AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT Review: Cool-Headed Asus ROG Strix

Along with the Radeon RX 6950 XT, AMD recently launched two other new GPUs: the Radeon RX 6750 XT and RX 6650 XT. Like the 6950 XT, both come with faster 18Gbps GDDR6 memory, plus higher GPU clocks and slightly higher power consumption. However, prices are also slightly higher than the 6x00 XT models they replace, making the overall prospects a wash at best. You can see how the newcomers rank in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy, where they're just slightly ahead of the existing models.

AMD didn't provide samples of its new cards, so we turned to the AIB (add-in board) partners for review units. Asus sent us its ROG Strix 6750 XT, which looks identical to the ROG Strix 6700 XT other than that little "5" on the sticker. We actually have a Strix 6700 XT in hand as well, so we'll get to see exactly how much more performance you get from the two factory overclocked variants. Note that most of the other cards we've reviewed, including Nvidia's RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3070, run reference clocks, so you can add a few percent in performance if you're after like-for-like comparisons.

Here's the breakdown of the specs for the AMD Navi 22 GPUs along with Nvidia's competing 3070 and 3070 Ti.

Asus bumps the GPU clock up by 43MHz relative to the reference 6750 XT, which, in turn, has a 19MHz "improvement" over the reference RX 6700 XT. Of course, the higher TBP (typical board power) on the new model means it may end up boosting a bit higher in practice, but we'll get to that later. At least on paper, the main change is the switch to 18Gbps GDDR6. That's 12.5% more bandwidth in theory, but we don't know if other aspects of the memory like subtimings may reduce the real-world gains.

There's good news in terms of the general availability of graphics cards. As we've noted recently, many GPUs can now be found in stock for prices close to the MSRP. Above, we've listed the best street prices we've been able to find for the various GPUs. That presents some difficulties for the Asus ROG Strix, a premium card that commands much higher prices. At the time of writing, the least expensive RX 6750 XT we could find costs $240 less than the Asus model, and you can shave off another $55 by opting for an RX 6700 XT.

It feels very much as though AMD and its partners came up with a pricing structure based on how much GPUs were selling for several months ago. In the meantime, cryptocurrency (and stock) prices plummeted, which now means the new products cost too much. Short of changes in supply or demand, we expect prices to continue to decline, and the 6750 XT really shouldn't cost much more than the 6700 XT, which has us wondering why it even exists.

We know AMD is hard at work on its upcoming RDNA 3 architecture, and Nvidia is likewise working on its Ada architecture. We expect to see the first cards using those to arrive before the end of the year, perhaps as early as July for the RTX 40-series. Doing a relatively minor refresh with higher official prices less than six months before the next-gen cards arrive strikes us as odd. Perhaps the supply chain has finally started catching up with backorders, but there's a real chance AMD and Nvidia could end up with a glut of "old" GPUs on their hands in the coming months, much like what happened with the RX 570 back in 2018. 

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