Last week, as part of the Radeon Summer Refresh reviews, we tested three Radeon RX 6950 XT custom designs: Sapphire RX 6950 XT Nitro+ Pure, MSI RX 6950 XT Gaming X Trio, and Gigabyte RX 6950 XT Gaming OC. Unfortunately, AMD is not sending out samples of their Radeon RX 6950 XT reference design, so we were still wondering whether opting for the reference card is a reasonable alternative, not only in terms of cost, but also in terms of power, heat, and noise—today, we can answer those questions.

With the Radeon RX 6950 XT, AMD is expecting to recover ground lost to the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3090 Ti, two products that launched after the original RX 6900 XT release. The Radeon RX 6950 XT is based on the same Navi 21 GPU as the RX 6900 XT, with the same 5120 cores active. The difference is in the GPU clock speeds, power limits, and memory subsystem. The memory chips are now Samsung-based 18 Gbps instead of 16 Gbps like on the original RX 6900 XT.

Averaged over our 25-game strong test suite, at 4K resolution, we find the AMD RX 6950 XT Reference 6% faster than the original RX 6900 XT reference design—not bad, but considerably lower than some of the factory-overclocked custom designs for the RX 6950 XT. For example, the Sapphire Pulse runs another 4% faster than the reference card, and the MSI Gaming X Trio is even 6% faster—basically doubling the gains over the RX 6900 XT. Still, with this performance, AMD is able to match the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, at much better pricing. The recently released RTX 3090 Ti is still 10% faster at almost twice the price. Compared to the RTX 3080 Ti, which sells for $1,200, the RX 6950 XT is 1% faster. The RTX 3080 and RX 6800 XT are roughly 12% behind. While performance is always near the top, it does vary greatly between games, so make sure to check out the titles you're playing. AMD's new Radeon RX 6950 XT is the perfect choice for gaming at 4K. With the newest drivers, AMD seems to have improved performance in situations where the games ended up CPU-limited; older DirectX 11 titles also show good gains.

Where AMD does have the weaker offering than NVIDIA is ray tracing. This is due to AMD's architecture, which executes some RT operations in shaders, while NVIDIA has dedicated hardware units for it. The Radeon RX 6950 XT still achieves very respectable performance, comparable to the RTX 3080. In many newer titles, which have less demanding and less impressive ray tracing effects, differences are smaller, though. I don't think RT performance is a dealbreaker for the RX 6950 XT, but it's something you should be aware of. If ray tracing is the only thing that matters to you, which it shouldn't be, the RTX 3080 Ti might be an alternative to consider. AMD is also actively engaged with all major developers to get them to optimize their games for AMD's architecture, and the driver performance improvements in this review confirm that AMD's driver team is always looking for opportunities to improve performance.

The AMD RX 6950 XT reference card looks great thanks to a slightly refreshed design compared to the original RX 6900 XT. AMD has removed the red trim near the top of the card and replaced the silver fan frame with a black one. The card now looks more stylish and classy, yet isn't just a black blob due to some nice highlights. In our thermal testing, the RX 6950 XT thermal solution achieved good temperatures of 77°C that are comparable to other RX 6950 XT cards. While noise levels are not as low as on the MSI Gaming X Trio and Sapphire Pure, they are still what I'd consider "quiet," especially when taking into account the performance class. Compared to the 42 dBA of the RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition cooler, the RX 6950 XT is much quieter with 33 dBA and matches RTX 3090 non-Ti FE noise levels. Overall, this makes the AMD reference design a good choice even when low noise is high on your shopping list. Our apples-to-apples cooler comparison testing reveals that AMD's thermal solution is considerably weaker than what we've been seeing on custom designs—roughly 10 to 15°C warmer at the same heat load. AMD really did a great job tuning the fan profile to the cooler's capabilities, but this means custom designs are still the way to go for enthusiast overclockers if pushing the card to the limit.

In our other RX 6950 XT reviews, we noticed that the power consumption was much higher than what we saw on the RX 6900 XT—like 100 to 150 W higher. Supported by recent NVIDIA history which saw the power limit dialed up to unlock additional performance on the RTX 3090 Ti, we assumed it just came down to how the RX 6950 XT works. In its reviewer's guide, AMD mentions "335 W Board Power," which we shrugged off as fantastical after seeing the custom-design power consumption numbers. Oh, how wrong we were, as the reference design actually runs at promised power levels and AIBs are to blame for dialing up the power limits considerably to unlock additional factory overclocking performance. The RX 6950 XT in this review is fairly gentle in its power usage with 340 W during gaming, a 40 W increase over the RX 6900 XT. That's not unreasonable at all and much lower than the 450 W measured on the RTX 3090 Ti. Even if the reference card board power limit is "just 350 W," the heat has to go somewhere, so you'll need good case ventilation and a way to manage the temperatures of your gaming lair. In terms of energy efficiency, the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT does very well, reaching a leading spot, better than any card offered by NVIDIA. During testing of the custom designs, all of those cards sometimes caused system shutdowns, possibly due to power spikes. This never happened with the RX 6950 XT reference design, maybe because it consumes a good deal less power. Still, make sure to pair the RX 6950 XT with a high-quality PSU, and only use one connector per power cable.

Overclocking the AMD RX 6950 XT yielded much lower clocks than the various custom designs—200 MHz lower. The underlying reason is that AMD is running their chip at a much lower voltage, which results in better efficiency and lower power draw, but also lower stable clocks. For overclockers, this is probably a deal breaker unless willing to do a voltmod. If you only plan on mild overclocking, the card will still be fine. Memory overclocking reached the same levels as the other cards tested last week.

Graphics card prices have come down a lot this year and are now almost reaching MSRP levels. AMD has announced a $1,100 MSRP for the RX 6950 XT, which seems to hold. I'm seeing cards in stock at that price point, and AMD's own web store has the reference card listed and ready to ship at $1,100. Guess it's safe to say the mining boom is coming to an end. The strongest competitors to the RX 6950 XT reference card are the few custom designs that are sold at the same price point. Their factory overclock and stronger cooling solutions will be tempting for many. On the other hand, the reference design runs quietly, is more efficient, and will dump less heat into your room. I would probably be willing to pay another $50 for a topnotch custom variant of the RX 6950 XT, but there's no way an additional $200 or more can be justified. Both the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti are just way too expensive unless you need the 24 GB VRAM. What's a solid alternative is the RTX 3080 Ti—for $1,200, it offers better ray tracing performance but slightly lower gaming performance.