When AMD introduced its Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled graphics card earlier this year, it said the product was only meant for system integrators and therefore would not be available for home system builders (opens in new tab). Nonetheless, a few of the cards are now available from MindFactory.de (opens in new tab), a major retailer from Germany.
At press time, MindFactory.de has over five reference Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled supplied by PowerColor in stock (thanks to VideoCardz for the tip), which is not many, but good enough for a product that was not to be sold at retail at all. The card costs €1749 ($1960 with VAT, $1650 without VAT), which is more expensive than the price of air-cooled Radeon RX 6900 XT (which retail for €1500 ~ €1700), but is cheaper than the price of custom liquid-cooled Radeon RX 6900 XT (which are available for €1800 ~ €2000).
This is not exactly the first time such boards have hit the retail market, as the product was previously spotted in India for about $3000 with taxes, as well as in Brazil, but it is not unusual for certain products to 'leak' in such large markets, as nobody notices if a company sells a graphics board, or even a dozen of them, without permission.
A listing at a major European retailer, however, indicates that the card got there through authorized channels and is 'officially' available. To that end, we may well see AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled become available from other retailers and in different markets.
AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled is based on the Navi 21 XTXH GPU with 5120 stream processors clocked at up to 2250 MHz (game clock) and paired with 16GB of GDDR6 memory featuring a 18 GT/s data transfer rate.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Sapphire Toxic Radeon RX 6900 XT EE | PowerColor Liquid Devil Ultimate RX 6900 XT | Asus ROG Strix RX 6900 XT Top | ASRock RX 6900 XT OC Formula | Radeon RX 6900 XT LC | Radeon RX 6900 XT |
| Base | ? | ? | ? | 2125 MHz | ? | 1825 MHz |
| Game | 2375 MHz | 2305 MHz | 2375 MHz | 2165MHz | 2250 MHz | ? |
| Boost | 2500 MHz | 2375 MHz | 2525 MHz | 2295 MHz | ? | 2250 MHz |
| Performance Game | 2525 MHz | 2480 MHz | - | 2365 MHz | ? | - |
| Performance Boost | 2730 MHz | 2525 MHz | - | 2475 MHz | ? | - |
| Memory Data Transfer Rate | 16 GT/s | 16 GT/s | 16 GT/s | 16 GT/s | 18 GT/s | 16 GT/s |
| Cooling System | Hybrid | Custom LCS | Hybrid | Triple-Fan | Closed-loop liquid cooler | Triple Fan |
From a GPU frequency point of view, AMD's reference Radeon RX 6900 XT LC looks rather pale compared to Sapphire's, PowerColor's, ASRock's or Asus's liquid-cooled Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics boards. However, that fast GDDR6 memory is a feature exclusive to AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT LC, which is why some users may prefer it to custom-designed liquid-cooled adapters.
At this point it remains unclear whether AMD intends to change its position and offer the reference Radeon RX 6900 XT LC as a full retail product, but it looks like some of its partners certainly want to.
