AMD RX 6700 XT: everything you need to know about AMD's new Big Navi GPU

AMD have just unveiled the next card in their Big Navi RX 6000 family of next-gen graphics cards, the RX 6700 XT. Whether you missed the announcements or just need a refresher of everything that went down, here's everything you need to know about the RX 6700 XT, including when it's coming out, how much it's going to cost and how its specs stack up to Nvidia's RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070.

AMD RX 6700 XT release date and price

The RX 6700 is arriving on March 18th, which is just over two weeks away at time of writing. Both AMD and third party partner cards will be available on this date, and prices will start at $479 (UK pricing to be confirmed).

Interestingly, $479 is actually closer to the initial price of Nvidia's RTX 3070 GPU than the RTX 3060 Ti. The RTX 3070 started at $499, while the RTX 3060 Ti started at $399. I'll have to wait until review samples are available to see how its performance stacks up, but the RX 6700 XT's specs do offer a number of key advances over both of its Nvidia rivals. Let's take a look.

AMD RX 6700 XT specs

The RX 6700 XT is designed to play games at 1440p on max settings at high refresh rates, according to AMD. To make sure it's got everything it needs to handle those high resolution texture packs, the RX 6700 XT comes equipped with 12GB of GDDR6 memory - that's 4GB more than the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070. It will also use a standard 8+6-pin power connector, and AMD recommend you pair it with a 650W power supply. As for display outputs, it will support both HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4, giving it plenty of future proofing.

Here's a quite run-down of how the RX 6700 XT's specs stack up to the rest of AMD's Big Navi RX 6000 family:

AMD RX 6700 XT performance

AMD also provided a handful of early performance figures for the RX 6700 XT during their reveal event, which you can have a gander at below. As you can see from AMD's max settings 1440p graph, it looks like the RX 6700 XT will be quite a bit faster than the RTX 3060 Ti (as you'd hopefully expect given its higher price) and pretty much on par with the RTX 3070, performing better in some games such as Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Hitman 3, but worse in others.

The one thing that was missing from today's RX 6700 XT event, however, was any more talk of AMD's rival DLSS tech, FidelityFX Super Resolution. I was hoping that AMD might finally spill the beans on their performance boosting upscaling tech today, but alas, it doesn't look like it will be ready in time for the RX 6700 XT's launch in a couple of weeks. This is a shame, as while the RX 6700 XT's raw performance may be on a rough equal playing with the marginally more expensive RTX 3070, if its ray tracing performance is anything like that of the RX 6800 or RX 6800 XT, then it's going to be at a serious disadvantage until AMD get it out the door.

Admittedly, given that no one can actually buy an RTX 3070 (or indeed any kind of AMD or Nvidia graphics card) right now due to thet ongoing stock shortages, perhaps the RX 6700 XT's lack of Super Resolution support is a slightly moot point. But it needs to happen soon, otherwise it's going to become increasingly difficult to recommend AMD's next-gen graphics cards when so many of today's big ray tracing games pretty much rely on there being a DLSS-like upscaling technology enabled in order to even be vaguely playable.

Still, while the lack of any more Super Resolution news was disappointing, that's pretty much all AMD announced regarding the RX 6700 XT today. Stay tuned for my full RX 6700 XT review closer to launch day to see exactly how it compares to Nvidia's RTX cards.