AMD doing Nvidia things: Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled edition with faster core clocks and VRAM quietly introduced only for select custom PC builders

It did not take AMD too long to offer an upgrade for its top-of-the-line Radeon RX 6900 XT cards in hopes of countering the launch of Nvidia’s RTX 3080 Ti cards. We have been hearing about an XTXH variant of the original Navi 21 XT for some months now, but we were not sure if that would be a slower or faster exclusive from AIB partners. Turns out it is an overcharged beast that is only available through select custom PC builders from all over the world. Of course, AMD is not making the mistake of mentioning an MSRP like Nvidia, knowing that the card will probably have extremely reduced supplies, plus there is no official announcement either.

So what is changed from the regular 6900 XT? Apart from the cooling system that now features a sleek liquid cooled shroud that takes up only two slots instead of 2.5, the compute units count is the same, but the core clocks are raised from 2015 to 2250 MHz by default and the boost clocks go up to 2435 MHz. Infinity Cache is still 128 MB, yet AMD upgraded the GDDR6 VRAM to 18 Gbps instead of 16, for a maximum bandwidth of 576 GB/s. The total board power rating is also bumped from 300 W to 330W.

We can expect to see a performance increase of maybe 10% across the board, with the added benefit of lower temperatures and reduced noise levels in full loads. However, just like with the new RTX 3080 Ti cards from Nvidia, it all comes down to pricing and supply. Not mentioning anything about the MSRP means that the supply is very small and PC builders could charge an arm and a leg with all the inflated prices caused by shortages, crypto mining and scalping, just for the sake of competitive marketing. Why not throw in faster XTXH versions from AIB partners with even more ridiculous prices while we are at it?

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