Ray tracing and DLSS/FSR performance:
We decided to select five games because they seem to us to be sufficiently representative. We chose DirectX11, DirectX12 and Vulkan with the following games:
- The Division 2 (DirectX 12)
- Borderlands 3 (DirectX 12)
- Red Dead Redemption II (Vulkan)
- Far Cry 6 (DirectX 12)
- Watch Dogs: Legion (DirectX 12)
We have chosen to use the benchmarks integrated in these different games. Why did we do this ? Simply to allow you to compare your results with ours if you also have a copy of one of these games. It’s a thought that seemed relevant to us and that will allow you to compare your results with ours. As we mentioned on page 4 of this article, we have enabled the Resizable Bar in the BIOS, which is supported by both NVIDIA and AMD cards. Finally, we have opted specifically for 2160p resolution that is most suitable for use with this RX 6950 XT.
The Division 2:
The Division 2 will be tested under DirectX 12. As far as the graphics settings are concerned, they will be set to ” ultra ” mode with vertical synchronization disabled.
First game and the trend seen in the synthetic benchmarks seems to be confirmed in The Division 2. The 2160p performance is very good and is close to AMD’s goal of overtaking the RTX 3090 in Green.
Borderlands 3:
For the second game, we switch to Borderlands 3. The graphics options are set to “Brutal”. Borderlands 3 is quite demanding and this choice of settings has a strong impact on FPS. This is a game that is often mentioned in new graphics card announcements.
Here, things are looking up for our RX 6950 XT which takes the lead over the RTX 3090. As you can see, there is no difficulty in 4K with the graphics options set to the highest choice.
Red Dead Redemption 2:
Third game and not the least, Red Dead Redemption II on PC. The advantage of this new opus is to offer the possibility to test the integrated benchmark under Vulkan. We opt for “Ultra” graphics options.
Our sample of the day is neck and neck with the RTX 3090, beating it by a slim margin.
Far Cry 6:
The latest game we are adding to this section as it supports DXR as well as the SFR offered by AMD. We will also find it on the next page. For our benchmarks, we have opted for “Ultra” graphics quality.
Even though our game report showed an advantage for the RX 6000 cards, this is the first time that our RX 6950 XT has taken the top spot.
Watch Dogs Legion:
Last but not least, Watch Dogs Legion will also be used for our tests with Ray Tracing. For our benchmarks, we opted for “Very High” graphics quality.
The trend is confirmed for our RX 6950 XT, which seems to be able to pass the RTX 3090, which was the target of this refresh proposed by AMD for the 2160p definition.
The average game:
For the gaming average, it’s no surprise that we chose NVIDIA’s RTX 3080 10 GB as our reference card. The other cards score either higher or lower depending on their performance against this model.
Please note that we are comparing against an RX 6900 XT with an XTXH chip and not a traditional RX 6900 XT where the differences would have been even greater. Moreover, the “traditional” RX 6900 XT is slightly behind the NVIDIA RTX 3090. The goal seems to be perfectly met with an RX 6950 XT that does better than NVIDIA’s RTX 3090, even though the “Ti” model is still the one that dominates our results. In a few weeks time, we will take another week to update our graphics by retesting all the cards with the latest drivers. It is impossible for us to do this with every new GPU release.
