AMD's upcoming RX 6950 XT could boost to 2.5GHz out of the box
Rumors regarding AMD’s upcoming RX 6000 series refresh are gathering pace. A new tease from prominent leaker Greymon55 indicates that the upcoming refresh of the Radeon RX 6900 XT could feature a boost clock of over 2.5GHz. That's an increase of 250MHz, or at least 10 percent over the reference 6900 XT's 2.25Ghz boost clock. The speculatively named RX 6950 XT is set to take its place as the best RDNA2 card before the release of RDNA3 later this year.
6950XT boost seems to be over 2.5Ghz????February 6, 2022
Not much else is known about the card, in fact it's all speculation really. One safe assumption is that the card, and other 6X50 refreshes will get a memory speed bump, up to 18Gbps from the current 6900 XT’s 16Gbps. Given that the far cheaper RX 6500 XT includes 18Gbps VRAM, it’s not much of a stretch to say that the newer and much more expensive cards will include it too.
If the refreshed cards are simply higher clocked variants, they'll probably get a TDP increase, but if there are any 7nm process optimizations, such increases could be small.
Of course, there are many 6900 XT cards that can reach 2.5GHz out of the box already. Those that can mostly use the binned Navi 21 XTXH GPU, but they are only found in the most expensive models, including a number of liquid cooled models and premium tier air cooled cards such as the Asrock RX 6900 XT OC Formula. In fact, our OC Formula review sample maintained 2.55GHz over long runs, and did so with its stock cooler (which admittedly could double as a battering ram).
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The current 6900 XT cards are overclocking monsters in the right hands. One example recently took the number one spot in the 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark. Thanks to liberal splashes of liquid nitrogen, the card reached a stratospheric 3.3GHz core clock. We wouldn’t bet against overclockers hitting 3.5GHz on a refreshed card.
As the launch of AMD’s RX 6000 series refresh gets closer, we can expect more rumors to surface. If they are available in volume, at somewhere near an actual RRP, then the next few months could be as good a time to be a PC gamer than at any time over the last couple of years. Admittedly, our doses of hopium are increasing as signs increase that GPU prices are beginning to fall. More cards from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel that other little company will be welcome!