In view of a Tuesday launch, that’s very sporty, and based on real working days it’s even impossible – and we’re not just talking about one graphics card here, but about three. It is noteworthy that AMD only published the reference GPU power limits on request last Friday afternoon. Through appropriate selection and operation with secondary silent firmwares, we did achieve our goal, but it was somewhat tedious.
Ex-factory, the models we have work with significantly increased values and the driver only allows changes between -6 and -10 percent GPU power. In the case of the Radeon RX 6950 XT, 6750 XT and 6650 XT, that’s easier said than done. We achieve this with AMD graphics cards by manually setting the corresponding power limit. If this is not possible, we use the “reasonable” variants of the given templates to simulate a reference map. This intervention ensures high performance even under extreme loads, but dilutes energy efficiency.įor this reason, PCGH prefers to test reference charts to plot the baseline. The problem is that these differ quite significantly from the reference cards, many work with significantly higher GPU power values. This is exactly what happened here, so that you and most of our colleagues will see beautifully designed OC models. As a rule, sophisticated variants are sent to the testers in order to shine with the highest possible performance and some special equipment. Instead, reference was made to the numerous custom designs of the board partners, which put a lot of effort into it. Basically, both the RX 6950 XT and the RX 6750 XT are available as “Midnight Black” reference cards in the shop at (the 6650-XT reference card only exists virtually) – but the Radeon makers sent samples not.
We would therefore like to forward our experiences directly in advance so that you can optimally assess the new Radeon graphics cards. This graphics card launch had several special features that had a significant impact on the results.