 The RTX 3090 or BFGPU as Nvidia's CEO called it has been nicely toppled by a card that costs a nice two thirds as much, at least. That's what the nice guys at AMD would like us to believe. And this is it, the RX 6900 XT. It looks nice, it feels nice, it even smells nice. But can it really be that simple? Just tack a few more compute units onto the 6800 XT and suddenly you're the top dog? Well, that would be nice, but it's also not quite that easy. After the announcement, we hoped that AMD was doing more under the hood than just increasing the number of compute units because the RX 6900 XT, at least on paper, is otherwise exactly the same card as the RX 6800 XT. Same RDNA2 architecture, same core clocks, same memory, same power draw. Hey, wait a minute. AMD pulled a fast one here. The rated graphics power is the same, but the recommended power supply is 100 watts higher for the 6900 XT. So it seems that in spite of those extra compute units and the cooler being identical, barring what AMD calls minor tweaks, the 6900 XT is in fact being pushed quite a bit harder in boost than its sibling. Well, okay, mystery solved then. That's exactly what AMD says is happening. And the 6900 XT is in fact a highly binned part capable of overclocking much more reliably than the 6800 XT can. It's an impressive feat considering just how fast some of those cards can go. Of course, we can't just take AMD at their word. This is Linus Tech Tips. We've got to test it for ourselves. So we grabbed the three fancy new Radeons and their corresponding GeForce cards and took them all for a spin. As you might expect by now, AMD crushed it in traditional rasterization, coming close to the RTX 3090 in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, despite costing $500 less. Though they fell well short of even the RTX 3080 when it came to real-time ray traced lighting. Minecraft RTX tells a similar story with AMD choking hard enough here that the 6900 XT managed only half of the RTX 3080's performance. To be fair though, ray tracing wasn't AMD's focus for this generation. And as much as we keep pointing it out, and it is the future, path tracers like this aren't common yet. So turning back to more traditional rendering, Wolfenstein Youngblood looks like a win for the RTX 3090, except that given the 6900 XT managed numbers halfway between the 3080 and 3090, the price difference makes AMD's offering look very compelling here. Microsoft Flight Simulator didn't do AMD any favors. Yeah, the 6900 XT is a better value than the 3090, but then the 3080 makes both of them look like a ripoff. And Counter-Strike is nearly a win across the board for Team Red, with the RTX 3090 only pulling ahead in minimum frame rates. Of course, all of this changes if you're willing to accept DLSS upscaling as a viable option. And in these cases, the Nvidia cards unquestionably dominate AMD in terms of raw FPS. Love or hate it, DLSS is here, customers are using it, and it looks pretty darn good. So AMD, you guys need to get on FidelityFX Super Resolution and stat. In our review of the RX 6800 series, we noted that AMD's productivity performance lagged behind, and it's no different here. AMD says they focused first and foremost on gaming performance. And that's fair enough, but it did cost them. It's not like it's bad at productivity if you find the right workloads. I mean, just look at how it handles the more memory-intensive SPECviewperf subtests. But there is one glaring exception where AMD firmly falls short, and honestly, I consider it unacceptable, Radeon ProRender. We called out AMD's poor rendering quality in the 6800 series review, and in response, they gave us a tweaked version of the tests to play around with. And okay, it's fast, but the problem is that it still looks like hot garbage. This is useful maybe as a preview, but it is not good enough for a final render. So sorry, AMD, until you get hardware ray tracing support baked into the Blender Cycles renderer like Nvidia's Optics Engine, this is not even remotely a fair fight. Unlike our prices at lttstore.com, they're always fair. Oh, and we've got the ABCs of gaming in stock. Once again, Smart Access Memory, while arguably the star of the show for gaming that pushed them into their competitive position, continues to do little or nothing for productivity. AMD reasons that while Nvidia and Intel are both working on enabling the resizable bar feature that makes up Smart Access Memory's core functionality, there is far more that goes into the special sauce. Specifically, they claim that significant driver optimization is required to help Smart Access Memory reach its full potential. If that's true, then there is significantly more work ahead for Team Blue and Team Green than just toggling a switch, at least in theory. Asus has apparently already enabled this functionality in their Intel Z490 motherboards, and early performance looks about as good as what we might see on an AMD platform. So I suppose we're gonna have to investigate that. Get subscribed so you don't miss our coverage. Firmly, the RX 6900 XT is similar to, but on average, a smidge hotter under load than the RTX 3090, with the notable exception of those memory bandwidth intensive tests at the end that we pointed out in our 6800 series reviews. Compared to the 6800 XT, the bigger card doesn't take as long to heat up, but they both end up in roughly the same thermal envelope by the end of the test. At 2.6 gigahertz, the 6900 XT's core clocks are consistently 100 megahertz higher than the 6800 XT, and like that card, these clocks appear to be quite stable. This hints that tinkerers might get great results from an undervolt, either to reduce power consumption and heat, or to potentially improve thermal or power headroom for better boost behavior. As for power consumption, this is becoming a bit of a pattern this generation. On average, power consumption is usually lower than the RTX 3090, but the 6900 XT experiences spikes that can go much higher. Check out this 462 watt spike. These kinds of instantaneous loads can trip up sensitive power supplies, and we actually had to swap out our test bench's Seasonic 1000 watt unit for a Corsair one to avoid tripping the overcurrent protection during benchmarking. Compared to the RX 6800 XT at least, it looks to average just about 50 watts higher under load at any given point in time. This is pretty crazy considering that it's got exactly the same cooler design as the 6800 XT, although it does have a beefier 16 phase power delivery setup to go along with the 14 layer PCB that they share. Of course, AMD goes out of their way to point out that they're using standard sizes for their coolers and standard dual eight pin power connectors, which sounds like it shouldn't be something to brag about, but turns out to be a sick burn on the 3090 with its behemoth size, not to mention proprietary 12 pin power connector. Oh, and the 6900 XT has RGB, checkmate Nvidia. Before I close out, I can't talk up AMD's promise of overclocking without actually doing some overclocking, can I? Yes, I can. You'll just have to wait for us to pit the RX 6900 XT against the RTX 3090 in a head to head overclock off to see who can pull off 8K gaming the best. Stay tuned. For now though, make no mistake, the RX 6900 XT is a powerful card, and at 999, it undercuts Nvidia's best by a significant margin, even if it doesn't always beat or even meet it and falls well short in productivity. This card looks like another classic AMD look for the gap in the market and fill it move. And given how expensive the RTX 3090 is and how relatively uncommon ray tracing still is in gaming, having a balls to the wall fast card that while not optimized for real time ray tracing, can do it, is still a pretty big deal. It would just really be nice if there were any to buy, because if you've waited this long to pull the trigger, I can almost guarantee that they are gone by now. How do I know? Well, the RX 6800 series was weapons grade unobtainium when it launched and three weeks later, supply still hasn't caught up with demand. Then given that 6900 XTs are pretty much cherry picked 6800 XTs, I think it's pretty safe to say that for the few of you who will be able to get your hands on it at MSRP in 2020, well, enjoy it you lucky SOBs. For the rest, maybe next year will be better. Thanks for watching guys, if you enjoyed this video, go check out our review of the RX 6800 series to learn a little more about the whole RDNA2 thing that makes this card tick.