A couple of weeks ago, we reported on some leaked Sapphire Technologies data sheets which appeared to reveal a new AMD graphics card called the "Radeon 6700," expressly lacking the RX at the front of the product name. A few hours after that story went live, Sapphire published its product page, spilling the full tech specs of these cards, as well as providing further concrete proof of their impending launch. Now, Sapphire's product pages have been updated and we find out the leaked cards were supposed to be "Radeon RX 6700" models all along. Coincidentally, the Radeon RX 6700 has now also appeared in AMD's consumer graphics card web pages.
Sapphire's use of Radeon non-RX nomenclature had raised some questions about whether these new SKUs had something missing, but it now appears it was just a typo. Nevertheless, as one of AMD's closest graphics card partners, it is surprising that the mistake perpetuated so far as appearing in Sapphire product data sheets and packaging renders.
The Sapphire URLs which delivered product pages about "Radeon 6700" graphics cards have been deleted, so the old URLs in our original story now lead to 'page not found' errors. Instead, Sapphire has hosted product pages with appropriate URLs, including the previously missing RX text.
Now AMD and Sapphire have both published specs for the Radeon RX 6700 (non-XT), we can see that the partner design is slightly overclocked compared to reference, and below is an updated specs table with both reference and Sapphire designs betwixt their nearest neighbors.
| Header Cell - Column 0 |
RX 6750 XT |
RX 6700 XT |
RX 6700 |
Sapphire RX 6700 |
RX 6650 XT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
GPU (7nm) |
Navi 22 |
Navi 22 |
Navi 22 |
Navi 22 |
Navi 23 |
|
CUs / SPs / RAs |
40 / 2560 / 40 |
40 / 2560 / 40 |
36 / 2304 / 36 |
36 / 2304 / 36 |
32 / 2048 / 32 |
|
Boost clocks |
2,600 MHz |
2,560 MHz |
2,450 MHz |
2,495 MHz |
2,635 MHz |
|
Infinity Cache |
96MB |
96MB |
80MB |
80MB |
32MB |
|
VRAM |
12GB GDDR6 192-bit 18 GBps |
12GB GDDR6 192-bit 16 GBps |
10GB GDDR6 160-bit 16 GBps |
10GB GDDR6 160-bit 16 GBps |
8GB GDDR6 128-bit 17.5 GBps |
Pondering over the reference and Sapphire product pages, we spotted one other difference, in regards to power consumption. AMD says that the typical Board Power (Desktop) of the reference card is 175W. Meanwhile, Sapphire says their Pulse model consumes up to 220W. Both card designs are fitted with a single 8-pin power connector. We would have to test some product samples to see what is happening here, checking the actual power differences and resulting performance differences, when these cards are under stress.
We look forward to testing these new graphics cards when they are but we don't have any official launch date or pricing indicators yet. In the meantime, if you are on the hunt for a new GPU today, you can take a check out our Best Graphics Cards for Gaming in 2022.
