MSI RX 6950 XT Gaming X Trio

Cranking the GDDR6 dial all the way up to 18Gbps

- JARRED WALTON

LAST MONTH, we got Nvidia's new halo GPU, the RTX 3090 Ti. This month, AMD tries to respond with an upgraded RX 6950 XT-though we're using the term 'upgraded' loosely here. Fundamentally, the RX 6950 XT uses the same Navi 21 GPU we've had for around 18 months and, since the RX 6900 XT was fully enabled with 80 CUS, the only improvements come via increased clock speeds. As with the RTX 3090 Ti, higher clocks also mean increased power limits, and the MSI Gaming X Trio we received for review takes things even further.

We reviewed ASRock's heavily overclocked RX 6900 XT Formula in our January issue and one of our complaints was that, for all the beefed-up cooling, factory overclock, and increased power consumption, the card was stuck with the same old 16Gbps GDDR6 memory.

Considering even the lowly RX 6500 XT now makes use of faster 18Gbps memory, something previously only seen in the limited availability RX 6900 XT liquid-cooled card, it's no surprise that AMD is using the same 18Gbps memory on its refreshed 6000-series lineup.