Radeon RX 6950 XT or GeForce RTX 4070, Which $600~ GPU Should You Buy?

[@PowellCat745]

Hopefully 7800XT can deliver 6950XT level performance with less power consumption. That will erase 4070’s advantages.

[@dashkatae]

Hopefully, it'll be around the same price as the 6950xt right now. If AMD can deliver that, it would be a massive advantage for them and might get people thinking of buying AMD over Nvidia this generation.

[@ثامرالثائر]

@@dashkatae yeah also with the av1 encoding it will be the beast of mid range gpu

[@danutghidia5820]

@@dashkatae idk about yours, but in my country 7900xt is the same price as 6950xt

[@ثامرالثائر]

@@dashkatae and just imagine if it deliver 20 gb vram it will bee amazing i think i will save some money from now

[@Eihei]

Well, the RDNA 3 performance is still weirdly inconsistent, and in places where 4070 has a lead in RT performance, i expect the 7800 to still lag behind 4070 :( too bad, I really like how RT looks in quite a few games that I actually play, especially Cyberpunk.

[@chenzen4915]

I recently bought the RX 6950 XT. Loads of performance especially coming from an RX 480

[@Elinzar]

Dam you went from a bicycle to a Lamborghini

[@chenzen4915]

@@Elinzar no kidding, I really enjoyed that 480, but I really wanted an upgrade.

[@abdullahnaeem7275]

damn brooo really big upgrade man like sheeeett

[@TheTeeroy32]

I'm jelly, I went from a RX480 to a 2070 super and thought it was good. Nice upgrade dude.

[@bravozero6]

​@@TheTeeroy32 2070 super is really good. I have a 2070 super since launch and I'm looking to up grade but I think I'm waiting for price cuts

[@ed_ELA]

Imagine If the 4070 was released as the 4060ti, and priced appropriately it would be flying off the shelves. Let's see what AMD has to offer next

[@glordium1951]

current amd gen doesnt have something similar to DLSS3 tho ..

[@DeadNoob451]

@@glordium1951 DLSS3 is no reason to overpay for underpowered hardware tho.

[@MDxGano]

Why would the name matter when they've gone to a relative performance price model and the names just simply don't matter for the most part?

[@MDxGano]

@@DeadNoob451 Isnt it 5% cheaper than the 6950xt?, uses about 100w less, averages around 15% slower in raster, 15% faster in RT, no mention of upscaling here because it is work and subjective numbers suck to present in an unbiased way. DLSS3 is actually pretty darn killer in Dying light 2, Witcher 3, and CP2077...like massively improves the experience of the games when playing with all the bells and whistles on. I said experience, not performance because there are those who will go "bah fake frames". Feels good to me on a 165hz monitor. The dual encoders alone are enough to overcome a 10% performance gap, let alone all the other addons you get going nvidia. Nvidia broadcast is probably the best "free" software i've ever used on a daily basis nvidias encoder is simply better than AMD's for streamers. You get a few other nibblets in the studio drivers like advanced face tracking for AR. All around nvidia, no matter how you slice it just has a better package right now albeit at the precipice of unacceptable vram levels.

[@ed_ELA]

@@MDxGano 4080 12 GB MSRP 899 renamed to 4070ti and priced at 799. Great example of naming inflation there.

[@fAED_]

I own an Asrock Phantom Gaming D 6900 XT, which I purchased during last year's Black Friday sale for 699€. I am absolutely delighted with this GPU and its exceptional performance. The temperatures have been well within acceptable limits, with the core temperature not exceeding 83ºC and averaging around 75ºC. Over the past few months, I've had the opportunity to play several games on ULTRA without any upscaling, and I must say that the experience has been nothing short of amazing (1440p). Here are the average FPS I've achieved in some of these games: The Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves: 140-160 fps The Last of Us: Part I: 80-110 fps God of War (2018): 90-120 fps Call of Duty: MW II: 90-130 fps Diablo 4: Beta: 90-170 fps After six months of using the 6900 XT, I can confidently say that I am extremely satisfied with my purchase. I would recommend this GPU to anyone considering it. Additionally, I would like to mention that I am using a Cooler Master v850w gold v2 PSU, which has been performing flawlessly. It's a great choice for powering this graphics card. - Rocking it with a 5600x

[@jrminate]

I love my amd reference 6900xt as well, had 0 issues with it so far. It has even played every console port game like The Last of Us Part 1 and so on great from the get go on day 1 release when other brands were having major problems. I buy all manufacturers too btw. Hopefully nvidia 5000 series gpus will resolve the Vram Skimping. If Nvidia does start putting more vram in the next gen GPUS and the price is a little bit lower I may switch back to them. Until then I think the 6900xt or 6950xt with 16gb ram is a really good value. Your temps look good for that asrock 6900xt overclocked card, you could even probably keep it under 80C on all games if you went in and manually adjusted the fan curve a little more aggressive.

[@fAED_]

@@jrminate Fan curve is adjusted manually. After 80ºC fan speed is set to 95%. (no OC on Adrenalin btw)

[@Azraenore]

I'm not quite sure but that CPU might bottleneck the GPU.

[@gjwestonable]

I just managed to get Asrock Phantom 6950xt for £589 you even get last of us free. Fantastic card. I was going to get a 7900XTX but even that can't raytrace so just will save my £500 and bug a nice monitor.

[@pauljanssen5331]

@@Azraenore not in 1440p and above

[@janizzkar]

Already bought and installed my 6950xt last week. Noo regrets whatsoever. Upgraded from a 3060ti.

[@mrm7]

As a 6900xt owner, I paid £700 for my card, I'm really impressed with the performance. I don't ever enable RT and TBF I don't think many gamers care about it either. For price, you can't beat AMD at the minute

[@maximumclutch8113]

You don't enable it because you can't without having a poor experience. I'm sure you would feel differently about it if you had a card that was decent at ray tracing

[@jonathonpion2042]

​@Maximum Clutch most people don't care about a niche feature that really does nothing but eat up resources and really does nothing to improve graphical quality. That said you waste your money on whatever you want.

[@CBadger]

I care about ray tracing and always have it enabled where I can. As Maximum Cluth says, if you had a card that could run it at high frame rates, your opinion would be very different. I'm sure if everyone had a 4090 level card (in 2 or 3 generations time) everyone will use ray tracing where they can.

[@charekuu]

well no shit you don't enable RT on RX 6000 series lol, their RT performance sucks

[@PineyJustice]

@@maximumclutch8113 A 6900xt will do around 60 fps in cyberpunk with FSR quality at 1440p, it's a playable experience, but still better just to have the higher framerate.

[@mudgie0205]

UPDATE: Just got an email stating my order is processed. Likely will arrive earlier than the expected date yet still the product page says it's 'coming soon' I ordered a Red Devil 6950 XT on Ebuyer here in the UK for £620 on May 5th. I was expecting it to arrive on May 12 when stock would replenish, however it's been delayed until 26th May since restock isn't always 100% accurate according to support team. So if you want one in the UK and can't find one elsewhere for the time being, keep an eye out for Powercolor's RD 6950 XT on 26th May

[@michaelmonstar4276]

I purchased two AMD ones no problem and they're still in stock. In The Netherlands however... Second one was from a different store for less, so the first one has to go back. XD

[@mudgie0205]

@@michaelmonstar4276 they told me I could cancel and order one of the others in stock but I thought it might be worth the extra power over the other models so I can wait. Something to look forward to 😂

[@reapergaming380]

​@@mudgie0205 same waiting on mine from ebuyer too, but didn't know it was delayed till the 26th. Might just buy it from Overclockers and bite the bullet of £8 next day delivery

[@mudgie0205]

@@reapergaming380 the listing only says ‘coming soon’ so that’s what led me to call them up

[@redrock425]

I got one from ebuyer. Great card.

[@Bogdan00]

The 6950XT is not that far behind even in raytracing, and good luck using RT with 12GB VRAM in the next couple of years.

[@JoeMaranophotography]

Shadows to high and textures. Done simple

[@charlesmiv3842]

I think DLSS and Frame Generation are much better than RT. That's why I went with Nvidia.

[@PackardKotch]

Why buy a new nvidia card if you have to drop settings?

[@JoeMaranophotography]

@Nugget YT6 Cos I don't have to right now. Its inevitable that in 2 years time you aren't going to be running AAA games at Max RT

[@Drip7914]

@@charlesmiv3842 so u like playing at lower res and fake frames which DECREASE performanc (increase of latency(l) and induce artifacts ☠️☠️☠️

[@jamesyoung151]

I purchased the 6950XT. I did seriously consider the 4070. I plan to keep the current system long term since I built it 6 months ago. I don't have any more plans to add any more parts at this time nor I have a need or want for RT. That is why I chose the 6950XT. If I did decide to purchase a card in the future, it will be a long distance future.

[@misaelhp1]

I'm going to upgraded from 3070 Ti to 6950xt in few days, let see how works.

[@jamesyoung151]

@@misaelhp1Which card are you looking at? I have the PowerColor Red Devil. I went with that one because it fits my system theme. I had the Red Devil 6700XT in the system before I upgraded.

[@misaelhp1]

@@jamesyoung151 I don't like power Color, on asus, XFX ore MSi in the same order.

[@jamesyoung151]

​@@misaelhp1 I can understand that, it's not for everyone.

[@BetalerIkkeSkatt]

I was actually pleasantly surprised how well the 6950XT performs on raytracing. Even on Nvidia raytracing is barely possible without dlss/fsr. Though i aswell dont care much about raytracing and rarely use it.

[@anthonyholmes5965]

From what I’ve seen most people shopping in this price range aren’t worried about ray tracing so the 6950 seems to be the better deal here for price to performance.

[@orcusdei]

If you have it only for gaming, then yes... The other thing is CUDA cores, since they affect not just ray tracing, but other factors like loading of the environment and everything. The other issue is, that in many countries the 6950 XT cost at least 30% more than 4070 or it isn't available at all. For example in my country i can buy 4070 for 700 USD - and I get Diablo 4 for free yet the cheapest shittiest 6950 XT is for 780 USD. And last thing is that if you have SFF PC, any AMD card is off the table :D But that is a different story :D

[@vuri3798]

We don't, but "normies" do, as we acquire knowledge we tend to forget that people still don't exactly know what they're buying, we're the ones in a bubble. Heck, you go on reseller's pages you see plenty people wanting to buy the 3050 because "rtx", asking if that's a good choice. You explain to them in details why it's not, and they're like "but....". Then a random dude pops and tell them "I get 100+ fps on (Insert Valorant or any esport title)", and congrats you just wasted some time, they'll act as if it's the better and only deal since they just wanted to feel validated for their bad spending💀 That being said, I find this one to be a tough choice, it really depends on your situation I guess. The 4070 really is an easy upgrade, the 6950xt might not. If you still play in 1080p, have to buy another PSU, or live in a country in which electricity bills can be a sensitive subject... Then the 6950xt might not be the same budget all things considered

[@jskyg68]

@@orcusdei "CUDA cores" nvidia marketing term for stream processors/shaders...... Amd and intel has them too....12 gigs Vram is pathetic at that price.

[@orcusdei]

@@jskyg68 That is nice in theory, but this is the reality: "For Windows and Linux, Redshift currently only supports CUDA-compatible NVidia GPUs." This goes for majority of graphic engines. They can "emulate" the AMD or Intel to CUDA core, but it's for the price of performance. Every single benchmark confirms this. And these benchmarks don't look on how fast the environment is loading, only on RTX FPS. At the end of the day, you will have a better texture detail, but slower card with Radeon. And by "slower" i don't mean just FPS, but the sole processing power which is subpar to Nvidia. So if you only play games, you may or may not benefit from the 16 gbs but if you want to do anything else, it's a worse card for more money that only benefit few extra FPS. And most reviewers confirm that. You can easily get these few FPS from somewhere else.

[@jskyg68]

@@orcusdei It's driver based not hardware, Graphics cards all do the same thing the main differences are the architectures not hardware. They have to be or the game industry would have to make separate versions of games to run on different cards......

[@Thun777]

I ended up buying the 6950xt as it was the same price as the 4070 in Denmark, main reasons was the extra vram and better non RT performance. I feel like if you cared a lot about RT 12gb vram probably is not enough in a year or 2, so next stop is the 4080 at twice the price, if the 4070 had 16gb vram I would have bought that

[@Thun777]

@SoundwaveSinus9 I’m still happy with the choice ;-)

[@cybervoid8442]

@SoundwaveSinus9 most nvidia users use dlss with RT. So effectively better at giving a good RT experience than 6950xt

[@ctgaming168]

​@@cybervoid8442 And those same people can use FSR to help improve fps when using RT. More Vram on AMD is so much better than crippled Nvidia cards. I have both a 3070 and RX 6800, the 3070 is unusable in most new games.

[@azure2137]

​@@Thun777 For Europe and especially Denmark RTX 4070 is a strong contender to 6950XT because of electricity is very expensive 200W more in power consumption is around 213 kWh a year if you game 3 hours a day over a year if I am not wrong electricity is around 3-4 DKK for 1 kWh in Denmark so 6950XT will cost 639-852 DKK more to use over a year compared to RTX 4070.

[@azure2137]

@@arthurmorgan6353 3-4 DKK (Danish Krone) is around 0.4 - 0.54 Euro or 0.44 - 0.58 USD

[@mastroitek]

I can't even imagine the amount of work and patience behind these benchmark videos. Amazing job guys!!

[@brodonamus]

yeah hubs videos are pretty awesome and they’re fantastically consistent.

[@VoldoronGaming]

@@Chasm9 competitive multiplayer gamers would use 1080p. Duh

[@mastroitek]

@@Chasm9 I might be wrong, but I think they did a pool a while ago and ppl still wanted 1080p benchmarks for high end gpus.

[@Romancedawn1]

I can - ctrl+a ctrcl+c ctrl+v and 3 minutes of editing numbers to appear new. Jk obviously.

[@Dr-CthulhuOfRlyeh]

HUB is underrated, they need to break a million subs already. But fanboys on all sides dislike them because of their great work and it keeps their subs low.😐

[@bmdshred77]

Easy choice. 7900 xt. Wait for $700 price tag. Got mine for $779 and it’s been fantastic

[@danutghidia5820]

in my country 7900xt is the same price as 6950xt

[@EarthIsFlat456]

lol you should've got the 7900XTX but I understand money is an issue 🤣

[@bmdshred77]

@@EarthIsFlat456 when I got the 7900xt the xtx was still hard to find and selling for $1100 ish. But yea now xtx can be had for $979 at times. I game at 1440p tho so 7900xt is perfect

[@mrpositronia]

​@@EarthIsFlat456 case size and PSU limitations considered, of course.

[@Ale55andr082]

point is: 700 WHEN? or even IF....

[@djsnowpdx]

Steve, I really appreciate how you’ve been siloing the ray tracing results. I still think the majority of gamers don’t consider them relevant; the cost of entry for decent performance is still too high. For those who do, or those watching in the future or looking forward, you have that information all in one graph per resolution. Your graphs are the best, Steve!

[@ImaITman]

Agreed. I usually buy the highest top end cards and I don't care for Ray Tracing. If I wanted to neuter my graphics performance by 20-30% I would just buy a cheaper card....

[@agentoranj5858]

Agreed; My old GTX 1070 could do anything non-RT but my new RX 6750 XT showed me that ultimately games are software-limited and more raster performance is just wasted on older games, and it also showed me that that RT really does give next-gen visuals but early RT games (not made by the legendary wizards of id Software) need more rendering power to get to 60fps @ 1440p. I learned a lot from my 6750 and I'm glad I didn't get burned from giving AMD a second chance.

[@fist003]

ray tracing is just a gimmick for me until all tier of GPU can turn it on with minimal penalty like AA nowadays

[@agentoranj5858]

@@fist003 "How does it perform in RT?" is the new "Can it run Crysis?"

[@jskyg68]

The problem with RT at the moment (imo) is 90% games with it were developed on nvidia hardware, notice how more recent games actually run as good or faster on AMD hardware?

[@Zoltan74]

Everyone is looking at price/ fps, but that's not the only important aspect! The 4070 is a 200 watt card, very often it consumes around 160-180watts /depends on the game/! I like my card to be as efficient as possible, cool and safe to run, not heating the cpu, and the gpu hot spot around 65-70 degrees! I like it that way! ...and if the machine is quiet as night! For me this is as important as the price/fps result for others! Also, I do 3D editing and rendering in Blender /hobby/, and the 200 watt 4070 is much faster, so it's not necessarily reasonable for everyone to go with what's cheaper! Not because the power is expensive, but for other reasons already mentioned! In addition, wherever possible, I turn on the RT function, it's basic for me! The lights are much more realistic!

[@thefurmidablecatlucky3]

before the 4070 was released the 3070Ti and 6950XT were selling for the same price, that's just absolutely ridiculous .. Nvidia is smoking crack for sure

[@virtualinsanity7791]

They really want that crypto miners bag so bad it's almost funny.

[@RFKG]

NVIDIA asking for the same price is completely understandable. What really puzzles me is people actually paying this price, and coping with "it has better RT performance", when 80% of cards in the NVIDIA lineup can't really deal with the performance blow that is turning RT on. And that's not even mentioning how disappointing it is in like 9 out of 10 games that implemented it. The problem is in the consumer.

[@GodisGood941]

@@RFKG nvidia was asking for the same price because people were stupid enough to actually pay for it when there were other options. Most of them dont even use rt because its still unusable in most games at the resolution people who use it want to play at.

[@honkhonkler7732]

​​@@RFKG True, everyone that says they went Nvidia for the ray tracing bought like a 3060 or 3070 which either aren't powerful enough anyways or are too starved for VRAM to use it lol

[@gusfring96]

Do you guys ever stop talking about the horrible pricing? Yes everyone knows it at this point. It's tiring seeing top comments regurgitate "overprice overprice overprice" instead of actually discussing what's on the video.

[@cjsrandomstuff]

I think given nvidia's bs lately, I'd go for the RX 6950 XT.

[@GewelReal]

double power consumption no DLSS terrible RT no frame generation and on top of that it's 30-40$ extra AMD fanboys on a roll smh

[@ComputerProfessor]

​​@@GewelReal This is coming from a 4090 user... You need to stop being a fanboy of any company. I can't care about ray tracing performance as in a couple of years it'll age like milk. DLSS should be a plus for lower-end stuff. If the person who posted this is spending over $200 on a GPU and the power bill is a concern they shouldn't be considering these cards. Go integrated if it's a concern because you shouldn't go broke building a computer or buying if you can't afford the power bill. In most of the USA it'll only be a small difference anyway Taking a look at PCpartpicker they're about the same price. I would spend a little extra on the 6950 xt.

[@Purjo92]

I went used RTX 3060 12 GB and will never ever buy any Nvidia products new, so they never get any money from my pockets. I love their products, but f*ck their anti-consumer BS. Hope AMD will gain more market share eventually and start competing hard like they did with Zen 1 vs. Intel 300 USD quad-core monopoly.

[@gabrielst527]

@@GewelReal you have FSR RT is a gimmick, until we get more proper pathtracing games like portal 2 that nobody can run right now, so we need like 5 years at a minimum frame generation at the moment adds a lot of input lag, that's not good at all, we will see how both companies address that. So yeah we get much more rasterization performance with more VRAM, no reason at all to buy the Nvidia product.

[@HardwareAccent]

@@GewelReal You are correct, but it's almost meaningless when you are running out of VRAM. The 4070 would mop the floor with the 6950XT if it had 16GB.

[@alun1038]

The 6950 XT is the best affordable card for a plain rasterised 4K experience without RT

[@RJ-vy4yd]

Why would anyone want to play in non-RT 4K instead of RT+DLSS is beyond me.

[@stanislavkimov2779]

@@RJ-vy4yd you need Nvidia for RT, and the only good Nvidia option is 4090. For 4K RT you need at least 4080, which is bad value. I see no point in RT yet with Nvidia's approach. AMD's GPUs for raster performance are the only adequate choice if you don't want to spend more than 1K on a GPU.

[@DragonOfTheMortalKombat]

But if I'm spending freakin' 600-700$, I would want some sweet RT visuals.

[@DragonOfTheMortalKombat]

@@stanislavkimov2779 Your comment is pretty senseless. 4070Ti can do 4K RT with DLSS. Intel can also do very good RT. RTX 3000 can also do good RT. You don't need 4090 unless you want 4K with zero upscaling + absolutely maxed out RT + High refresh rate experience.

[@duckilythelovely3040]

Not really, with FG i'm doubling my FPS over a 6950xt. I have a 4070, and a 4080 as well

[@orwellchu]

Reading the comments feels like 9 out of 10 would choose that 6950XT?! 400W power draw with 20ms spikes up to 550W. High power even when doing basic tasks, watching youtube or just having more than one monitor. Gaming performance is one thing but at what cost ?!

[@kingwein89]

If you're spending over 500 dollars on a GPU I'm pretty sure the power bill is of little concern. Frame rates, rasterization, vram, price > RT, DLSS, power efficiency.

[@EpicListening7]

I bought rx 6950 xt for like 550€, and i think for that money it can't be beat. I didn't expect such a massive boost coming from a 1080ti. With undervolt it has even better performance for some reason. Technical City helped me with his video on this one.

[@hankhillsurethra]

I’m happy to see this. I just got an xfx merc 6950xt and the parts to build a new rig and I’m coming from an old i7 7700 with 1080ti too

[@LBenn302]

@@hankhillsurethraproud new 6950xt 7700x ddr5-6000 owner here 🫡

[@griftgfx]

an extra 4 gigs of VRAM is pretty useful if you use your GPU for any non-gaming GPU compute task, but CUDA brings its own strengths there, and unfortunately the combination of CUDA and VRAM is basically unobtainable unless you buy a friggin 4090

[@blenderalien]

You spoke my heart random stranger

[@Adri9570]

- 4060Ti: my 16GB are a joke to you? - Everyone: XDDDDDDDD do we really have to answer that?

[@tk72231968]

I'm unhappy with the BS that Nvidia has been up to, so I lean AMD if I had to buy right now. Also, the VRAM is a key in useful lifetime for a GPU.

[@RJ-vy4yd]

But AMD is doing exactly the same BS as Nvidia. They both just price their new cards so bad to force people into buying their old GPUs without really discounting them that much. Literally the only anyhow reasonably priced card this generation is 4090 but yeah, it's not a GPU for everyone. My point is AMD isn't any better than Nvidia here so it's ridiculous to hear people repeating such BS like "Nvidia bad AMD good".

[@AlexRubio]

​@@RJ-vy4yd let's be honest ngreeda has done worse.

[@AlexRubio]

@@wiLdchiLd2k huh,

[@No-One.321]

​@@wiLdchiLd2k seriously, what the hell did you just try to say?

[@No-One.321]

@@BETEP-gw7qp tell us you are a troll without telling us! What are you talking about future proofing? 12gb of vram isn't enough vram already let alone in the future. And if you are really having these problems the issue is not the gpu since you've used 2 completely different GPUs.

[@ViolenceCity]

Great vid. The 6950 handled the non RTX stuff effortlessly. If I do end up building another machine this year I might go with this for the games that inexplicably run like crap on Nvidia.

[@benacker8525]

If you're doing some 3D work, streaming or video editing I think RTX4070 makes perfect sense. 3D modeling and animation work much much better on nVidia hardware. I had 2080Ti it died, then I got RX6950xt for 770e and it's been amazing ever since, I keep gaining FPS with new driver updates. AMD software is solid, never had a blue or black screen. It would be nice to compare these GPUs again in 2year period. RayTracing was never a good feature for me due massive performance cuts. Great Video.

[@williamscott6209]

During Black Friday sales, both of these GPU's were at the exact same price where I live. I opted for the 6950 XT. I don't care much about RT performance and I don't stream, so the significantly better rasterized performance of the 6950 XT was a no-brainer for me.

[@lv83bloodknight]

I did the same thing!

[@Jesse__21]

Just picked a steal of a 4k monitor and need a gpu. the 6950xt reference card is 599 at my microcenter, do i do it?!

[@williamscott6209]

@@Jesse__21 definitely a capable 4k card, I'd say go for it

[@Hubwood]

Would have loved to see a section dedicated to Power Consumption and Efficiency!

[@Hubwood]

@SoundwaveSinus9 I don't think amd was the efficiency King. If I remember it right the 3070 was pretty much the most efficient card? Might be wrong though. Also a 4070 undervolted to 150w still gives you 98%. I have to admit I don't know how well the 6950xt can be undervolted.

[@sadssadsa5944]

@SoundwaveSinus9 no its not a clear 4000 series win at all. u can enable sam and undevolt it gaining loads in perfromance for 150w less power draw meaning it reaches the 4070. so no. u cant undervolt nvidia gpus and gain performance thats what u do with amd. so back to the cave u troll.

[@Flaschenteufel]

@SoundwaveSinus9 maybe because of the war many countries are very expensive regarding electricity in europe rn....? just a wild guess

[@Lemard77]

@@Hubwood 3070 was the most efficient 3000 card as it wasn't pushed to the max, but the RX 6800 was a bit more efficient than it as it was a bit faster and only consumed 10-20W more. The 3060 / 3070 Ti / 3080 / 3090 were beaten by their 6000 series counterparts in efficiency for the most part.

[@niebuhr6197]

​@SoundwaveSinus9 last gen AMD wasnt more efficient, they had very incomplete power readings, unlike Nvidia.

[@ycl260779]

Personally I would probably go with the 6950xt if I was looking to change my gpu from an older gen, but I'm not currently.

[@MDxGano]

@@terraincognitagaming I mean he did say which one he would pick if you watched the whole video.

[@Вадим-к6ж8р]

@@terraincognitagaming In few years you will be glad with that power efficiency of your system in office-mode because you wouldn't launch games because of unabling of gaming with 12G VRAM. 😄

[@Exoleres]

@@terraincognitagaming That's a really weird take about a video that starts by talking about prices on Newegg. Newegg, as apparently only some of us know, is actually not Amazon.

[@Ebilcake]

@@Вадим-к6ж8р It's mid range card bro, in a few years it will be time to upgrade. 12Gb will be fine for a while longer, so long you don't play at 4K native, which this card is not intended for.

[@Вадим-к6ж8р]

@@Ebilcake Why mid-range card in 2023 isn't intended for 4k? According declarations at presentations of NVIDIA and AMD cards for 4k-gaming was released 5 years and 2 generations ago. So 4k-gaming it's not something new to be unique only for top-products.

[@SaxaphoneMan42]

One thing I wish was mentioned a bit more on these kinds of videos, the XTXH binned 6900 XTs (sapphire toxic, red devil ultimate, MSI Gaming Z Trio, etc.) are very similar in performance to a 6950 XT. Best part is they can generally be had for a $50-$100 discount from the 6950 XT. On top of that, 16GB of VRAM from AMD is a bit more likely to age well than the 12GB VRAM from Nvidia, though at least its better than 8GB. One other side note for people to consider if they intend to stay on their GPU for a while, AMD historically has better support for their older GPUs than Nvidia - who is much more likely to release software that can only be utilized if you upgrade your GPU again. If you care about ray tracing and are on a 1080p or 1440p resolution, 4070 seems like a solid card. If you are on 4k, or simply don't care about ray tracing, 6900XT/6950XT all the way.

[@tek1645]

Biggest selling point for me is the power efficiency of the 4070 but it stings to see 12gb on this card...

[@Nerwesta]

@@tek1645 the so called AMD fine wine. I'll probably switch to this card after my very nice experience with the 5700 XT. ( Sapphire Nitro + ) which was after my 290X ( again Sapphire ) Always happy with this. 🤗

[@SaxaphoneMan42]

@@Nerwesta went with the red devil ultimate 6900 XT, I was torn between that and the sapphire toxic (air cooled versions of both), but was able to find the RD ultimate at a good enough price that I couldn't pass it up. Both models are XTXH bins with great coolers, zero regrets on this purchase, and likely wont care to upgrade for a few more generations. Plus, being on Linux tends to add more to the "AMD fine wine", for instance, I was using SAM on a Vega64 prior to the upgrade, and can use FSR on games that don't have it implemented thanks to proton, though with my current card there is much less need for FSR.

[@clo1298]

@@tek1645 Pay now or pay later.

[@Nerwesta]

@@SaxaphoneMan42 Many thanks for your valuable insights ! I guess I have some time to spend for this summer, I'm not in a hurry right now but this surely comes handy.

[@tofuguru941]

Sapphire 6950XT Pure OC owner here. Bought it when it cost more than it should have, but am not disappointed in having it for as long as i did and enjoying it for the joy it has given me thus far rather than wait. I run 1440p @ 240hz and nothing i throw at it is a problem at all. I dont care for Ray Tracing, and they can be underclocked to save wattage all while keeping 90% of the performance. When overclocked... You can def push it to gain another 10% but at the cost of a lot more watts (about 400 from the card itself). Thats great efficiency considering the 3090 that was out around the same time would use nearly 500w pegged, and cant keep up with the raster performance of the 6950xt at all. Great card and will stand the test of time easily.

[@fgcc89]

Great job! I just got the 6950xt, with the discounts it was actually cheaper than most 4070s in Sweden.

[@Kage0No0Tenshi]

not directly, I can agree that rx 6950xt is way cheaper than 4070ti but still cost about 200SEK more than 4070, in the end there is no point to get 4070 when both cost same and 4070 have less vram and only good at ray tracing that no one going to enable

[@GodKitty677]

@@Kage0No0Tenshi 4070 card is aimed at a different customer than the 6950xt. 6900xt need a more expensive psu and bigger case. This means on cost the 4070 wins and to its target customer its the best card. A build with the 4070 will be cheaper. Really performance difference is bigger in RT once you factor in frame generation. Overall in newer games with DLSS the 4070 is far faster than the 6950xt. Even without DLSS the 4070 has better performance balance overall.

[@fgcc89]

@@Kage0No0Tenshi I got the 6950xt MERC 319 at 7300 sek at komplet. But you are right regarding the price in most stores.

[@fgcc89]

@@GodKitty677 I think that depends on what you are doing with your PC. Personally I don't care about ray tracing and the extra VRAM suits me very well. I installed the texture mods for KSP an I see my VRAM utilization usually around 10GB

[@GodKitty677]

KSP can run fine on a very crappy GPU. Getting a RX 6950XT for KSP well... at least its not solitaire with a texture mod but kind of the same. Not caring about RT, well thats your own problem. The market is all for RT cards. nVidia is greater than 80% market share. Soon all new games will require decent DXR support and performance.

[@chrissoclone]

I'd save the $100 on the card plus another $100 for a new PSU, as probably many (ex-) midrange buyers still have a med-tier PSU, plus some $ on the power bill and just get a 6800(XT), the $200 will come in handy for the 8xxx generation.

[@807800]

It would be interesting to see what RX 7800 would offer. Although, it looks like it would be quite a while for that.

[@F1ll1nTh3Blanks]

I am loathed to care because I already know it's gonna be overpriced, even is it's just better by 2%.

[@JurgenSchober42]

I am actually curious where this will fit into. I hope the can make this a 2 slot card, and I think if it sits between the 6950XT which I think it should beat and improve RT I might have to look into that. I guess unless they run out of 6800xt/69x0xt it'll be $699, though. So, I probably will wait until it'll be $599 (or $649). My guess is 7700XT @ 6800xt level for $499, leave the $600 bracket for the 6900xts and the 649-699 for the 7800xt (16GB, faster than 6950 and much better RT plus less power usage). I'd be surprised if it'll be $599

[@hub1986]

the only RT game i own is Cyberpunk for me the 6950 xt will be the clear winner for me specially at the same price. also play at 3440x1440p so Vram will idd be needed

[@redracer2797]

Glad to find a video with this specific content. I have freesync monitors & so obviously i wanted an AMD gpu... i got the RX 6950 XT for $600 on newegg. Now they're $650. still a great deal. The performance lost when enabling ray tracing was just a huge turn off. I personally don't care for power efficiency so i went with the 6950. But definitely a good video with great points :)

[@emmw7794]

I think the 7800 XT is the way to go. I think that will be the go-to card this gen.

[@doncsicso81]

When the new cards started coming out last year I took the risk and bought an open box 6950xt after seeing the idiotic prices of the new GPUs. I paid 600 EUR for the card and I was afraid it would end up being a 6800 or something but luckily it wasn`t a scam and it was indeed what was advertised. I couldn`t be happier, and seeing what`s been going on with GPUs and pricing (especially in Europe) I definitely made the right decision! Thanks for all the effort you put into this video!

[@spacechannelfiver]

You should check pricing in your region, 7900XT is only 100 more than these cards and smashes them both. (Here the prices are much closer to what they should be than MSRP) I think if you are ponying up 600-650 for a GPU you are firmly in highend pricing and you should think about 750-800.

[@mapesdhs597]

That though is indicative of the encouraged upsell becoming the norm within both companies. By the same rationale, if one is then considering spending 800, then why not 900? 1K? 1500? Where does it end? The entire stack by both companies has shifted upwards by a huge margin in the last decade. If people keep paying such prices then they'll keep going up. NVIDIA even boasted in one of its investor calls that it had successfully upsold the market.

[@RJ-vy4yd]

@@mapesdhs597 Can confirm. Was planning on upgrading 2080 to 4080. When I saw the announcement of 4000 series I simply bought 4090, as 4080's MSRP made no sense.

[@mapesdhs597]

@@RJ-vy4yd At least you have something there which is a lot faster than anything else atm (required CPU driving performance not withstanding), with a hefty VRAM margin. It's a modern unanswered question though. Top-down, expensive graphics subsystem design was very common 30 years ago (my old high-end SGIs prove that easily), but with off-the-shelf commodity tech now firmly in vogue, would gamers be willing to adopt the same MO from long ago? Alas NVIDIA seems to be approaching the matter by jacking the pricing while providing as little real gain as possible that it can get away with, which is ironic given the origins of many of its staff from SGI. If NVIDIA or AMD actually released something properly 3x faster than the current best (without any upscaling meddling), but which cost 5x the price, would gamers buy it? How high can the ceiling go? Obviously the margins climb rapidly. What sucks atm is that the ceiling keeps being pushed up, while at the same time the entry & midrange get repeatedly screwed over. For reference of what I meant above btw, my 24-CPU Onyx RE2 rack cost $1.5M when it was bought new by Ford in 1993.

[@spacechannelfiver]

@@mapesdhs597 oh come on, someone with a $650 budget should be able to stretch to $750 for a much better product without too much issue. If they cant then the $650 product is too much money to start with. Nobody is suggesting to go and spend 3 times the original budget, a 15% price increase for IMO more than 15% better product is offering some value. If someone is at the $650 and not a penny more pricepoint, then they are spending beyond their means and should go look at a $400-500 card.

[@LaccerHS]

Here the cheapest ones have about a $250 difference.

[@saikousocial]

A 16GB 4070 would be the ideal GPU for me. I would be completely content with buying that and keeping it until the day it dies.

[@telemaq76]

for me too !

[@SweatyFeetGirl]

rtx 4070 ti should be the rtx 4070 and it should have 16gb vram at 500$. nvidia is just milking people with 12gb 600$ 4070(4060)

[@Derael]

​@@SweatyFeetGirlI mean, you could say this, put considering last year prices, they know they can get away with it this year. 4070 costs 600, and it's comparable to 3080 Ti which was going for 1200+ last year. So 50% price drop is already good enough for a lot of people who were holding on buying a new GPU. But it's likely that prices will drop some more in the near future, so waiting for the 4060 Ti 16 GB version might be a better idea. If 4070 had 16 GB, I would grab it for 600$ without batting an eye, but as is, I'll wait a bit more, perhaps 4060 Ti will be a better option.

[@irispettson]

Yup, they were very close to having a very compelling product, but instead cheapened out on the VRAM, which is a dealbreaker for a card that expensive.

[@nipa5961]

@@Derael The 4070 barely ties the 3080 in performance which was 700 3 years ago. In pure raster performance it loses to the 6800XT which as 650 3 years ago. Very disappointing.

[@JLRO7]

Just picked up a 6950xt for £550. I’m not bothered about RT and FSR seems to be gaining some ground so I think this was a perfect purchase!

[@xajeyx]

Where did you get it from at that price?

[@stettmann]

Here in Ukraine there are almost no 6950XT in stock, but there are plenty of 4070 for 720-750 USD with all taxes included depending on model. Bought myself 4070 dual, very satisfied with card, for 2K it is optimal, cool, quiet and power efficient.

[@mr.electronx9036]

AMD had always a lower stock than nvidia bc they produce less gpus than ngreedia so it sounds very logical to me here in germany the same situation. 20000 amd gpus vs 120000 gpus now you can see wich one goes off shelfes first

[@KryssN1]

Thanks for good content like always, on point! Would love to see some graphics during the Conclusion that visualise the points you make. Cheers!

[@Orisha1990]

A lot of the ray tracing results steer me even more toward the 6950xt, because with RT enabled even though 4070 performs better, it does so at an FPS level I wouldn't want to play the game anyways.

[@MiraPloy]

The test's not using any upscaling which is kinda unrealistic and ridiculous tbh.

[@lewsee5562]

@@MiraPloy They're not using any upscalers because Nvidia fans are complaining about using FSR on an Nvidia card instead of DLSS, even though the comparison is only framerate, not image quality. On the previous benchmarks, both AMD and Nvidia cards are using FSR because you know, AMD doesn't have DLSS and Nvidia can use FSR. They've made a video about this one.

[@SamuraiDeek]

@@lewsee5562 Which is unfortunate considering that no scaling is not a true representation of how a GPU is used in 2023, especially for users at higher resolution. I disable it sometimes sure, but I play at 1080p, it gets annoying in some games. However, DLSS and FSR are a game changer in most games and if we factor in DLSS 3, then the RTX 4070 has a huge advantage (in specific games) over the 6950XT and there is no reason why anyone wouldn't enable it.

[@eliceomartinezmejias867]

To try RT you should use upscaling it’s what scientists says about this technology the “raw ray tracing “ it’s just not right

[@garyb7193]

@@SamuraiDeek The way I use my GPU in 2023 is 1080p absolutely off the table as is fps below 60fps. This places me at the moment at 1440p w/o RT which is why I bought a used 6800xt 16GB for $425.

[@kotnbronson]

Just bought today a 6950XT,replacing a 3070. Perfect timing Hammer On Box, thanks😅

[@NamTran-xc2ip]

might as well get a 3090 for similar performance and superior upscaling, and a bit of rt

[@ivicamajmunskikreten9714]

congratulations on getting a mini heater for the upcoming summer.

[@riven4121]

@@NamTran-xc2ip Then run out of VRAM when you enable RT, especially at higher resolutions? 10 gigs of VRAM is not enough for it.

[@NamTran-xc2ip]

@@riven4121 I meant the 3090/3080ti sorry. The 4070 is basically the 3080 in raster

[@kotnbronson]

@@NamTran-xc2ip You can't find a 3090 anymore for decent price. I bought the 6950XT for 625£ brand new... also, my case is the NZXT H1, all the high end Nvidia cards are massive, so it was a no brainer for me! Don't really care about RT.

[@nanfoodles]

I just bought a 4070, thanks for the great video. Its out for delivery right now. Thanks for helping me decide.

[@DeenSalazar]

I had a coupon from micro center last month that let me get a reference 6950xt for just $600! My budget for a GPU was $700, so I was super pleased. At that price, the alternatives in store were only the 6800xt, and the rtx 3070ti, both of which were more expensive than my $600 coupon. The rtx 4070 was still nearly $1000 off the shelf.

[@howsikl8594]

Hey what power supply is needed for 6950xt and what processor do you have

[@Dell-ol6hb]

depends on your processor, but I'd say a high quality 850 W power supply should be more than sufficient @@howsikl8594

[@SirPunch2Face]

​@@howsikl8594If you have an 850W power supply, you should be good.

[@ojassarup258]

Here's hoping that the 7800XT comes in at $600 with RT performance to match the 4070 but raster performance and VRAM of the 6950XT, without the high power consumption...

[@snakeinabox7220]

I hope so too Im waiting for it. I will buy one the moment I can for MSRP

[@diamonshade7484]

$500

[@snakeinabox7220]

@@diamonshade7484 for the 7800 maybe. Doubt the 7800xr is going to be sub 600. 600 is a stretch. 650$ with a chance if amd wants to murder the 4070 to up it at 600$

[@DishonoredDuck]

Great comparison! Always appreciate the detailed evaluation of both GPUs in videos like these. I think the energy consumption could be somewhat further talked about as to what influence it has on the total cost of running the GPU in a typical lifespan of 4/5 years. I know it depends on A LOT of factors, but I think it really shows what financial impact a higher power consumption could have and how important efficiency is.

[@JanLe82]

Yup, reviewers (and customers) really need to stress power consumption more. A 150 Watt difference is insane, make no mistake that's *hundreds* of dollars on your energy bill over the card's lifetime. Then again the 4070s 12GB is garbage too, you'll start turning down textures on a 600$ card in 2 years. It's an impossible choice. Wait for 7800 (XT) imo.

[@Dell-ol6hb]

not even just in 2 years, even now some games like Hogwarts Legacy literally run out of VRAM on the 4070 in 4k RT, that will just become more common as time passes @@JanLe82

[@jonathanc1390]

The performance hit is just too much when ray tracing is enabled for both cards

[@TheDravic]

These benchmarks do not really consider DLSS3 which in practice puts 4070 in a position where raytracing performance is really great. Frame Generation is game changer. Even DLSS Super Resolution itself is FAR better than FSR2 at lower resolutions, you also can tweak it with DLSSTweaks, you can update the .dll...

[@andrzejwysocki609]

@João M. the only game my 3070 can do rt with well is prolly metro exodus and the ascent

[@deltasca]

@@TheDravic its so amazing that on jedi survivel you get a powerfull and amazing 2 fps boost . wow

[@TheDravic]

@@deltasca Jedi Survivor is an AMD sponsored title and has neither DLSS3 nor even DLSS2. It also is a completely broken PC port.

[@berengerchristy6256]

@@TheDravic the latest run of busted PC ports is really a tragedy. I almost never buy games on release. always wait for a steam sale. I don't trust publishers to let devs have enough time

[@SpartanMunky546]

If it just had a slightly larger memory bus, 16GB of VRAM and was $550 it would probably be one of if not the value GPU of this generation

[@bfish9700]

The 4070 should have been the 4060 and been under $400. But, Nvidia doubled down on scummy this gen. Very happy with my 6800 that I got for $350.

[@Challechallechalle]

Heyyyy, I have a 6800 as well. We won.

[@Gortok1]

Helluva deal!

[@jelipebands1700]

Based on the benchmarks, thank you Steve!!! The 4070 cannot handle the newer games at 4K. I would buy a 6950xt for the vram. That’s if I wanted to upgrade my 6700xt.

[@liquidcorundum6568]

I would be interested in seeing a few power-normalized benchmark comparisons between these cards. A power limit and perhaps an undervolt could be applied to the RX 6950 XT for a same price, same power consumption comparison.

[@naamadossantossilva4736]

That is dependent on silicon lottery,and HUB tends to avoid that.

[@wojciechsiewior3868]

@@naamadossantossilva4736 It's also not a realistic buying criteria for most people. You either have the PSU to handle it or you don't. I doubt many gamers really look at their electric bill much as a decision maker for buying GPUs.

[@slob12]

​@@wojciechsiewior3868 ah but some do.......im in a dilema atm as i have a beautiful acer predator 1080p monitor which i m reluctant to swap out for a 1440p model....presently have a R7 5800X with 32gb 3600 ram......wondering how much my cpu will bottleneck the 6950xt at 1080p,how much stuttering would be experienced and how much an underclock and undervolt could be achieved to reduce stuttering. In the next couple of years i will have to upgrade the kids pcs due to MS ststem requirements for new windiws products and the 6950xt would age better...any thoughts folks?

[@Ebilcake]

You can undervolt the 4070 as well...

[@wojciechsiewior3868]

@@slob12 I'm in a similar boat (CPU bottlenecking) with my i7-8700k and the ASRock OC 6950XT. Wonder how much performance there's left on the table.

[@ellypsis603]

Considering that the RTX 4070 can be found for about 600euros compared to 700euros for the 6950xt, consumes almost half the power, is significantly smaller in size, it's a better deal imo even with 4gb less vram. 6950XT has to drop under 600euros to be competitive.

[@nicholaswilkerson501]

6950XT is a $900 card at launch. Although last gen hardware, your not going to see a price drop another $100 any time soon. Also that 4GB less VRAM is going to hurt bad in a year or two when minimum VRAM for games jumps, as it is already. your going to be stuck lowering settings in order to compensate for running out of VRAM.

[@ellypsis603]

@@nicholaswilkerson501 wrong, the 6950 XT was 1100$ msrp, it resulted in about 1300€ with taxes in e.u

[@thepro08]

the rtx is slower 17% ---- fukin fan boys is a tier class below.....

[@frshunter]

Great job as always! If I was going to buy a card this expensive I would lean to more ram and raster performance.

[@agentoranj5858]

It's fun reading comments, a lot of people say they value raster and once I would have agreed but actually owning a modern card has changed my perspective. I haven't personally seen much of a performance uplift in the games I play most (TF2, Halo MCC PC, Insurgency, Deep Rock Galactic) from upgrading my GTX 1070 to a RX 6750 XT, but playing Doom Eternal and Ghostrunner has converted me from being curious about RT to being seriously interested in RT performance when considering my next upgrade. However, VRAM convinced me to pick the RX 6750, and Nvidia's stinginess on that front is making their offerings look underwhelming as upgrades over the 6750.

[@bradhaines3142]

​@@agentoranj5858the games you play most would run great on a 3060 honestly, anything more than that is just for the next games you might play. going from 200fps to 300 just isnt a noticeable improvement. definitely hit diminishing returns there

[@daxitron]

While I highly enjoy the 1080,1440, & 4K graphs... is it possible to get a single graph for VR with these (or similar) cards sometime? It makes the VRAM differences WAY more important, but it'd be interesting to see how a wide range of GPUs perform when having the increased load of VR gaming is added on top. Sure small market, but even a quick 30s snippet would be cool. -> Someone who bought a 6950XT recently after running a 3070, since the 16GB vs 8GB of VRAM made a world of difference in VR capture/gaming.

[@Digger513]

I have a 3070 myself and I'm eyeballing the 6950, just wanted to follow up to see how you're liking it?

[@daxitron]

@@Digger513 I've had no issues so far. It improves the headroom for the graphics and I find VR stutters a LOT less now. Even under taxing loads.

[@ZeeDeevil]

The 6950xt is very appealing to me at £600, based solely on raw performance. I'm not interested in 4K or RT. However, with the upcoming 7800xt releasing at around the same price point, is it worth waiting to see how it performs?

[@Hugh_I]

It probably is somewhat worth it. It will surely be more efficient and at least a little bit better perf/$ than the 6950XT at current pricing. You also get some additional features that I personally would consider not essential but nice to have, like AV1 encoding, improved RT perf, maybe some better hw support for FSR3 features. However, AMD is taking its sweet time with the midrange - it'll be a couple of months. Overall depends on how severe your itch to buy is bugging you. I personally just ordered a 6950XT and don't expect to regret it, the 7800XT will probably be a better deal, but not by that much (at day1 pricing).

[@timhorton7420]

I'm waiting for 7800xt. No point buying a 2 year old power hungry hog now

[@summushieremiasclarkson4700]

@@timhorton7420 6950xt is very efficient if you want to run it that way. It has so much raw performance, that you could undervolt the snot out of it for 95% performance. I reckon you could achieve a 250W TDP with almost all the performance, these are highly binned silicon.

[@windpeoples]

Considering your heavy focus on gaming, have you considered doing a video comparing Gen 3, 4 & 5 NVMe SSDs and their impact in gaming? I *think* there was no much difference between Gen 3 & 4, but I have seen no data on Gen 5. Just a thought!

[@bradhaines3142]

even sata vs gen 4 is almost no difference. initial load times are a touch better, but its like going from 30fps(hard drive) to 60fps(sata ssd) to 120(pcie) you hit diminishing returns at a point, and it just stops making a real difference. sure you gain a couple seconds here and there, but its nothing like the 1-5 minute load times of hard drives to the sub 30 second load times of a sata ssd.

[@roelf8044]

Even though the price in the stores is comparable for both cards, the 6950 draws about 150 Watt more power. You have to factor in the electricity bill as well, since this adds to the total cost of ownership.

[@Chris-gh6ko]

I bought the 6950 xt, it was cheaper than 7800xt, 4070 and alot more, so it was the best value card for me, it also has enough power for my games.

[@phillipvorndran6531]

Great video, I decided to keep watch on the 6950 xt after watching this and just bought the 6950 xt for under $600 on sale at Amazon (8/19). That and Starfield bundle make it a no brainer over the 4070 as I don't care about Ray Tracing at this point. Should hold me over for a few years before I start considering a completely new pc build. Thanks for the video!

[@kvahlman]

The 6950XT looks like great value at $650, and then you think back to when it was released at $1100... Only took cutting the price in half to make it a good purchase. What a weird market.

[@solocamo3654]

Relative to a $1500 3090 or $2000 3090ti, at $1100 it was a deal

[@slayerr4365]

Yet people kiss amds ass for "good pricing" all of a sudden amd are a great company because a year later they cut the price to sell a dead card that they are about to replace to gullible buyers lol.

[@Tippotipo]

Got it for $830 two months after its launch.

[@jasonhenninger8220]

You guys rock. Really appreciate all your efforts and insights.

[@ThisRandomUsername]

If I were in the market for this type of GPU, it'd probably be the 6950XT, but I'm seriously tempted by the power consumption of the 4070. For me the upsides of Radeon drivers on Linux are just that much of a pull.

[@arnoldshmitt4969]

just undervolt it , i reduced gpu clock to like 2500mhz from 2653mhz and voltage to 1120 and my rx 6950xt consumes just 212 watt at peak load , reducing max fps by like 4 fps , and min fps like 2 fps , well worth it to underclock rdna 2 gpu also 6950xt are better binned so you will get much better result anyway in both over clocking and underclocking.

[@ThisRandomUsername]

@@arnoldshmitt4969 That's not bad! Do NVidia GPUs not respond similarly to AMD ones w.r.t undervolting? I've just looked it up and there seems to be software to undervolt AMD GPUs on Linux, so that could also work there.

[@arnoldshmitt4969]

@@ThisRandomUsername yeah but 6950xt is average 15% faster raster and just 10% slower than rtx 4070 in raytracing while 4070 uses dlss also where i live top sapphire nitro + 6950xt model was like 100 dollar cheaper than 4070 asus 3 fan tuf model also 6950xt has like 4gb more vram this will become more important in a year and two when new gen games comes on scene since nvidia knows this and so will launch 4070 super cards in 2024 featuring 16gb ram using salvaged 4080 dies all and all rtx 4070 was looking like a worse deal , it was like nvidia didnt want my money and were more than happy with their AI truck loads of money. so i went with amd , surprisingly when ever i am in market for new gpu nvidia always do these anti consumer things and are in the news for wrong reasons.

[@ThisRandomUsername]

@@arnoldshmitt4969 I fully agree with that, I'd rather have a product from a less scummy company even if it didn't have all these disadvantages already.

[@CommandoTM]

Cool, this really helped convince me in pull the trigger on a Sapphire HD 6950! Can't wait to get my hands on it soon!

[@cheetahfurry9107]

I wanted to LOVE the AMD cards. I was switching from a 2060 and I ordered the Sapphire 6700 (non-xt). I was so sad when I got it and it did not work! Spent 4 hours trying to get the 6700 and followed a ton of videos but the second the drivers installed it would go black screen. Windows would load and I could see the screen for a few seconds then nothing. Finally returned it and I was so frustrated I had spent so much time picking out that card. I am going to grab a 4070 but I have to wait till the FE edition is back locally. Thanks for the video though really good.

[@doabrad1850]

That sucks. I have the Sapphire PULSE 6700 10GB and it's worked flawlessly over the last 9 months I've owned the card. It appears like the one you received was defective, which is very unfortunate. The 6700 10GB performs just slightly worse than a 3060 TI while costing a good $150ish less. Also, AMD's built-in GPU software is hugely better than what Nvidia offers. The only reasons I've exclusively bought AMD cards since 2017 are because Radeon Adrenaline is galaxies better than GeForce Experience and I also don't want to pay the Nvidia tax for a card that's equivalent in performance or barely better than a card AMD offers for $100.00 to $150.00 less.

[@cheetahfurry9107]

@@doabrad1850 I wanted to try their cards and would consider a 6700 from a local shop but after that. I really wanted to get that card I was so excited.

[@cr0mag732]

RTX is for taking screenshots and that's about it. If I wanted mediocre fps I'd buy a console

[@0ZeroZeta0]

15% average at 1440p on raster performance can't be ignored. fake frame generator has 0 value, for using rt in this segment u need dlss anyway, so for me 6950xt is the clear winner.

[@imo098765]

200 watts is a big deal with higher electricity prices around the world but on pure fps, its a big margin

[@KryssN1]

It can, cause DLSS2 is much better quality at 1440p compared to FSR2. Upscaling are not fake frames, only DLSS3 frame generator are fake frames, but it still imporves the exprience if you already running more than 50FPS.

[@0ZeroZeta0]

@@KryssN1 who cares about upscaling when un can play native? For me dlss 2 is useless, not totally BS like fake generator dlss 3, but useless for sure.

[@KryssN1]

@@0ZeroZeta0 no you cannot play native, if you enable RayTracing. With the 4070 you can and DLSS2 actually looks better than native in some games due to better AA. Just get a console if you don't want RT 😂

[@0ZeroZeta0]

@@KryssN1 man never said that u can play RT native. I Say that for me raster native maxed out Is Better that ray tracyng with dlss. And sayng that in some cases dlss Is even Better than native Is Just nonsense.

[@ZAGAN-OZ]

I hope AMD had 6950 XT performance RDNA3 at $600.

[@GewelReal]

soon?

[@cribbbles]

could be 7700/7800 XT? maybe

[@DildoFagginsNL]

​@@cribbbles I hope so but i highly doubt that. Amd tends to adapt to whatever NVDIA charges the customer. My guess is the RX6950 pricecut is an exception to that rule only because the 4070 actually has a decent price/performance ratio compared to the other stuff NVDIA has on the market right now besides the 4090.

[@hiimcortana1568]

@@DildoFagginsNL TBH, AMD could charge 6950xt level raster with better RT but make it 650$ and 16gb of gddr6. That would still destroy 4070..but knowing AMD, they will screw up and price it 750$. lol

[@ZAGAN-OZ]

@@hiimcortana1568hard to price it that hard when 7900 XT goes for $800.

[@sgtjarhead99]

I'm in a situation where I'm thinking of upgrading my system right now. Currently moving away from a Geforce 2070 Super. Thinking about a RX 6800 XT, since I really don't game much anymore. Rez would be 1440p for my monitor. The RX 6950 XT and Geforce 4070 are both a couple of hundred dollars more and competitively priced against each other. Not sure I want to splurge a little bit more and just go with one of the latter.

[@thane_snipes]

I recently upgraded from a 1070 to a 6950 XT. In my part of the world, the XFX Merc 319 6950 XT is currently 4749 DKK, whereas the cheapest AIB 4070s are about 5100-5200 DKK. Seeing as I also bought a 3440x1440 curved ultrawide, I'm really happy with my decision. That vram will come in handy as they years pass. Moreover, I've underclocked the heck out of it, reducing the load power draw to 180-200W, and with that massive cooler on it, it's hardly audible over my other fans, even under load. It's a wonderful gaming experience. Thanks for the video, and keep up the good work guys.

[@UnavailableHandle.]

What settings did you use for the underclock? Also, how much performance did you lose on average?

[@thane_snipes]

@@UnavailableHandle. 2100 MHz min freq. 2200 MHz max freq. 900 mV +20% power limit Didn't touch the memory except for enabling fast timings. I haven't done any formal before/after benchmarks, but I reckon I've lost about 10-15% performance.

[@nsuinteger-au]

Spot on. Improved efficiency, stable and quiet operation were top reasons for me to take a swing at 4070. Its amazing to see my total system with amd 5700x , 4070 and gaming monitor draws around just 320W from wall while gaming and is whisper quiet.

[@TheMoneyhats]

Very good analysis, could have been interesting to see some RT results at different presets rather than RT always on high. I think many of the gamers that use RT don't use it on high/ultra, so at moderate levels the performance between the two could be quite similar.

[@Hellafast2uDude]

the main feature of the 4xxx series dlss3 - nah we will compare as if it does not exist

[@BPMa14n]

What a great review video. This is l the toughest decision someone looking to get a GPU around that price can make right now. I hope the 6950 xt sells well so Nvidia will reduce prices or at least ship their cards with 16GB vram

[@grzegorzreszel]

Great job with the video. I did a different decision. Got the AMD RX because of better performance consistency mainly. I want a stable performance with high 1% FPS. Ray tracing has so huge performance impact that I never use it, games look great without it, higher FPS is a win for me. Power consumption after undervolting is not an issue, 200W drained by card (Jedi Survivor), 2350MHz, 1100mV, 88 celcius on hotspot (Fractal Define mini case).

[@OcihEvE]

It's a clear choice if you can get them at that price. In Canada the 6950 works out to $750 US and the situation the US had back at launch is still there. Prices on 6950, 7900XT and 7900XTX are creating more AMD competition with their own product than nVidia.

[@boingkster]

6950 for that sweet, sweet VRAM. And now served dripping with rich, creamery butter....

[@charlesmiv3842]

But the drivers ruin it

[@JoseSouls]

Butter will be melted, due to the excessive temps of the majority of 6950's

[@HenrySomeone]

Sweet 400 watts too...

[@DailyCorvid]

@@charlesmiv3842 You know I find 99% of the time they're really great and I love all the extra streaming and recording features - direct mic and cam control with F keys. But yeah when it does it's usual weird AMD quirks I do throw mini tantrums at it :D Sometimes when I shut a tab in my browser, it just goes black for a millisecond, ONLY HAPPENS IN THE BROWSER WHEN USING SQUARESPACE and I cannot figure it out! LOL drives me nuts thos guddamn drivers. But then I use it again and it's fine, literally cannot pay somebody to reproduce that error. My GPU secretlty hates me lol all that budget air OC'ing.

[@INTJ791]

​@@charlesmiv3842 amd drivers always get better overtime

[@oatbear8243]

Got the 4070, mainly bc of the 200W TDP and the reasonable size of the FE. Been pretty happy with it so far! I mostly play 4X and cRPG games, and it makes those games look great on 4K. Plus Nvidia GPUs allow you to more easily play around with deep learning models compared to AMD GPUs.

[@GR33Nday2]

I just bought a 6950 XT after seeying this video.

[@MarioAPN]

I went from R5 1600AF and RX 580 to R7 5700X and 6950XT. All of that at the same motherboard (thanks AMD).

[@GamesAndStuff111]

In Europe, in Romania, at Nvidia page the RTX 4070 is listed to 3.349 RON (Romania Ron) wich is 738,83 $ (american dollar) and the lowest i see on market is arround 712 $ (american dollar), the point is that in the US the average salary per month is 6,000 $ and in Romania the average salary is below 700 $ . The real problem is here ,and other country (like many from Europe) with 10 times the lower salary and higher price at GPU (and at all compenents is the same, CPU, RAM, MB, all all ). So, in order to buy a mid tier GPU you need to work for a entire month without spending a penny in order to buy just the GPU. My full wishlist (rtx 4070 , i5 12500, etc) is 1450 $ + the monitor (1440p IPS 165 hz is 390 $ ) , and in the end is 1830 $ for a mid range PC. You can make the necessary calculation to see how many months you need to work to buy a mid tier PC. It's crazy for us, but from my pov in US the price are actually good.

[@benjaminoechsli1941]

Good to see two cards with trade blows in performance in both raster _and_ ray-tracing be the same price. In this market, that 4070's efficiency is appealing, so I'm excited to see what mid/low-range RDNA 3 brings to the table when it launches.

[@DragonOfTheMortalKombat]

Hard to get "excited" when both major companies are offering worst value in years.

[@rayyL95]

1080p is completely irrelevant for these cards. Wasting time testing and even talking about it. Nobody is buying 4070’s or 6950xt’s for 1080p and if they are it’s less than 1% of gamers

[@ertai222]

100%

[@AlexDubois]

200W difference is huge. Base on the level of difference for the other aspects... Nvidia it would be. But I'm going to look at maybe a GPU with a bit more VRAM and pay for the premium if not too expensive. I'm on 2080ti and plays mostly RUST which is more a CPU bound game. Edit: after having a look, $1200 for a 4080 is a no go, even from a 2080ti... I'll wait for the next gen to come out...

[@itsthebiggiecheese9213]

maybe the 7000's series radeon cards would work. Although they still kinda suck with rtx, they do better. If your budget is 600 tho, you will have to wait for the 7750 or the 7800.

[@Wineblood]

Steve focusing on niche features is always a weird twist.

[@twiggsherman3641]

I picked up a 6950XT and a 5800X3D. Went from a 3600X and 1070 Ti. My total cost is still below what it would've cost me for a single 4080. If Jensen wasn't a tool this generation and priced the 4070 Ti where it should've been I'd of gotten that. The AMD drivers still have issues, video playback can be spotty. Battlefield 5 DX12 has issues. I usually have to do a complete DDU uninstall, I can't just do a normal update. But for the price, I'm willing to make it work, and quite honestly Jensen has annoyed me so much with the pricing, I'll be keeping a Radeon GPU for my next upgrade too.

[@danielainger]

Strange I too have a 6950xt & 5800x3D and I’ve never had any driver issues.

[@jellorelic]

I still wonder if the nVidia raytracing hardware is really that much better than the AMD stuff or if it's more a situation where all the current software is optimized for nVidia since they were the first mover in the market and so dominant in general.

[@kimjongpoontv69]

It really isn’t a lot of it comes down to driver optimizations, on paper 6950xt is just as capable for raytracing in comparison. So no surprise that RT perf is on par. Only thing NV has where it surpasses is DLSS. Even then it isn’t a deal breaker in any way

[@NXDf7]

that's basically it, first come first serve. They market the fuck out of raytracing and dlss+framegen, that every moron thinks its the second coming of christ. It will always be this way with normies.

[@Berkay-xl4hu]

Id prefer amd for the sole fact that it bottlenecks the cpus much less than nvidia

[@nepp-]

6950xt has more vram, clearly better in the long run

[@rustler08]

If you want to point out power voltage, undervolt the 6950XT and you'll get close enough power usage that you really cannot complain when compared to the power bump. Also, thank you for splitting apart the ray-tracing and non-raytracing performance.

[@hinchlikescake7592]

I don't really care for Nvidia GPU's these days but where I am (the (UK) energy prices are quite insane.. and around 100-120W difference will make a difference. That and you can also undervolt the 4070 as well. So that'll be like 150W vs 250W when both are UV'd. The 4070 is also around $30-50 cheper and comes with Diablo 4... If power consumption is an importance and you have a lesser PSU the 4070 is probably the better buy right now.

[@jackboudreaux5883]

@@hinchlikescake7592 did steve mention that the power figures were from just gaming?

[@zxbc1]

It's not just the consumption, but also power requirement. I have a 550W PSU and if I were to get 6950 I'll have to buy a $100+ PSU on top of the card, which instantly makes 6950 $100 more expensive. In reality it's already about $15 more expensive, and then there's a deal for Diablo 4 bundle, so that makes the Nvidia 4070 effectively $185 cheaper. At that point it's not even a competition anymore. I think AMD needs to get 7700/7800 out ASAP or people who's been holding out on upgrading will settle with 4070, given the lack of competition in realistic pricing.

[@hinchlikescake7592]

@@jackboudreaux5883 He did mention the system with the 4070 was consuming 200W less power at stock vs the 6950XT (system total). I got general figures from Reddit and forums. Average underclocks were in that range without compromising core performance and clocks. Quite substantial indeed. Would even be more if you factor in DLSS2 and 3 with frame gen.

[@yeahbuddy300lbs]

Appreciate you lads. Your hard work is precious. Thank you

[@fy7589]

Well done Steve. I like your representation of these comparisons, totally objective and not emotional. Good job!

[@thegaminglord2190]

The 4070 is a real shame, I've been team green my whole life, I've recently changed my 3070ti to 6800xt and that's because the vram issue, imo going with the 6950xt is the way to go because most people don't want to change cards every gen, and the ps5 has 16g of ram so I get the feeling that most of the upcoming games will use 16g because devs nowadays only optimize for console first and port to pc, so game NOW already exceeded the 14g what about next year?, why should i get another gpu because of nvidia incompetence?, i just said nope and got a 6800XT my next upgrade is gonna take a while, while 4070 owners are gonna upgrade next gen in a year

[@sven957]

Also DLSS 3 aka Frame Generation actually needs about 1,5GB of VRAM. You can see for yourself if you look up some FG On/Off comparison videos on youtube. 12 GB will not be enough in 2 years max. And if I'm paying that much for a 1440p GPU in 2023 you better let me play at max settings for more than 2 years.

[@RJ-vy4yd]

Because it's not 4070 but a glorified 4060 with a higher number in its name so the price jump seems less ridiculous. Also it's a 1080p GPU, so the 12GB of VRAM is not that bad. The only bad thing about this card is its misleading name and therefore ridiculous price tag. It's good to see people not falling for that as those cards don't sell well and the price is already dropping.

[@pdmerritt]

the PS5 has approx 12 gigs usable vram...remember it's actually shared vram.

[@starstreamgamer3704]

If you want to play games strictly at launch and will use only Max graphics preset, than even 16GB of VRAM will not be enough for the next 2 years. Otherwise you can still live with 8GB without any problems (not even talking about 12GB). Some badly optimized games (like TLoU and Hogwarts) are already partly fixed (reduced VRAM usage, improved performance etc.) and for some, like RE4 Remake, you just need to tune settings a bit - if you use High shadows instead of Max and slightly lower texture quality, which you won't be able to notice at 1440p res anyway, you can play this game at 1440p with RT on an 8GB card without any issues. And the game will look and perform as good as console version.

[@thegaminglord2190]

@@starstreamgamer3704 yes but what of next year? what of the year after ?, if console has 16g of ram isn't it possible that games will use that amount in the near future ? ,we all pay premium for our cards to get the best possible quality and frames why should I pay nvidia yearly for me to keep up with the games I like ?,yes 8g is manageable but you are now barely moving with them and you will get frame stutters due to the game using system ram instead of vram and a lot of games run past 8g nowadays that using raytracing the suppose "future" of graphics will be impossible with 8gb anyway even at 1080p a resolution that shouldn't be relevant in 2023 an on i really don't see the point of getting a 3070ti anymore even though its barely last gen card that is suppose to stay relevant for more than a year

[@solocamo3654]

6950XT's raster lead is larger than the 4070's RT lead. The choice is clear, especially with the extra vram.

[@GodKitty677]

Nope RT goes with upscaling and frame generation doubles fps. You would never get anything other than a 40 series card from nvidia for RT. Also the 4GB of extra VRAM has little use in RT because the 6950xt is a 1080p+ card.

[@solocamo3654]

​@@GodKitty677 Just because Nvidia's driver overhead sucks and AMD does better at low res due to being less cpu limited certainly doesn't make the 6950XT a low res focused card. FSR exists and DLSS3 is not worth it on a card as "slow" as the 4070.

[@GodKitty677]

@@solocamo3654 It is in ray tracing. Frame generation puts the 4070 ahead of all the 30 series nvidia cards.

[@solocamo3654]

@@GodKitty677 Unless you are 120fps+ with DLSS3 the latency issues presents itself. No point of the frame counter showing 100fps when your real world feel & latency is like you are playing at 50fps.

[@GodKitty677]

@@solocamo3654 DLSS reduces latency. Frame generations job is to give you a smooth experience. In games that require very low latency, players turn off and reduce all feature to low. Here up scaling is not needed. Ray tracing would be off. Even so native rendering would under a high load have a high latency and low fps. Upscaling reduces latency and increases fps. Frame generation increase fps but eats a tiny bit of that latency. The end result can have lower latency than what the card can do natively without DLSS at the target resolution. Say the resolution is 8k, your card can't render enough frames anyway but can at say 4k. DLSS upscale from 4k and then frame generation doubles the result. So you got 18 fps at 8k native. DLSS will give you 30fps and frame generation 60fps. Latency will be as good or better than 8k 18fps but the 8k result will be playable now and feel smooth. DLSS is not about creating a high fps and ultra low latency experience. You do that with lowering the resolution and turning off graphic features. This only matters in certain games like cs:go, we're DLSS is not needed anyway.

[@aotrieu4234]

Great work as always HB. Insane amount of time and effort

[@kennethd4958]

I think something many reviewers forget is mentioning the small memory bus Nvidia put on the 4070 and 4070ti… along with the 12GB of VRAM, the memory bus is something that will cripple the card sooner rather than later. And if you’re someone who’s buying at 70 tier than you obviously are more budget oriented and want your card to last. I’m not a fanboy of either company.. I would have bought a 3070 over a 6800 if the 3070 had 16GB or vram. But I also don’t care for DLSS or RT so I would def go for the 6950XT if I wasn’t already in the market for a 7900XTX.

[@mialoron8455]

TRULY GREAT JOB!!! it clearly shows everything especially the performance hit when RT is enabled.. for me, RT is really useless..

[@NaumRusomarov]

so if you don't have much use of rt, then the rtx 4070 is an overpriced garbage. it's substantially slower than the 6950x.

[@Bloo759]

I am enjoying the 4070 because I use the RT and DLSS, the truth is that the price is disappointing, but the performance is satisfactory, I was very tempted to buy an AMD GPU but in the end I put the balance on the RT, I would like to try an AMD gpu in some future.

[@Sirciel]

I never had a pc before but I'm interested to try the new tech in 4070..but I heard this pc is only future proof for 1080p due to small vram Does this means it's better for me to just buy a 1080p monitor instead of a 1440p?

[@RAZGR1Z]

Thanks for the video. I don't care about RT, upscaling or content creation so I got the RX 6950 XT. Coming from a 1080 Ti the upgrade has been pretty nice.

[@JustKillinIt]

What cpu do you have? I have a 10700k with 1080ti currently

[@GrimK77]

I also didn't cared much about RT, upscaling, ect. until I saw how well it runs on 4070... and how quiet it is, and with less power draw than GTX 970.

[@craeshendo]

These videos have been great. Not only for deciding on which series of GPU, but the quality of the manufacturers with cooling and noise in mind. I'm eyeing a 4070 and deciding on one to get and these ur videos really helped me pin one down.

[@superpeitinhos]

4070 i think is more balanced. You should do a 4070 roundup... Thank you from Portugal