The world’s fastest GPU, the AMD RX 6900 XT, just got faster

By Jacob Roach Published June 16, 2021

After leaks from the past few days, AMD has officially launched the RX 6900 XT Liquid Edition. As the name implies, this is an RX 6900 XT with a built-in liquid cooler, but extra cooling isn’t all the card has to offer. Over the base RX 6900 XT, the Liquid Edition also features higher clock speeds, more board power, and faster memory.

Powered by the Navi 21 XTXH GPU, the Liquid Edition delivers the same 80 compute units (CUs) as the base RX 6900 XT, giving the card a total of 5,120 stream processors (AMD’s name for cores). This new model boosts the game clock speed from 2,015MHz to 2,250MHz and the boost clock speed from 2,250MHz to 2,435MHz.

The AMD RX 6900 XT Liquid Edition graphics card. — Image used with permission by copyright holder

The extra cooling shows off the range of the Navi 21 XTX GPU. Earlier this year, the RX 6900 XT set world records for GPU speed with elaborate liquid nitrogen cooling setups. Although you won’t be able to push the Liquid Edition as far as you could an RX 6900 XT with liquid nitrogen cooling, the addition of a liquid cooling loop opens up more range for the already powerful card.

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Accompanying the boost in clock speed is 330W of TBP (total board power), which is 30W higher than the RX 6900 XT. With the extra cooling headroom, AMD is able to deliver more power to the board, which explains the higher clock speeds.

Although the card features the same 16GB of GDDR6 memory that you can find on RX 6900 XT through the RX 6800, it’s faster on the Liquid Edition. The new card has a memory speed of 18Gbps, which is up from the 16Gbps that the RX 6900 XT has. Like the base card, the Liquid Edition has a 256-bit memory bus and dual eight-pin power connectors. Without fans, though, the Liquid Edition is slightly smaller — it only occupies two slots instead of two and a half.

Cooling the card is a single Radeon-branded 120mm fan on a 120mm radiator. The card keeps with the design language of the rest of the RDNA 2 range with a silver and black aesthetic with red accents.

The RX 6900 XT Liquid Edition is available now through system integrators like MainGear and iBuyPower. It’s not available as an add-in card for PC builders right now, and AMD hasn’t announced if it will release the card separately. On MainGear’s configurator, the Liquid Edition is $825 more than the base RX 6900 XT, suggesting an MSRP of around $2,300 if the card ever releases separately.

Former Lead Reporter, PC Hardware

Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…

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