We are nearing the arrival of AMD's Radeon RX 6x50XT graphics card refresh series, and benchmarks are starting to appear. Today, we received a 3DMark TimeSpy benchmark of the AMD Radeon RX 6950XT GPU and compared it to existing solutions. More notably, we compared it to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and came to a surprise. The Radeon RX 6950XT GPU scored 22209 points in the 3DMark TimeSpy test and looking at Graphics score, while the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPU scored 20855 points in the same test. Of course, we have to account that 3DMark TimeSpy is a synthetic benchmark and tends to perform very well on AMD RDNA2 hardware, so we have to wait and see for official independent testing like TechPowerUp's reviews.

AMD Radeon RX 6950XT card was tested with Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU paired with DDR4-3600 memory and pre-released 22.10-220411n drivers on Windows 10. We could experience higher graphics scores with final drivers and see better performance of the upcoming refreshed SKUs.

As AMD is preparing to launch a highly-anticipated refresh of the Radeon RX 6000 series, codenamed RX 6x50 XT series. Alongside AMD, add-in board partners (AIBs) will have their say as well, and today we get to take a look at the alleged specifications of Sapphire's highest-end upcoming products. According to Chiphell member RaulMee, who claims to possess the specification of the newest Sapphire models, we are expected to see a bit higher total board power (TGP) with the arrival of this refresh. First and foremost, the Sapphire RX 6950XT TOXIC is the fastest air-cooled model from Sapphire, with a boost clock of up to 2565 MHz (255 MHz over AMD's reference 2310 MHz model), carrying a TGP of 364 Watts in OC BIOS. Regular TGP for this model is 332 Watts with a boost speed of up to 2532 MHz. Please note that this includes the power output of GPU and memory.

Next up, we have Sapphire's RX 6950XT NITRO+ SKUs. The non-SE card is a minor improvement over the AMD Radeon RX 6950XT reference GPU and offers a Silent BIOS option. The RX 6950XT NITRO+ Special Edition can go up to 325 Watts and 2435 MHz with OC BIOS applied. Silent BIOS is also an option, and it lowers the TGP to 303 Watts and 2368 MHz. The alleged specification chart also carries Sapphires' RX 6750XT & 6650XT NITRO+ GPUs, of which you can check the clock speeds and TGPs below.

The rumor mill is attempting to nail down the specific launch date of AMD's purported RDNA 2 series refresh. According to renowned leaker Enthusiastic Citizen over at Chiphell forums, AMD is now planning to launch updated versions of its RDNA2 graphics cards around April 20th or April 21st. It seems that AMD is updating three different SKUs based on the RDNA2 silicon, perhaps in order to increase their market attractiveness (and competitiveness) against both NVIDIA's lineup and Intel's upcoming Arc Alchemist series, which is expected to launch in the next several weeks as well.

The new cards, which are expected to carry updated model names, are currently expected to be the RX 6950XT (a response to NVIDIA's oft-delayed RTX 3090 Ti graphics card), the RX 6750XT (likely meant to compete against Intel's upcoming Arc Alchemist A700 series, and the RX 6650XT. The only available details purport to the RX 6950XT, which is expected to not only carry upgraded 18 Gbps GDDR6 VRAM, but also an increased power limit of 350 W (above the 300 W from the reference RX 6900XT. The other two GPU updates should follow suit along the memory frequency and power consumption increases.

All things must come to an end, and Intel has decided that it's time to retire their Broadwell-E line of processors. The Broadwell-E family is comprised of four models: the Intel Core i7-6800K, 6850K, 6900K and 6950X. According to the Product Change Notification (PCN) document, Intel is still accepting orders until May 25, 2018, while the last shipment is scheduled for November 9 of the same year. So, there is still sufficient time left for those who plan to acquire one of the aforementioned models. However, we don't see any reason to do so now considering that there are far better options on the market.

Broadwell-E processors debuted last year and were received with mixed reactions. With just one year under their belt, they were eventually replaced by the more powerful Skylake-X models. Intel is probably getting rid of their unsold inventory of Broadwell-E models. Who knows? Maybe we'll even see some price cuts in the not-so-near future.