AMD unleashes the RX 6950 XT, costs $100 more than RX 6900 XT

AMD is launching three new Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards today, led by the courageously powerful AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT. While not a direct replacement for the RX 6900 XT, the RX 6950 XT is now AMD's most powerful graphics card. With that title comes the promise of high frame rate 4K gaming, but also a tall price tag.

The RX 6950 XT is priced at $1,099 for the reference model. These will be sold on AMD's own webstore, though its many board partners will also have third-party models available at or close to launch. The prices for these custom designed cards may creep a little higher. 

In its newly painted black reference design, however, AMD is only asking for $100 more than an RX 6900 XT for its latest revision.

What you get for another $100 sounds like it could be somewhat worth it—I've heard of bigger leaps in price for less, at least. The RX 6950 XT comes with 16GB of GDDR6 memory rated to run at 18Gbps out of the box. That means it's a touch faster than the 16Gbps memory on the older RX 6900 XT. 

The Navi 21 GPU within the RX 6950 XT is also rated to run faster, at 2,310MHz boost to the 6900 XT's 2,250MHz. Of course you're able to bump this up yourself with overclocking, and third-party models may already offer a factory OC out of the box, but basically we're looking at a slightly more capable chip guaranteed in the RX 6950 XT.

In exchange for those faster speeds and feeds, the RX 6950 XT is rated to 335W board power, whereas the RX 6900 XT is a 300W card. In terms of core counts and key specs, the RX 6950 XT is otherwise materially the same as the RX 6900 XT.

All upgrades accounted for, AMD reckons the RX 6950 XT will gain a handful of fps in the latest games over the RX 6900 XT. It also sees it as much more of a competitor to Nvidia's RTX 3090. We'll have to put these claims to the test ourselves in the near future—while we would've loved to give you preliminary results today, as we had hoped to, our RX 6950 XT sample is currently stuck in customs.

The RX 6950 XT, along with the RX 6750 XT and RX 6650 XT detailed below, are one last hurrah for RDNA 2. AMD squeezing every bit of performance out of these SKUs before it replaces them with RDNA 3 graphics cards later this year. AMD is reportedly still on track to deliver these next-gen cards this year, which ultimately means the RX 6950 XT's time as the performance champ is fleeting.

That doesn't make it any less of a 4K monster in the meantime, however.

Onto the more affordable GPUs also launching today: the RX 6750 XT and RX 6650 XT.

The RX 6750 XT comes with 40 CUs, 12GB of GDDR6 memory at 18Gbps, and a boost clock of 2,600MHz. While the RX 6650 XT comes with 32 CUs, 8GB of GDDR6 memory at 18Gbps, and a boost clock of 2,635MHz.

The RX 6750 XT will be available to purchase in reference garb, though the RX 6650 XT pictured above is only a render and doesn't actually exist. Only third-party models it is, then. The RX 6650 XT is also the only one of the three refreshed cards to replace any of the current stack: the RX 6600 XT will be no more once stock runs dry.

Here's hoping all three are readily available to purchase. Graphics cards are still in short supply, and prices are often still absurdly high, yet AMD's RX 6900 XT is one of few currently available far and wide, and for MSRP. That could bode well for these new refreshed numbers, but we'll have to wait and see.