AMD and Nvidia looked to be living in a parallel universe. They’d quote pricing like $329 or $479 for a middling graphics card, knowing that by the time pandemic middlemen got their cut, you’d be paying a lot more. AMD, on the other hand, looks to be waking up right now.
The $1,099 AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT, $549 AMD Radeon 6750 XT, and $399 AMD Radeon 6650 XT are the company’s first graphics cards to be priced based on market demand rather than a fictitious MSRP.
When you consider that AMD graphics cards have practically returned to reasonable costs in general, there’s a chance in hell you’ll be able to get these new ones at the price AMD is claiming.
That’s fantastic, because value is by far the most interesting aspect of the AMD graphics cards at the moment.
The RX 6950 XT, 6750 XT, and 6650 XT are nothing like the next-generation AMD RDNA 3 processors that have been rumoured. They are not, in fact, new GPUs.
They’re straight-up enhancements of the current RX 6900 XT, 6700 XT, and 6600 XT, with the same silicon but updated firmware enabling faster clocks and memories, as the “50” in their names suggests.
And, although any efficiency boost is welcome, this one won’t be huge: each “50” card offers a 5 to 6% boost over the vanilla model.
According to AMD reviewer information, the difference in some video games might be as tiny as 1 body per second. Others that operate at really high framerates may witness a tenfold increase in framerate.
Furthermore, these enhancements come at a cost: the playing cards have a TDP that is 20 to 35W higher than the originals, consuming more energy and/or emitting more heat.
To read our blog on “Intel, AMD and ARM have teamed up to make faster CPUs,” click here.
