AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT, RX 6750 XT, RX 6650 XT ‘RDNA 2 Refresh’ Graphics Cards – Here’s Everything We Know So Far

AMD launched its RDNA 2 desktop graphics card line, the Radeon RX 6000 series, back at the end of 2020. The lineup brought AMD on parity, and even faster in some cases, against the NVIDIA RTX 30 series lineup. Now in 2022, AMD is planning to refresh its RDNA 2 graphics card lineup with a brand new series of cards.

Known as the RDNA 2 refresh 'Radeon RX 6X50 XT', the new graphics card lineup will be utilizing a similar GPU design but will launch with new designs and faster memory clock speeds. Today, we'll give you a rundown of what to expect from AMD's RDNA 2 refresh graphics card lineup.

So starting up with the lineup, the AMD Radeon RX 6000 'RDNA 2 Refresh' lineup will come in three flavors. These include the Radeon RX 6950 XT, the Radeon RX 6750 XT, and the Radeon RX 6650 XT. These graphics cards aren't meant as an official replacement to the existing lineup but more of a step up from where the current cards stand. The first look at these graphics cards was reported by Videocardz.

The AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT will be placed above the Radeon RX 6900 XT, and the Radeon RX 6750 XT will be placed above the Radeon RX 6700 XT and the Radeon RX 6650 XT will be placed above the Radeon RX 6600 XT. Think of it as AMD's own 'SUPER' refresh but without major upgrades. The lineup is expected to bring performance increases ranging from 5-to 10% and memory is going to play a huge role in achieving these performance targets. Once again, the new lineup would look like the following:

With the lineup out of the way, next up, we are going to take a look at the individual specs that each graphics card has to offer.

The AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT will come packed with the Navi 21 XTXH GPU in its fully-enabled die config featuring 80 Compute Units or 5120 SPs. The card will also feature 16 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit bus interface. There are also 80 Ray accelerators for ray-tracing enablement on the graphics cards (one RA per Compute Unit). The graphics card will feature a TBP of around 300-350 Watts.

In addition to the standard memory, the Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card will also feature 128 MB of Infinity Cache on the GPU die. The cache will help boost bandwidth for higher performance at resolutions beyond 1080p HD. The 128 MB Infinity Cache boosts the standard 512 GB/s bandwidth by 3.25x, delivering an effective bandwidth of up to 1.664 TB/s across all Big Navi GPU-based cards.

Now as for the clock speeds, there are mixed reports. We know that the new lineup will feature 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory dies, delivering an effective bandwidth of 576 GB/s but it's the core clock that cannot be confirmed yet. We have heard reports that the Radeon RX 6950 XT will feature boost clocks of over 2.5 GHz which is a nice jump versus the standard RX 6900 XT but we don't know if this is specific to the reference model or a custom model.

As for the design of the graphics card, it will ship in the same 'Midnight Black' flavor as the 6800 XT Limited Edition with a 2.5 slot cooler, a massive triple-fan cooled heatsink, and power provided by 2 8-pin connectors.

Compared to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, this is a performance improvement of 11% which is the same performance level as the RTX 3090 TI. The RTX 3090 retails at $1499 US while the RTX 3090 Ti retails at $1999 US. So you are looking at a much cheaper price with higher gaming performance. At the same time, we are looking at a 4% performance boost over the Radeon RX 6900 XT for $100 US more (MSRP). So one could just overclock his Radeon RX 6900 XT and call it a day but for those who haven't upgraded yet, if you are able to find an RX 6950 XT custom model with similar pricing as an RX 6900 XT custom model, then going for the former makes the most sense. But if you are looking at a lower price point for the 6900 XT, then just buying this graphics card and saving a few bucks is the way to go. To sum things up:

The raytracing performance for the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT was tested in titles that run slightly better with AMD hardware. You are looking at an average 2-3% performance bump in the games tested but at the end of the day, there's a reason why AMD didn't focus that much on raytracing performance and that's purely because NVIDIA's RTX 30 series has a huge advantage in a majority of RT-enabled titles at the moment.

AMD is also sharing the official RSR performance benchmarks of its Radeon RX 6950 XT graphics card. The results include scaling performance from 1800p to 4K and 1440p to 4K. The Ultra Quality preset allows for similar to the native image at higher performance while the Balanced preset allows for much higher performance with slight image quality loss. AMD didn't share any FSR2 numbers which we will include in our review.

The AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT will be packing the Navi 22 XT GPU and feature 40 compute units which are equal to 2560 stream processors. The graphics chip also features 40 Ray accelerators for raytracing capabilities on the RDNA 2-based GPUs.

The graphics card will feature a 12 GB GDDR6 memory buffer along with a 192-bit bus interface. AMD will be using 18 Gbps dies which would net a total bandwidth of 432 GB/s for the cards. The GPU additionally packs 96 MB of Infinity Cache. The GPU will be fully Gen 4.0 compliant. As for the TBP, the card is expected to feature a 230-250W design. This is solely due to the use of higher clock memory dies which will lead to increased power consumption. As for the GPU clock speeds, we can not confirm if the RX 6750 XT will get the same 'boost' treatment as the RX 6950 XT mentioned above.

The graphics card will get a brand new triple-fan 'Midnight black' reference design with a dual-slot design and power provided through an 8+6 pin connector configuration.

For the Radeon RX 6750 XT, AMD is focusing on the 1440p gaming performance numbers. The card is positioned against the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 which has an MSRP of $499 US so the red team is asking $50 US more for its offering. The RX 6750 XT does rock 12 GB memory (compared to 8 GB on the RTX 3070) and is slightly more power-efficient at running games. But the pricing is already absurd for the RX 6700 XT at $479 US which should've been set to $429-$449 US. So asking an extra $70 US over that makes no sense at all.

However, out of the three variants, the AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT gets the biggest jump over its replacement, offering a 7% performance boost over the RX 6700 XT. Compared to the RTX 3070, the card offers only a 2% performance boost on average. The performance difference doesn't justify the cost here and it looks like AMD should be looking at their own marketing and testing results. Back when AMD introduced its RX 6700 XT, it was shown to comfortably beat the RTX 3070 8 GB graphics card whereas the performance numbers here show that the RX 6700 XT is not only slower but is also able to offer similar performance as the boosted 6750 XT which is a 7-8% gain over the original 6700 XT. To sum things up:

Lastly, we have the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT graphics card which will be powered by the Navi 23 XT GPU, featuring 11.06 Billion transistors packed within a 237mm2 die. The Navi 23 GPU features 32 Compute Units with a total of 2048 stream processors. The card will also rock 32 MB Infinity Cache and features an 8 GB GDDR6 memory capacity running across a 128-bit wide bus interface at pin speeds of 18 Gbps for a total bandwidth of 288 GB/s.

Just like the Radeon RX 6600 XT, the card will operate with a single 8-pin connector and TBP will be expected at around 160-180W. Once again, we cannot confirm the boost clocks for the GPU and if they remain the same as the existing 6600 XT or get a boosted treatment. The graphics card will get a brand new dual-fan 'Midnight black' reference design with a dual-slot design and power provided through a single 8-pin connector configuration.

While the pricing for the Radeon RX 6750 XT is bad, the RX 6650 XT isn't impressive either even though it does cost just $20 US more than the 6600 XT but comes on par with the RTX 3060 Ti.

The former competitor ships with more VRAM, while the latter offers higher performance as the results posted by AMD, prove that the RX 6650 XT will be 2% faster than the RX 6600 XT. Now while the performance jump over the RTX 3060 is touted as a 20-23% gain which does bring the card to the same performance tier as the RTX 3060 Ti, the graphics card loses a lot at 1440p due to its limited bus interface and the respective bandwidth figures. AMD also might've forgotten the fact that the RTX 3060 costs $70 US less at $329 US (MSRP). To sum things up:

Evaluating the performance of unreleased hardware is always a difficult task and the same is the case here for the Radeon RX 6000 series. However, based on the clocks and bandwidth figures, we could extrapolate some hints of where the performance would land.

To compare, the current Navi 21 XT & XTXH chips have a reference boost clock of 2250 MHz, and only a few custom variants such as the Gigabyte AORUS RX 6900 XT Xtreme WaterForce WB and the ASUS ASUS ROG STRIX LC RX 6900 XT Gaming Top can hit boost clocks over 2.5 GHz (2525 MHz to be precise). The addition of higher clock speeds would yield over 26 TFLOPs of FP32 horsepower, a 3 TFLOPs increase over the existing model.

If the AMD Radeon RX 6950XT with a few optimizations on the RDNA 2 Refresh Navi 21 XTXH GPU can hit reference boost clocks of over 2.5 GHz, then we can expect custom models for the same chip to offer even higher boost clocks. The current custom variants are clocked around +250 to +300 MHz over the reference specs so if we use the same numbers, we can expect 2.8 or 2.9 GHz from the new model. This would prove to be a bigger performance uplift in combination with the 18 Gbps memory dies which are also rumored for the upcoming lineup. But it will come at the cost of higher power consumption hence the 350W TBP figures for the flagship model.

So overall, that's a 12% increase in memory bandwidth and a 13% in clock speeds. If this kind of improvement is expected for all three cards, then we can definitely get up to 10% performance from each segment.

There would also be a small price difference too for the new AMD Radeon RX 6000 Refresh cards. Today, the cards are being announced and reviews are available for you to check out (ours will be posted within this week). The cards will hit retail shelves on the 12th of May.

These cards will not only launch in the reference 'Midnight Black' card flavor but also get custom treatment. Based on the existing prices, the RX 6950 XT might hit retail for $1099 US, the RX 6750 XT at $540 US, and the RX 6650 XT at $399 US. Prices of the existing models will remain unchanged.

These GPUs will compete with Intel's high-end ARC Alchemist GPUs that are launching in a few months while the Radeon RX 6950 XT flagship is clearly aimed at NVIDIA's RTX 3090 Ti graphics card which was introduced just recently. Does the question remain who will buy these GPUs considering the Radeon RX 7000 'RDNA 3' launch is planned by the end of this year?

It looks like AMD is eyeing those users who wanted to get RX 6000 series cards at launch but couldn't do so due to the many supply and pricing issues. Rather than waiting another 6-7 months for a graphics card, users can get an upgraded RX 6000 card with slightly better performance for slightly higher pricing.

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