Overall and Final Verdict
Going into this I knew that AMD was focusing on this card being a solid performer at 1440p and it did just that. I only had one result lower than 60 FPS at that resolution and there were a lot in over 120 FPS as well. The same went for 1080p. The RX 6700 XT came in and stepped its game up compared to the 5700 XT. They added ray accelerators to help with ray tracing. But it is the huge jump in clock speeds that have improved the overall performance up significantly. Of course, this was an overclocked card from MSI as well which adds a little more kick to things, but MSI paired that up with one of their dual fan coolers and even without going with a monster Trio cooler the cooling performance was great. Noise performance was middle of the road but not bad at all and it will be interesting to see how it all compares to other RX 5700 XT’s when I dive into testing them.
I’m also really liking this generation of MSI cards as far as their styling goes. They have a heavy focus on angles which might not be everyone’s cup of tea but it seems every card has it now. But I love the subtle RGB accents on the sides and the mix of colors that stay color neutral but still look great. The backplate is metal which a lot of cards even from MSI haven’t been and it is strong which is good because the nearly triple-slot card is going to need that strength later in life. They could add a black PCI bracket which I think would be a nice improvement in overall styling and maybe move away from the branding billboard RGB lighting for more of the subtle accents or even if it had the card model name RX 6700 XT Gaming X backlit I would like it more.
At the end of the day, this card does exactly what is needed performance-wise and frankly, some of the weird and annoying driver issues from AMDs drivers seem to be fixed like the fan speeds never wanting to spool down if you manually set them which was a problem on the 5000 series. As far as pricing goes, MSI didn’t land anywhere near the original MSRP of a base 6700 XT which was $479. This card has an MSRP of $789.99 which they say is due to US tariffs and maybe that is true but it feels a lot like raising the price ahead of time to cut profits from the scalpers. The downside to that if it is the case is gamers who are lucky enough to get a card retail then end up getting hit hard. Though I don’t blame them for preferring to get the booming prices vs the scalpers. I wish however that you would get a crazy card like the 3060 Gaming X Trio that I recently reviewed which had that monster 3090 heatsink on it as well as a support bracket. I also have to mention that overall card availability right now is the wild west as well, which is an issue with any new card or frankly even the old cards in the used market. We can only hope that things calm down soon, even though it doesn’t look that way. But if they do, I really hope that MSI takes another look at that price because outside of the current situation people aren’t going to want to pay that much even if it is a solid card.
Live Pricing: HERE
