ASUS launched the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Strix LC Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. This is essentially the same card as the ROG Strix LC RX 6800 XT the company launched its custom-design RX 6800-series lineup with, but featuring AMD's mighty RX 6900 XT, and a beefed up power delivery, which uses three 8-pin PCIe power inputs, instead of two on the RX 6800 XT-based card. The card uses a factory-fitted hybrid all-in-one liquid closed loop cooling solution, which uses a liquid-cooling cold-plate to cool the GPU, while some of the heat from the memory and VRM is cooled by a set of heatsinks ventilated by a lateral blower. Find out more about this cooler design in our review of the ROG Strix LC RX 6800 XT. As of this writing, ASUS hasn't confirmed its factory-overclocked speeds, release date, or pricing.

Yesterday, Cowocotland, a technology website, has published information that AMD's reference design cards like the latest Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6800 GPUs are getting discontinued. That means that AMD will stop the production of the reference designs and rely completely on the supply of GPUs coming from add-in board partners to satisfy the market needs. This does not mean that the availability of these GPUs is not going to exist. Rather, there will not be AMD reference designs available for purchase from the company. Only cards that are custom made by AIBs, that AMD provides GPU+VRAM for, will offer customers cards with these GPUs.

VideoCardz claims that they have been able to confirm some pieces of the information, so it is a done deal. From now on, it seems that only graphics cards with Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6800 GPUs inside them will be the ones offered by AIBs. The reference design cards will only be produced until early 2021, giving it a month or two for consumers to purchase cards from AMD. After that period the market will rely completely on AMD's partners.

Update 4:30 pm UTC: Scott Herkelman, CVP & GM of AMD Radeon Tweeted that they have "extended the reference design builds indefinitely due to popular demand." Meaning that the reference cards will remain in production. Mr. Herkelman also thanked for feedback, where community was loud and clear that they want to see reference boards for a while longer.

TUL Corporation, a leading and innovative manufacturer of AMD graphic cards since 1997, today announced the fastest graphics card in its AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series lineup with the new PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. The new card features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory and is built upon the groundbreaking AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture, designed to deliver top performance for enthusiast gamers seeking the best 4K gaming experiences with incredibly life-like visuals.

The PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card is designed to deliver unmatched 4K performance with no compromises to meet the demands of the most avid gamers and computer enthusiasts. It offers 80 Compute Units (CUs) with a total of 5120 stream processors, and provides a Boost Clock of up to 2250 MHz.

ASRock, the leading global motherboard manufacturer, has launched the ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT Phantom Gaming D 16G OC graphics card. The new graphics card is built upon the groundbreaking AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture and 7 nm process technology, and features 80 compute units, 5120 stream processors, hardware-accelerated raytracing, 16 GB 256-bit GDDR6 memory and an HDMI 2.1 video port. It also supports the DirectX 12 Ultimate API and the PCI Express 4.0 bus standard, and provides a host of additional features to deliver the ultimate 4K gaming experiences.

AMD's launch of their top of the line RX 6900 XT graphics card seems that it will have even less availability than the company's high-end RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT graphics card. This isn't surprising; the RX 6900 XT is a 590 mm² beast of a GPU with all of its execution units enabled - that's a lot of die space to harvest without a single silicon fault, no matter how good TSMC's 7 nm manufacturing process really is. Stock will be scarce, and likely will be scarce throughout the lifetime of the product, especially with the clogged, unmet, existing demand for high performance GPUs from a world population that has turned to gaming as a solace in times of quarantine.

Digitec, the largest Swiss retailer (serving a population of 8.5 million people), is only receiving 35 RX 6900 XT graphics cards for launch. We don't know, of course, what exactly is the Swiss demand for high-performance graphics cards, but it being one of the world's wealthiest countries (when it comes to its population's average income) it's expected to be higher than other countries with comparable population but lower income. As a result, the retailer isn't even putting the cards up for sale as they normally would; instead, there's a sweepstakes of sorts where 35 random users that opt-in for the event will receive a code that allows them to purchase the graphics card for its retail price of $999. An interesting solution, albeit of course, it just signals the dimension of the cards' availability issues.

ASUS has today surprised everyone and decided to launch the first custom design of AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. Previously, the word was that AMD was debating with AIBs whatever to open the GPU to custom designs or keep it AMD PCB exclusive. However, thanks to today's launch, we now know that AMD will allow its partners to design their PCBs and push the Big Navi silicon to its maximum. So when it comes to pushing to maximum, enter the world of ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards, designed to fit in the line of ASUSes TUF principals.

Featuring a triple fan, triple-slot (2.9 slots more precisely )body, the graphics card is built around Navi 21 XTX GPU. This means that only the best needs to be brought to the card as it is a premium product. That is why the company says that "The TUF GAMING Radeon RX 6900 XT is a tenacious beast with a tough metal exterior, super-efficient cooling, and components that offer enhanced endurance." The built-in cooler offers 0dB cooler technology, meaning that fans will not spin unless the GPU reaches 55 degrees C temperature. The card is powered by two eight-pin connectors, so it seems that power supply requirements are not changed compared to the reference card. While the exact specifications are not known, you can expect the card to boost over the standard 2250 MHz frequency, as it is factory overclocked. Pricing is also not yet confirmed but a slight premium is expected as well.

AMD has launched its RDNA 2 based graphics cards, codenamed Navi 21. These GPUs are set to compete with NVIDIA's Ampere offerings, with the lineup covering the Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT graphics cards. Until now, we have had reviews of the former two, but not the Radeon RX 6900 XT. That is because the card is coming at a later date, specifically on December 8th, in just a few days. As a reminder, the Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU is a Navi 21 XTX model with 80 Compute Units that give a total of 5120 Stream Processors. The graphics card uses a 256-bit bus that connects the GPU with 128 MB of its Infinity Cache to 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. When it comes to frequencies, it has a base clock of 1825 MHz, with a boost speed of 2250 MHz.

Today, in a GeekBench 5 submission, we get to see the first benchmarks of AMD's top-end Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. Running an OpenCL test suite, the card was paired with AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X 16C/32T CPU. The card managed to pass the OpenCL test benchmarks with a score of 169779 points. That makes the card 12% faster than RX 6800 XT GPU, but still slower than the competing NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, which scores 177724 points. However, we need to wait for a few more benchmarks to appear to jump to any conclusions, including the TechPowerUp review, which is expected to arrive once NDA lifts. Below, you can compare the score to other GPUs in the GeekBench 5 OpenCL database.

It's becoming clear that AMD's new "Big Navi" Radeon RX 6800 XT is a treat for overclockers, and that it launched with much lower engine clocks than the silicon is capable of, resulting in what is possibly the largest overclocking headroom on an AMD GPU in a long time. This has been highlighted by recent conquests of the 3DMark Fire Strike leaderboard by RX 6800 XT cards, displacing even the RTX 3090 from the top. It's becoming even more clear now just how far the RX 6800 XT can be pushed. Patrick Schur on Twitter reports that the RX 6800 XT engine clocks are capped at 2.80 GHz, which is possibly why we're yet to see anything faster than that. The upcoming RX 6900 XT, on the other hand, is a better-endowed beast.

According to Schur, the RX 6900 XT has a raised engine clocked limit to 3.00 GHz in comparison to the 2.80 GHz of the RX 6800 XT. This 200 MHz increase, coupled with the 8 additional RDNA2 compute units, should mean that the Fire Strike leaderboards will get another shake-up in December, when these cards are released to market. The memory clock on both cards is capped at 1075 MHz (real), or 17.2 Gbps GDDR6-effective, although this should depend heavily on the overclocking headroom of the memory chips. It's important to note here that neither the 3.00 GHz of the RX 6900 XT, nor the 2.80 GHz for the RX 6800 XT, are advertised clock speeds for the cards, and are achievable only by manual overclocking, in some cases employing extreme cooling solutions such as liquid nitrogen.

ASRock has today published a new product on the company website. The new ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card is the latest addition to the company's offerings. Featuring regular, reference-designed PCB found in the Made-by-AMD (MBA) cards, the ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT even features all of the same specifications as the reference model: base clock 1825 MHz, game clock 2015 MHz, boost clock 2250 MHz, memory clock 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective). The card itself isn't changed one bit. Even the stickers found on it (which are usually AIB's logos) are still AMD's. The only thing that differs this card from AMD's offerings is the box that the graphics card comes in. That is the only part that features ASRock's branding. When it comes to the pricing and availability, we do not know when this card will arrive, however, assuming the reference PCB design, it will feature a reference price of $999.

According to the unknown manufacturer (AIB) based in Taiwan, NVIDIA is preparing to launch the new GeForce RTX 3000 series "Ampere" graphics card. As reported by the HKEPC website, the Santa Clara-based company is preparing to fill the gap between its top-end GeForce RTX 3090 and a bit slower RTX 3080 graphics card. The new product will be called GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. If you are wondering what the specification of the new graphics card will look like, you are in luck because the source has a few pieces of information. The new product will be based on GA102-250-KD-A1 GPU core, with a PG133-SKU15 PCB design scheme. The GPU will contain the same 10496 CUDA core configuration as the RTX 3090.

The only difference to the RTX 3090 will be a reduced GDDR6X amount of 20 GB. Along with the 20 GB of GDDR6X memory, the RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards will feature a 320-bit bus. The TGP of the card is limited to 320 Watts. The sources are reporting that the card will be launched sometime in January of 2021, and it will come at $999. This puts the price category of the RTX 3080 Ti in the same range as AMD's recently launched Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card, so it will be interesting to see how these two products are competing.

Godfall, the RPG looter-slasher that's being developed by Counterplay Games in close collaboration with AMD, will require 12 GB VRAM for maxed-out settings at 4K resolution. As part of AMD's partner videos the company announced when it revealed the RX 6000 series of graphics cards, Godfall is being built with DirectX 12 Ultimate and DXR in mind, and takes advantage of a number of rendering technologies that are part of the DXR 1.1 feature-set, alongside AMD's Fidelity FX technologies. Counterplay Games will make a 4X x 4X Ultra HD texture pack available for maxed-out settings - well within the 16 GB of VRAM AMD has settled on for its RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6800 graphics cards.

Godfall features Variable Rate Shading (VRS) for increased performance with no discernible loss of visual quality, as well as raytraced shadows (platform agnostic) and makes use of AMD's Fidelity FX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening. This technology has shown great results in improving both performance (it has been benchmarked as offering performance levels similar to that of DLSS 2.0 in Death Stranding, for instance, compared to a full 4K render) and image quality.

Just a few days ago AMD has announced its Radeon RX 6000 series of graphics cards based on the new RDNA 2 architecture. While AMD has given out the "Big Navi" chips to its partners to design custom boards and give users designs with better cooling and possibly higher overclocking capabilities, that doesn't seem to extend to the highest-end parts. So far, we have seen custom designs from companies like ASUS, MSI, etc., and all of them have one thing in common - they only do designs for Radeon RX 6800 or RX 6800 XT. So one would wonder where are the highest-end custom Radeon RX 6900 XT designs.

The first wave of the "custom" cards will be on November 18th, when manufacturers will release designs that are MBA (Made-by-AMD), meaning that the PCB is a reference design, just with a custom cooler installed. When it comes to the custom RX 6900 XT cards, AMD is now in talks with its partners whether to keep the biggest "Big Navi" design available for custom designs, or to keep it as AMD exclusive, with the most likely scenario being the AMD exclusivity. AMD partners could carry the models in their stores and offerings, however, the PCB and cooler design would be AMD's. The situation is yet unresolved so we have to wait and see what comes out of it and if we are getting any custom designs of the Radeon RX 6900 XT model.

With AMD's Radeon RX 6000 and Ryzen 5000 promising to be a formidable high-end CPU+GPU combination, EK Water Blocks is anticipating many "pure AMD" DIY builds, and is giving final touches to a new line of full-coverage VGA water blocks, Socket AM4 CPU water blocks, and monoblocks for certain premium AMD 500-series chipset motherboards. The company teased renders of some of these products in the development pipeline. The VGA full-coverage block in particular borrows many design cues from the recently announced RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT reference-design cards. An illuminated Radeon logo sits on what seems like an acrylic top that has PV covering. The CPU block and motherboard monoblock feature large AMD logos. There are also radiators and Vardar fan variants in AMD's favorite shade of red, with branding on the impeller hubs. There's no word on availability, but at least those of you planning AMD-purist builds know where to look for liquid cooling gear.