MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming X Trio Assessment: Energy Hungry

The AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT launched final month, together with the RX 6750 XT and RX 6650 XT, bringing 18Gbps GDDR6 reminiscence together with boosted clocks and better energy necessities. The Sapphire Nitro+ Pure that we reviewed initially carried out fairly nicely. In the present day’s MSI Gaming X Trio is only a hair quicker, however in getting there MSI appears to have elevated energy draw considerably over the competitors. The RX 6950 XT ranks as one of many finest graphics playing cards, and even holds the highest spot for 1080p and 1440p gaming in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy (however not with ray tracing), however MSI’s variant would not be our first choose.

Here is a take a look at the specs for AMD’s reference 6950 XT alongside the MSI and Sapphire playing cards we have had in for assessment — AMD elected to not pattern media with its reference design, serving to to make sure barely greater general efficiency, similar to Nvidia did with the RTX 3090 Ti. 

Curiously, MSI lists an influence consumption of simply 340W for its RX 6950 XT Gaming X Trio, however that feels extra just like the TDP for the GPU reasonably than the total card energy. We have truly examined two totally different playing cards (the primary died after a few days for unknown causes), and each consumed excess of 340W at their default settings. Actually, the second card used a couple of extra watts than the preliminary card. We’ll get to the precise energy measurements later, however we noticed nearer to 430W out of MSI’s card, and enabling Rage mode (with its 10% bump in energy limits) pushed that as much as 440W. Principally, it was proper in the identical ballpark because the RTX 3090 Ti.

Core specs are principally similar among the many three RX 6950 XT playing cards, with GPU enhance clocks and TBP being the one actual distinction. AMD provides a reference clock of 2310 MHz, Sapphire pushes that to 2435 MHz, and MSI tacks on an extra 19 MHz for 2454 MHz. Whereas previous-generation AMD GPUs usually listed a theoretical enhance clock that was greater than you’d usually see in follow, that modified with the RDNA 2 structure and the RX 6000-series GPUs. At default settings, we noticed common GPU clocks of greater than 2.5GHz, and with Rage mode the MSI card truly broke 2.6GHz.

The large concern proper now with the RX 6950 XT is that we anticipate AMD will launch an RX 7900 XT earlier than the tip of the 12 months, probably as quickly as October. That is not too far-off, and AMD has publicly declared that it expects RDNA 3 to ship a 50% enchancment in efficiency per watt. It should even be the first GPU to make use of chiplets, and whereas the topology of such a design is not completely clear, this may very well be the “largest Navi” but. Amid falling GPU costs and the pending next-gen architectures, it is troublesome to advocate dashing out to purchase a soon-to-be-outdated GPU for over $1,000 proper now.

Talking of which, it is fascinating that the retail costs on the RX 6950 XT have been coming down quick. Formally the GPU has a $1,099 MSRP, and at launch we noticed a number of firms pushing manufacturing unit overclocked fashions for $1,249 or extra. Proper now, Newegg has a number of RX 6950 XT playing cards (opens in new tab) promoting for MSRP, and we have seen some gross sales come and go that dropped costs as little as $1,030. The MSI Gaming X Trio is without doubt one of the playing cards promoting for MSRP, which does put it $150 under the Sapphire Nitro+ Pure, however when the playing cards launched final month, each have been focusing on the identical $1,250 value level — MSI simply occurred to right quicker.