GIGABYTE gave its previous-generation Radeon RX 6000 graphics card series an unexpected revision even as the new RX 7000 series is out. The company released the Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming OC Pro, a new graphics card model in the company's main GIGABYTE Gaming brand, positioned a notch below the AORUS Gaming series. The new Gaming OC Pro features a significantly larger cooler than the original RX 6800 XT Gaming OC, measuring at least 33 cm in length, up from roughly 29 cm for the original RX 6800 XT Gaming OC. It's also significantly taller, by at least 1.5 cm.

It turns out that GIGABYTE is sitting on plenty of cooling solutions it originally ordered from its suppliers for the Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming OC, and is now reusing them for other SKUs based on the same "Navi 21" GPU, such as the RX 6800 XT. The company is also reusing the same PCB. Selling for around $550-650, the RX 6800 XT remains a formidable 1440p gaming graphics card for classic raster 3D graphics, although its ray tracing performance is closer to those of mid-range GeForce RTX 30-series models, such as the RTX 3060 Ti. A reuse of the RX 6950 XT board design means that the new RX 6800 XT Gaming OC Pro has three 8-pin power inputs instead of two on the original RX 6800 XT Gaming OC.