow and air stress in comparison with yesteryear’s axial followers whereas maintaining noise ranges low. This second-gen iteration improves air stress and quantity by 44 and 19 %, respectively, Sapphire says. The Nitro+ 6750 XT and Nitro+ Pure 6950 XT every include three followers embedded of their shrouds, whereas the Nitro+ 6650 XT packs two. All three function idle fan cease, which turns off the followers fully should you aren’t gaming or performing different GPU-intensive duties. Those followers might be shortly changed in the event that they break utilizing Sapphire’s Quick Connect Fan function.

Sapphire
The Nitro+ collection is thought for its quiet, cool efficiency, and these 6×50 refreshes are not any exception. These enthusiast-focused playing cards additionally include dual-BIOS switches useful for overclocking endeavors, although the default efficiency for the secondary BIOS differs between the Nitro+ 6650 XT and the higher-end fashions. The 6650 XT’s secondary setting is a “silent BIOS” that barely reduces energy draw and clock speeds to run even quieter than the default whisper. The 6750 XT and Nitro+ Pure 6950 XT, alternatively, include a secondary “OC BIOS” that amps up the ability draw and clock speeds if you wish to put the pedal to the steel.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Sapphire’s Trixx software program utility can be utilized to shift between the 2 BIOSes without having to tear open your PC and flip the bodily swap. Trixx may also modify the look of the Nitro+ playing cards’ RGB lighting, and verify their fan well being. The software program suite additionally provides you entry to Trixx Boost, a performance-boosting function that gained the 2019 innovation award on our Full Nerd podcast. Unfortunately for Sapphire, the introduction of AMD’s Radeon Super Resolution largely eliminates Trixx Boost’s usefulness, although you may nonetheless use Sapphire’s function to craft customized monitor resolutions that offer you higher management over how Radeon Super Resolution behaves.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG
These are all very spectacular items of package. But earlier than we transfer on to testing, I need to spotlight simply how beautiful the brand new Nitro+ Pure design is. The big, white card appears so contemporary and so clear, and runs completely silent. Subtle RGB lights within the followers and embedded within the aluminum backplate assist it look even higher. My teenage daughter has grown up with me benchmarking countless graphics playing cards, however that is the primary card to ever make her cease and ask, “Whoa, what is that?” when she walked in throughout my testing.

Brad Chacos/IDG
The Sapphire Nitro+ Pure Radeon RX 6950 XT appears completely beautiful and punches like a powerhouse. On to the benchmarks!
Our check system
Our AMD Ryzen 5000-series check rig can benchmark the impact of PCIe 4.0 help on trendy GPUs, in addition to the performance-boosting AMD Smart Access Memory and Nvidia Resizable BAR options (that are each primarily based on the identical underlying PCIe commonplace). Most of the {hardware} was offered by the producers, however we bought the storage ourselves.
- AMD Ryzen 5900X, inventory settings
- AMD Wraith Max cooler
- MSI Godlike X570 motherboard
- 32GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 3800 reminiscence
- EVGA 1200W SuperNova P2 energy provide ($352 on Amazon)
- 1TB SK Hynix Gold S31 SSD
We’re evaluating the $399 AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT, $549 Radeon RX 6750 XT, and $1,099 Radeon RX 6950 XT (utilizing their default BIOS profiles) in opposition to their vanilla namesakes and related Nvidia GeForce counterparts. These shall be some large benchmark charts.
We check a wide range of video games spanning varied engines, genres, vendor sponsorships (Nvidia, AMD, and Intel), and graphics APIs (DirectX 11, DX12, and Vulkan). Each sport is examined utilizing its in-game benchmark on the highest doable graphics presets except in any other case famous, with VSync, body charge caps, real-time ray tracing or DLSS results, and FreeSync/G-Sync disabled, together with another vendor-specific applied sciences like FidelityFX instruments or Nvidia Reflex. We’ve additionally enabled temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) to push these playing cards to their limits. We run every benchmark a minimum of thrice and record the common end result for every check. We examined the Radeon RX 6650 XT and 6750 XT and its rivals on the 1080p and 1440p resolutions they’re supposed for, and the Radeon RX 6950 XT and its rivals at 4K and 1440p.
Typically, we absolutely re-test each GPU utilized in a brand new graphics card overview, benchmarking the whole lot with the latest-and-greatest drivers. Given the intense variety of comparability GPUs wanted for this three-card roundup, nonetheless, we reused our benchmark numbers for the comparisons on this overview. That’s not best, however all playing cards have been re-tested over the previous few months, and we ran spot checks with every to verify efficiency hasn’t been drastically elevated or decreased by driver adjustments within the meantime.
Gaming efficiency benchmarks
Watch Dogs: Legion
Watch Dogs: Legion is likely one of the first video games to debut on next-gen consoles. Ubisoft upgraded its Disrupt engine to incorporate cutting-edge options like real-time ray tracing and Nvidia’s DLSS. We disable these results for this testing, however Legion stays a strenuous sport even on high-end {hardware} with its optionally available high-resolution texture pack put in.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Horizon Zero Dawn
Yep, PlayStation exclusives are coming to the PC now. Horizon Zero Dawn runs on Guerrilla Games’ Decima engine, the identical engine that powers Death Stranding.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Gears Tactics
Gears Tactics places it personal brutal, fast-paced spin on the XCOM-like style. This Unreal Engine 4-powered sport was constructed from the bottom up for DirectX 12, and we love having the ability to work a tactics-style sport into our benchmarking suite. Better but, the sport comes with a plethora of graphics choices for PC snobs. More video games ought to dedicate such loving care to explaining what flipping all these visible knobs imply.
You can’t use the presets to benchmark Gears Tactics, because it intelligently scales to work greatest in your put in {hardware}, that means that “Ultra” on one graphics card can load totally different settings than “Ultra” on a weaker card. We manually set all choices to their highest doable settings.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Wolfenstein: Youngblood is extra enjoyable when you may play cooperatively with a buddy, however it’s a fearless experiment—and an absolute technical showcase. Running on the Vulkan API, Youngblood achieves blistering body charges, and it helps all kinds of cutting-edge applied sciences like ray tracing, DLSS 2.0, HDR, GPU culling, asynchronous computing, and Nvidia’s Content Adaptive Shading. The sport features a built-in benchmark with two totally different scenes; we examined Riverside.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Metro Exodus
One of the perfect video games of 2019, Metro Exodus stays one of many best-looking video games round, too. The newest model of the 4A Engine offers extremely luscious, ultra-detailed visuals, with some of the beautiful real-time ray tracing implementations launched but. The Extreme graphics preset we benchmark can soften even essentially the most highly effective trendy {hardware}, as you’ll see beneath, although the sport’s Ultra and High presets nonetheless look good at a lot greater body charges.
We check in DirectX 12 mode with ray tracing, Hairworks, and DLSS disabled.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Borderlands 3
Borderlands is again! Gearbox’s sport defaults to DX12, so we do as nicely. It provides us a glimpse on the ultra-popular Unreal Engine 4’s efficiency in a standard shooter. This sport tends to favor AMD {hardware}.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Strange Brigade
Strange Brigade is a cooperative third-person shooter the place a workforce of adventurers blasts by way of hordes of mythological enemies. It’s a technological showcase, constructed across the next-gen Vulkan and DirectX 12 applied sciences and infused with options like HDR help and the power to toggle asynchronous compute on and off. It makes use of Rebellion’s customized Azure engine. We check utilizing the Vulkan renderer, which is quicker than DX12.

Brad Chacos/IDG
F1 2020
F1 2020 is a gem to check, supplying a wide selection of each graphical and benchmarking choices, making it a way more dependable (and enjoyable) choice than the Forza collection. It’s constructed on the most recent model of Codemasters’ buttery-smooth Ego sport engine, full with help for DX12 and Nvidia’s DLSS expertise. We check two laps on the Australia course, with clear skies on and DLSS off.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider concludes the reboot trilogy, and it’s nonetheless completely beautiful a few years after its debut. Square Enix optimized this sport for DX12 and recommends DX11 provided that you’re utilizing older {hardware} or Windows 7, so we check with DX12. Shadow of the Tomb Raider makes use of an enhanced model of the Foundation engine that additionally powered Rise of the Tomb Raider and contains optionally available real-time ray tracing and DLSS options.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Rainbow Six Siege
Rainbow Six Siege nonetheless dominates the Steam charts years after its launch, and Ubisoft helps it with frequent updates and occasions. The builders have poured a ton of labor into the sport’s AnvilNext engine through the years, ultimately rolling out a Vulkan model of the sport that we use to check. By default, the sport lowers the render scaling to extend body charges, however we set it to 100 % to benchmark native rendering efficiency on graphics playing cards. Even nonetheless, body charges soar.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Radeon’s all-AMD benefit
Now that you understand how the Radeon RX 6×50 refreshes carry out in commonplace conditions, it’s price mentioning that AMD additionally presents software program options that may considerably improve efficiency in the best situations. AMD presents a wide range of performance-boosting features, however we’ll give attention to two right here: Smart Access Memory and Radeon Super Resolution.
If you even have an AMD Ryzen processor, Smart Access Memory lets it speak on to your GPU’s full array of onboard reminiscence, slightly than limiting that communication to tiny chunks. Its results range wildly from sport to sport, and even from decision to decision or relying on what settings you’re utilizing, however normally, SAM can present an uplift in most video games, particularly newer ones constructed utilizing the DirectX 12 or Vulkan graphics APIs. In uncommon situations, Smart Access Memory can present double-digit pace will increase. Nvidia and Intel help PCIe Resizable BAR, SAM’s underlying expertise, however AMD’s customized resolution is way more efficient.
Next, there’s Radeon Super Resolution, which primarily lets RDNA GPUs use AMD’s killer FidelityFX Super Resolution tech in all video games, not simply video games that actively combine help. This upsampling expertise isn’t as clear as Nvidia’s DLSS, however the capability to make use of it in each sport is an incredible promoting level that may’t be denied. Nvidia presents related easy upscaling options past DLSS, however they’re far much less polished and require leaping by way of extra hoops.
RSR lets your Radeon GPU render video games internally at a decrease decision, then upscales it to suit your monitor’s native decision after, which helps you to get the sooner efficiency you’d count on from working at decrease decision, however with minimal high quality loss. Well, principally: While RSR and different upscaling strategies work exceptionally whenever you’re upscaling from 1080p to 1440p, or from 1080p or 1440p to 4K, upscaling 720p photos to 1080p appears a bit extra grainy, because it’s working with so many fewer pixels from the beginning. It positively works for 1080p upscaling, however that nuance makes it a bit much less engaging in 1080p-focused graphics playing cards just like the Radeon RX 6650 XT.
Using both may give you a noticeable pace enhance. Using each in tandem can propel these playing cards into new efficiency tiers. To offer you a style of simply how efficient SAM and RSR are as a duo, the charts beneath present the types of good points you get with SAM energetic on the Nitro+ Pure Radeon RX 6950 XT, after which with each SAM and RSR (upscaling from 1440p to 4K) enabled, alongside outcomes from the RTX 3090. Compare the orange (SAM + RSR 1440p upscaled to 4K) bar in opposition to the blue 4K bars within the charts beneath, and remember to discover how a lot—or little within the case of Metro Exodus—going from commonplace outcomes to outcomes with SAM on with out RSR make in every sport, at each 4K (blue) and 1440p (pink) decision.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG
Sayonara, RTX 3090. There generally is a slight picture downgrade should you pause your video games and pixel peep when upscaling from 1440p to 4K with RSR, particularly in tremendous heads-up show components, nevertheless it’s nearly imperceptible in movement.
Ray tracing efficiency
Remember that these Radeon RX 6×50 refreshes sport the identical underlying GPUs as their vanilla variations. That means they don’t embrace extra {hardware} ray tracing models to attempt to shut the hole in ray tracing efficiency between it and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX choices, that are on their second era of ray tracing tech.
We examined the Radeon RX 6650 XT and 6750 XT in a few video games to verify the actual fact. Watch Dogs: Legion packs ray-traced reflections, whereas Shadow of the Tomb Raider contains ray-traced shadows.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG
Yep: If peak efficiency in ray traced video games is a significant concern of yours, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30-series stays the best choice by far. Other video games embrace much more strenuous ray tracing results (and mixtures of results) that may solely exacerbate the gulf. That mentioned, the power to make use of Radeon Super Resolution to claw efficiency again in any ray-traced sport is a noticeable feather in AMD’s cap.
Power draw, thermals, and noise
We check energy draw by looping the F1 2020 benchmark at 4K for about 20 minutes after we’ve benchmarked the whole lot else and noting the very best studying on our Watts Up Pro meter, which measures the ability consumption of our complete check system. The preliminary a part of the race, the place all competing vehicles are on display screen concurrently, tends to be essentially the most demanding portion.
This isn’t a worst-case check; this can be a GPU-bound sport working at a GPU-bound decision to gauge efficiency when the graphics card is sweating laborious. If you’re taking part in a sport that additionally hammers the CPU, you can see greater general system energy attracts. Consider your self warned.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Pushing these GPUs’ clock and reminiscence speeds even greater, and unleashing extra vitality to take action, leads to noticeably greater energy attracts for the Radeon RX 6×50 refreshes. The Radeon RX 6750 XT and 6950 XT now suck down extra juice than their major Nvidia rivals, however the Radeon RX 6650 XT stays extra conservative than the identically priced RTX 3060 Ti (although the 3060 Ti is far sooner in efficiency as nicely).
We check thermals by leaving GPU-Z open through the F1 2020 energy draw check, noting the very best most temperature on the finish.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Sapphire’s cooling prowess proves itself as soon as once more. All three of those Nitro+ GPUs keep cool and whisper-quiet even underneath huge load. They aren’t fairly silent, however they’re damned close to it, particularly enclosed in a case. And keep in mind that they are silent throughout non-gaming desktop use due to Sapphire’s idle fan-stop function.
Conclusion
So the mud has cleared and the benchmarks have been run. Should you purchase these Radeon RX 6×50 refreshes? It relies upon.

Brad Chacos/IDG
The energy, clock, and reminiscence pace will increase enhance efficiency an honest quantity for all these playing cards, however not by earth-shattering quantities. Graphics card pricing is lastly approaching MSRP after two lengthy, bleak years of shortages, however the adjustments listed below are nuanced sufficient that it doesn’t change our underlying impressions of every core GPU. We initially mentioned the Radeon RX 6600 XT and 6700 XT ship good efficiency for 1080p and 1440p gaming, respectively, however include too-high value tags. These 6650 XT and 6750 XT choices are a little bit bit sooner and price a little bit bit extra. Their launch doesn’t successfully alter the worth proposition of the Radeon lineup, although the transfer to extra energy negates AMD’s effectivity benefit over Nvidia’s RTX 30-series.
The spectacular $400 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti nonetheless serves as a giant spoiler for each of those new Radeon GPUs. It is considerably sooner than the Radeon RX 6650 XT for a similar value, and sometimes solely a bit slower than the $550 Radeon RX 6750 XT (which trades blows with the $500 RTX 3070). In AMD’s press briefing, the corporate made the purpose that the most affordable road pricing for the Nvidia GPUs put them at $579 for the 3060 Ti and $770 for the RTX 3070—however then lists its personal 6×50 refreshes at MSRP.
If these new Radeon choices keep on with MSRP, whereas Nvidia’s stay inflated, AMD’s playing cards are clearly the higher purchase (particularly should you plan on utilizing Smart Access Memory and Radeon Super Resolution). But GPU costs hold creeping downward. If Nvidia’s rivals change into out there close to MSRP, the RTX 3060 Ti stays the clear champion of this complete phase, particularly given GeForce’s robust ray tracing and DLSS benefits. We haven’t seen the RTX 3060 Ti going for wherever close to $400 but, although.

Brad Chacos/IDG
The Radeon RX 6950 XT is extra attention-grabbing. The vanilla 6900 XT traded blows with the GeForce RTX 3090, and the supercharged Radeon RX 6950 XT meets or beats Nvidia’s monster within the overwhelming majority of titles, particularly should you play at decrease 1440p or 1080p resolutions that permit RDNA 2’s Infinity Cache flex its muscle groups. If you have got a Ryzen rig able to utilizing Smart Access Memory, the scales tip much more in AMD’s favor. And should you plan on utilizing Radeon Super Resolution to upscale video games from 1440p to 4K—since RSR works universally—it completely smokes the RTX 3090 (and 3080 Ti) with virtually no perceptible downgrade in visible constancy. Giddy-up.
That mentioned, splurging on a $1,000-plus graphics card for gaming prowess alone is fairly area of interest. The GeForce RTX 3090’s huge 24GB reminiscence buffer and ray tracing capabilities make it the clear alternative for content material creators who need to work and play on their GPU. When it involves the equally ferocious $1,200 RTX 3080 Ti, which prices $100 greater than the 6950 XT, we’d advocate choosing your poison primarily based on out there options. Do you favor the improved ray tracing and DLSS capabilities of GeForce, which solely work in choose cutting-edge video games, or AMD’s killer duo of Smart Access Memory and Radeon Super Resolution, which work to some extent in nearly all video games? Personally, we’d in all probability lean in direction of the latter (working 4K video games at 1440p speeds with little-to-no visible downgrades rocks) however there’s no proper or incorrect reply.

Brad Chacos/IDG
Finally, should you determine to choose up one in all AMD’s new playing cards and are prepared to spend a bit extra for a high-end customized model, we will’t advocate Sapphire’s Nitro+ fashions extremely sufficient, similar to we’ve got been for years. They’re engaging, quick, cool, and quiet, with options that PC gaming fanatics demand, like twin BIOS switches and RGB lighting. Sapphire makes wonderful merchandise, full cease. Yes, Nitro+ playing cards cost a premium for his or her prowess, however they’re price it.
And should you’re out there for a god-tier graphics card, take a protracted, laborious have a look at the Nitro+ Pure Radeon RX 6950 XT specifically. The new design tames this hotrod GPU in spectacular vogue, and with its standout all-white, all-aluminum design, appears completely improbable doing so. This often is the most pleasurable graphics card I’ve benchmarked this era. I can’t wait to tinker with its OC BIOS and open up the ability limits much more.
Editor’s notice: Our content material system solely permits for one scored overview per article. The Nitro+ Radeon RX 6650 XT and Nitro+ 6750 XT would get 3.5 stars—3 for AMD’s underlying GPU efficiency, and an additional half star for Sapphire’s elegant Nitro+ design and implementation.