AMD‘s latest Radeon RX 6700 XT went live last Thursday; and in just a matter of few minutes, they are gone. If you currently own an RX 5700 XT and were wondering whether it was a worth-it upgrade or not, well I think it’s best to hold on to your 5700 XT just yet. Let’s do a quick comparison between the Radeon RX 6700 XT vs the RX 5700 XT graphics cards. You’d be surprised to see that they are quite similar in some way, yet they perform differently. Go ahead and find out below.
Radeon RX 6700 XT Beats RX 5700 XT Thanks To RDNA 2.0
AMD’s mid-range Radeon RX 6700 XT is based on TSMC’s 7nm process. The 6700 XT graphics card is powered by a Navi 22 GPU chip featuring AMD’s new RDNA 2.0 architecture. Meanwhile, its predecessor is using a Navi 10 GPU based on RDNA 1.0 architecture; but is also on a 7nm process.
Now here comes the interesting part. Both the Radeon RX 6700 XT and RX 5700 XT has the same number of Stream Processors, which is 2560. They also have the same number of Compute Units, ROPs, and TMUs, which are 40, 64, and 160 respectively.
The Radeon RX 6700 XT does have an advantage when it comes to memory capacity, which is 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM with a clock speed of 16Gbps. However, it has a lower memory bus width and slower bandwidth compared to the RX 5700 XT’s 256-bit memory and 448.Gb/s bandwidth.
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT vs Radeon RX 5700 XT Specs Comparison
| AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT | AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT | |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing Process | 7nm TSMC | 7nm TSMC |
| Transistor Count | 17,200 million | 10,300 million |
| Architecture | RDNA 2.0 | RDNA 1.0 |
| GPU | Navi 22 | Navi 10 |
| Stream Processors | 2560 | 2560 |
| Compute Units | 40 | 40 |
| ROPs | 64 | 64 |
| TMUs | 160 | 160 |
| Base Clock | 2321 MHz | 1605 MHz |
| Game Clock | 2424 MHz | 1755 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 2581 MHz | 1905 MHz |
| Throughput (FP32) | 12.4 TFLOPS | 9.75 TFLOPS |
| Memory Size / Type | 12GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Clock | 16 Gbps | 14 Gbps |
| Memory Bus Width | 192-bit | 256-bit |
| Bandwidth | 384.0 GB/s | 448.0 GB/s |
| Infinity Cache | 96MB | N/A |
| Total Board Power | 230W | 225W |
| Recommended PSU | 550W | 550W |
| AMD MSRP | $479 | $399 |
So, how do the specs of the RX 6700 XT translate into performance? Jarrod from Jarrod’s Tech recently uploaded a video comparing the new Radeon RX 6700 XT against the older RX 5700 XT. He used AMD’s reference cards, so I think the RX 5700 XT may have a little bit of a disadvantage when it comes to thermals since it’s a blower-type graphics card.
Based on his review comparison, the RX 6700 XT is substantially faster than the RX 5700 XT by up to 25% average in 1080p resolution. Moving up to 1440p resolution, the RX 6700 XT was even faster than the RX 5700 XT by up to 30% average. Of course, the performance difference varies depending on the game titles.
Clock-Per-Clock Comparison Reveals Same Performance
Steve from Hardware Unboxed also uploaded a video on the same day comparing both the RX 6700 XT and RX 5700 XT. But his approach was very different. Instead of just benchmarking both graphics cards and comparing their results directly; he locked the clock speeds of both graphics cards to 1.8GHz. The results were surprising!
Locking both graphics cards’ clock speed to 1.8GHz reveals that the RX 6700 XT and RX 5700 XT performed similarly; and most of the time neck-and-neck with each other. I was quite surprised at first, but if we take a look at both card’s specifications, they do have the same number of Stream processors, Compute Units, ROPs and TMUs. Both are also using a 7nm process.
But thanks to the new RDNA 2.0 architecture and the higher or faster clock speeds of the RX 6700 XT, it was able to outperform the RX 5700 XT by a respectable margin. Notice that both graphics cards have a near-similar total board power as well, 230W vs 2250W. This also tells us that the RX 6700 XT performs not only faster, thanks to higher clock speeds, but was more efficient than its predecessor.
The Radeon RX 6700 XT also has features like ray tracing that is not present on the previous AMD cards. AMD is also planning to release a similar feature to NVIDIA’s DLSS called FidelityFX Super Resolution. But we don’t know yet if this feature will be exclusive to the RX 6000 cards with RDNA 2.0 only.
Pricing and Availability
While the new Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card looks very appealing, unfortunately, supply is still an issue at this time. You are lucky if you got one for $479 (MSRP). But most custom RX 6700 XT from AIB partners are sold for around $620 to $830; a significant mark up. And those are retail prices listed on Newegg; those are not scalper prices. Let’s just hope that the (silicone) shortage will be resolved sooner and hope for the best.
