AMD’s new RDNA 2 refresh is finally here after months of hype and a few weeks of delays, with the new flagship Radeon RX 6950 XT in my hands in the form of MSI’s new custom Radeon RX 6950 XT GAMING X TRIO graphics card. Let’s dive right into it.
MSI isn’t changing much here with its TRI FROZR 2S cooling technology here on the Radeon RX 6950 XT GAMING X TRIO, but under the hood we do have some changes with the Navi 21 KXTX GPU and faster 16GB of GDDR6 now at 18Gbps. It’s the fastest RDNA 2-based Radeon GPU that MSI now sells, and AMD offers… until RDNA 3 later this year.
The new Radeon RX 6950 XT is a new RDNA 2 refresh that better competes with NVIDIA’s newly-released flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card… but falls closer to the RTX 3090. AMD can’t quite answer that new flagship Ampere GPU until its new RDNA 3 architecture is here, but pushing Navi 21 KXTX + higher TDP + and clocking the GDDR6 up helps a bit… I guess.
AMD initially started the RDNA 2 refresh GPU party with higher «starting from» $1299 pricing on the new flagship Radeon RX 6950 XT… but that was quickly changed to «starting from» $1099. This is $100 more than the $999 launch price of the Radeon RX 6900 XT.
The company is lucking out with the stars aligning for GPU prices to drop just as they’re refreshing their RDNA 2-based GPUs.
AMD is pushing out a great set of performance improvements, new technologies, and more into its new Radeon GPU drivers. I was using the Adrenalin v22.10 beta drivers for the review, but there will be new drivers out that will include these updates shortly.
AMD reiterates that there are 80+ games with FSR 1.0 support so far.
Inside, you’ll get support for FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 2.0 technology, where the first game out of the gate to support FSR 2.0 being DEATHLOOP by Arkane Studios and Bethesda. The update for that will drop on May 12, while FSR 2.0 is coming to other games in the near future.
FSR 2.0 is coming soon to Asterigos, Delysium, EVE Online, Farming Simulator 22, Forspoken, Grounded, Microsoft Flight Simulator, NiShuiHan, Perfect World Remake, Swordsman Remake, and Unknown 9: Awakening.
The introduction of AMD’s new Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) technology is here with the latest drivers, coinciding with the launch of the new RDNA 2 refresh GPUs. RSR uses all of the abilities that AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is capable of, and puts it into the driver to offer free performance uplifts across thousands and thousands of games.
AMD hasn’t done too much to the GPU on the Radeon RX 6950 XT, but we do have some faster GDDR6 memory — the same 16GB of GDDR6, but now at 18Gbps — up from 16Gbps. This provides a nice boost in performance over the Radeon RX 6900 XT, but it doesn’t topple NVIDIA’s new GeForce RTX 3090 Ti.
The new Radeon RX 6950 XT definitely beats the Radeon RX 6900 XT across the board, but it’s not by much… what it benefits from here is that AMD has pushed up the TDP to 335W default on the RX 6950 XT. We are able to pump that up to 360-370W on the custom MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT GAMING X TRIO.
We have 26.8 billion transistors for the GPU (no changes here from the other Navi 21 GPUs on the RX 6900 XT cards), with some improvements in performance from the increased TDP… allowing for higher GPU clocks. We have a few FPS or points in games and benchmarks across the board over the RX 6900 XT, and butting heads with the RTX 3090 (but not the RTX 3090 Ti).
Navi 21 XT inside of the Radeon RX 6900 XT was capable of 23.04 TFLOPs of FP16 compute performance and 46.08 TFLOPs of FP32 compute performance, while the new Navi 21 KXTX + increased TDP + GPU clocks spits out (in reference form) up to 23.65 TFLOPs of FP16 compute performance, and up to 47.33 TFLOPs of FP32 compute performance.
You won’t notice that, but it’s there.
The thing is, the Navi 21 XTXH chip was inside of some of the custom Radeon RX 6900 XT models released after the RX 6900 XT. I looked at two of them — the ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula, and then there’s the SAPPHIRE TOXIC Radeon RX 6900 XT Extreme Edition. I used the SAPPHIRE TOXIC RX 6900 XT Limited Edition, which is based on the Navi 21 XTX GPU.
I’m currently re-testing the ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula + SAPPHIRE TOXIC RX 6900 XT right now, and will have a separate article for that looking at the two cards side-by-side.
MSI keeps the retail packaging in line with its Radeon RX 6000 series GAMING X TRIO graphics cards, with the triple-fan TRI FROZR 2S cooling system detailed on the back.
From the front, it doesn’t look very different to any other triple-fan GAMING X TRIO card from MSI… and that’s not a bad thing. It looks great from the front, and even better when it’s installed into your gaming PC and has RGB lighting reflecting off of it.
The same goes for the back, it’s no different — but I’ve gotten used to MSI’s fantastic SUPRIM X range of GeForce 30 series GPUs. It would’ve been nice to have seen a real nice, high-end backplate on MSI’s new flagship Radeon RX 6950 XT GAMING X TRIO… I guess not. Hopefully things change with RDNA 3-based cards later this year and into 2023.
The card feels unnecessarily thick and large, with a huge cooler that really isn’t required but I guess «this is just the GAMING X TRIO» card. A nice, tight, dual-slot Radeon RX 6950 XT would’ve been fantastic. MSI is driving more power through the card, so an improved cooler is welcomed, I guess.
You will need 3 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors… which again I don’t see the need for, as this card isn’t going to be pushed past 400W or more.
MSI is using the regular display connectivity here: 1 x HDMI 2.1 and 3 x DisplayPort 1.4 connectors.
The biggest upgrade to the GPU testbed is the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X processor, offering 12 cores and 24 threads of Zen 3-powered CPU grunt at up to 4.8GHz.
That’s plenty of CPU power and offers a great upgrade over the Ryzen 7 3800X that I was using previously.
I will be upgrading this system in a few months, and maybe running it side-by-side with the new Alder Lake-powered Intel Core i9-12900K processor. I’m using one inside of the Allied M.O.A.B.-I gaming PC that I reviewed a few months ago, and man the 12900K is like the Godzilla of CPUs.
Sabrent is the most recent partner of mine to help build out my systems, sending me oodles of the fastest NVMe M.2 SSDs on the planet. I’m using Sabrent’s flagship Rocket 4 Plus 4TB M.2 SSDs which offers 7GB/sec+ reads and writes with a huge 4TB of capacity.
ASUS has been a tight partner of mine for a few years now, providing their huge 43-inch 4K 120Hz gaming monitors for my benchmarking and gaming needs. I’m using two of them at the moment, the ROG Strix XG438Q and the ROG Swift PG43UQ gaming monitors.
Note: All games run on Ultra/Maxed Out visual settings, motion blur disabled, V-Sync disabled.
Right out of the gate, the new Radeon RX 6950 XT offers leading performance in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with a huge 144FPS average. This beats out everything on the list, but don’t worry — this is just at 1080p — at 4K the GeForce RTX 30 series reigns supreme in Cyberpunk 2077.
You’re driving over 123FPS average at 1080p in Forza Horizon 5, more than enough to enjoy on a super-fast 120Hz monitor or TV. This puts it above the GeForce RTX 3080, and above the Radeon RX 6900 XT (of course) while the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is still far 11FPS superior.
Moving onto Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, we have 72FPS average at 1080p with the Radeon RX 6950 XT… impressive, as that keeps up with the GeForce RTX 3080 (NVIDIA excels in Metro). We have an additional 10%+ performance over the RX 6900 XT here, too.
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla sees AMD on top with its new flagship Radeon RX 6950 XT, pushing a huge 145FPS average at 1080p — 10FPS over the RX 6900 XT.
Note: All games run on Ultra/Maxed Out visual settings, motion blur disabled, V-Sync disabled.
Turning up the resolution to 2560 x 1440, we see the Radeon RX 6950 XT dropping under the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p — the RX 6950 XT with 93FPS (10FPS faster than the RX 6900 XT) — while there’s 97FPS average out of the RTX 3090 Ti here.
You’ve got another 5FPS average from the Radeon RX 6950 XT in Forza Horizon 5 at 1440p over the RX 6900 XT, the same 104FPS average as the GeForce RTX 3080. There’s also another 5FPS average from Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition on the RX 6950 XT over the RX 6900 XT, and 1FPS under the RTX 3080.
117FPS average in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, too… 9FPS above the RX 6900 XT and 22FPS over the RTX 3090. Kick ass stuff here, AMD. If you’re gaming with esports titles like Overwatch, League of Legends, Rocket League and others, you’ll easily enjoy 120FPS+ on high refresh rate displays.
Note: All games run on Ultra/Maxed Out visual settings, motion blur disabled, V-Sync disabled.
Things aren’t so rosy at 4K for the Radeon RX 6950 XT with NVIDIA’s higher-end GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs — the GeForce RTX 3080 12GB LHR, RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3090, and RTX 3090 Ti — beating the best Navi GPU you can buy in Cyberpunk 2077.
The same goes for Forza Horizon 5, except the GeForce RTX 3080 also joins that smack down list — the same goes for Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition. AMD-friendly Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla sees the Radeon RX 6950 XT stomping everything NVIDIA has by a longshot, with 117FPS average… up from the 108FPS average on the RX 6900 XT and 99FPS average (18FPS higher!) than the new flagship RTX 3090 Ti.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of War see AMD’s new flagship Radeon RX 6950 XT graphics card is only toppled by the RTX 3090 Ti at 4K in these two games.
AMD has a default TDP of 300W on the Radeon RX 6900 XT, custom Radeon RX 6900 XT cards can use up to 330W or so (without any power limit tricks and heavy overclocking).
But… the new Radeon RX 6950 XT arrives with a higher 335W TDP, while custom variants like the MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT GAMING X TRIO we have here today driving upwards of 370W for the card under full benchmark and gaming loads. This all comes down to the resolution, frame rate, overclock that you’ve got set, power limits, and more.
I could push mine up to 355-370W or so for the Navi 21 XTXH itself with a manual OC.
As for the GPU temps, we’re looking at around 58C for the GPU, thanks to MSI’s kick ass TRI FROZR 2S cooling system. GPU hotspot temperature sits at 80C — this is with the full overclock at 2760MHz and the triple-fan system cranking at 100% speeds (3250RPM or so).
AMD has polished its RDNA 2 architecture and new Radeon RX 6950 XT graphics card to the point where, yeah… it’s actually an impressive upgrade over the Radeon RX 6900 XT, but not enough to topple NVIDIA’s new monster GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card.
The new custom MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT GAMING X TRIO is a fantastic AMD Radeon graphics card, with the usual triple-fan GAMING X TRIO style, upgraded 16GB of GDDR6 (now at 18Gbps), and improvements in performance across the board at all resolutions. It’s thinner than the MSI RTX 3090 Ti SUPRIM X, and nowhere near as chunky, either.
There’s some OC wiggle room that gives you some time to push the Navi 21 KXTX GPU upwards of 2750-2780MHz (at least with my sample) and squeeze a few more FPS out of your games, or a few more notches on that benchmark run for the OC leaderboard.
The price of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT has come down considerably in the last month or so, allowing AMD to market the Radeon RX 6950 XT to start from $1099. That’s not bad when you compare it to the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti which costs at least $2000, while the Radeon RX 6900 XT is between $1050 and $1350 or so.
AMD is introducing the Radeon RX 6950 XT at the same rough price of the Radeon RX 6900 XT right now, offering a few % more performance across the board — the biggest upgrades are the higher TDP + higher GPU clocks + faster GDDR6 memory.
AMD has also made some strides in their Radeon GPU drivers, where v22.10 drivers gave me some great performance improvements — so much so that I re-benched the entire stack of Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs — so there has to be a mention of that.
Radeon Super Resolution 2.0 (RSR 2.0) launches with the new Radeon RX 6000 series refresh GPUs too, with RSR giving you the best of FSR… but baking it right into the Radeon drivers making it accessible by thousands and thousands of games.
If you are the owner of a large 4K 120Hz gaming TV, which there are more and more of now — especially the LG OLED TVs — then the MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT GAMING X TRIO is your weapon of choice should you choice Team Red over Team Green.
AMD could already handle 4K 120FPS gaming (esports titles like Overwatch, League of Legends, Valorant, CS:GO, Rocket League, and many more) with its Radeon RX 6900 XT, but the new Radeon RX 6950 XT is 5-10% better across the board. Those frames matter, man.
Wrapping up, the new MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT GAMING X TRIO isn’t something I’d buy over the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti… but if you wanted a Radeon, and wanted the fastest piece of Radeon GPU silicon, then the new Radeon RX 6950 XT GAMING X TRIO is an easy buy. More so now that the insane GPU prices are starting to come down, even if it’s just by a little.
You wouldn’t buy the Radeon RX 6900 XT now, unless it was $200+ cheaper than the Radeon RX 6950 XT… not bad AMD, not bad.
Coming soon: I’ve got a comparison with the ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula graphics card — this card rocks the higher-binned Navi 21 XTXH GPU — not far away. I’ll need a few more hours past these first reviews before I’m finished, but it is shaping up to be interesting so far… that’s for sure.
Performance
95%
Quality
85%
Features
90%
Value
95%
Overall
91%
MSI’s new custom Radeon RX 6950 XT GAMING X TRIO is as good as Navi 21 will get. It’s definitely a step above the RX 6900 XT, but still loses to the RTX 3090 Ti.
Anthony Garreffa
Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering.
