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Leaked Radeon RX 6900XT (Big Navi) Specs are Impressive but Fake AF

Recently a bunch of slides was shared by a certain YouTuber pertaining to the much anticipated Big Navi graphics card from AMD. Dubbed as the Radeon RX 6900XT in the slides, there are multiple discrepancies which led us to conclude that the data was absolute rubbish:

Right off the bat, let’s have a look at the first slide which includes the heatsink design and the specs chart. Now, let me just say that the former is far from convincing, and it’s a low-effort fake. AMD for starters, won’t use the blower-style heatsink with Big Navi and as far as liquid cooling is concerned, this isn’t how it would be implemented. This is simply the RX 5700 reference design with a radiator-fan snapped to it in Photoshop. Truly low-effort.

The second slide is alright I suppose, but let’s not forget that Big Navi and Navi 2x graphics cards have to compete with Ampere, not Turing. Going by that assumption, these figures are rather disappointing. Still, this is the least controversial slide of the pack.

The last one depicting the impact of ray-tracing on performance once again rings all the wrong bells. Firstly, real-time ray-tracing will be a lot more intensive than depicted in the above chart, especially in titles optimized for NVIDIA’s RTX implementation. Secondly, the impact of RT on performance in different titles is also suspicious. Out of all these games, Metro Exodus and Battlefield V are the most intensive as they make use of RT-AO, reflections, and GI. Shadow of the TR and Modern Warfare are limited to ray-traced ambient shadows which has a modest impact on performance compared to the others, and yet in the chart these two are the slowest.

Lastly, these are all NVIDIA sponsored titles. If AMD’s upcoming Navi 2x graphics cards do support ray-tracing in them, the implementation won’t be ideal. The performance hit will be more severe and I don’t expect AMD to include them in the marketed materials. We’re likely to see an Unreal 5 demo or something similar with ray-tracing enabled in the very first sneak peeks and marketing content. AMD has already worked with Sony and MS to implement RTRT in Unreal 5 and it’ll be a much better demonstration of the capabilities of RDNA 2 and Big Navi.

Areej Syed

Processors, PC gaming, and the past. I have been writing about computer hardware for over seven years with more than 5000 published articles. Started off during engineering college and haven't stopped since. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Divinity, Torment, Baldur's Gate and so much more... Contact: areejs12@hardwaretimes.com.
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