Introduction

The ASRock Radeon RX 6950 XT OC Formula is the company’s fastest RX 6950 XT, and it not only targets gamers who want one of the fastest graphics solutions for 4K gaming, but also professional overclockers chasing down benchmark records, which is where the company draws its “OC Formula” branding from. The RX 6950 XT OC Formula succeeds the RX 6900 XT OC Formula, which we also reviewed. That card was unique in that it was based on the special “XTXH” variant of the “Navi 21” silicon the RX 6900 XT is based on; paired with factory-overclocking, it allowed ASRock to extract a near 10% performance gain over the reference RX 6900 XT. While very similar, the RX 6950 XT is a different SKU.

AMD released the Radeon RX 6950 XT as part of a 3-SKU refresh of its product stack for Summer 2022, with the other two being the RX 6750 XT and RX 6650 XT. The RX 6950 XT, AMD states, is a reimagining of the RX 6900 XT. Imagine if AMD were to release it in 2022, what it would be like. Under the hood, the RX 6950 XT is based on the same RDNA2 graphics architecture, and the “Navi 21” silicon that it’s based on is fabricated on the same 7 nm process.

Compared to the RX 6900 XT, AMD has increased engine clocks, with the game clocks (de facto GPU clocks) now 2100 MHz reference instead of 2015 MHz as on the RX 6900 XT. ASRock factory-overclocked this to 2279 MHz (game clocks). AMD has also improved the memory sub-system by employing 18 Gbps-rated GDDR6 memory chips, bringing about a 12.5 percent increase in memory bandwidth, which is now 576 GB/s, compared to 512 GB/s on the RX 6900 XT. The third area is a collection of firmware and driver-level tweaks to improve performance even further.

The core configuration of the RX 6950 XT is identical to the RX 6900 XT, with 80 RDNA2 compute units that work out to 5,120 stream processors, 80 Ray Accelerators, 320 TMUs, 128 ROPs, and 16 GB of video memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface. The memory bus may seem rather narrow in comparison to NVIDIA’s offerings in this segment, such as the RTX 3080 Ti with 384-bit wide interfaces; however, AMD has sought to overcome this bandwidth shortfall with an innovative piece of technology it calls Infinity Cache—a 128 MB on-die cache operating at 1.5 TB/s, it cushions data-transfers between the GPU and video memory.

The ASRock RX 6950 XT OC Formula visually resembles the RX 6900 XT OC Formula that left us mighty impressed. A large triple-fan cooler is optimized to pull heat from the overclocked GPU. The PCB features a massive 21-phase VRM that draws power from a trio of 8-pin PCIe connectors. ASRock has given the RX 6950 XT a neat 179 MHz game clock overclock over the 2100 MHz reference game clocks. The PCB features several overclocker-friendly features suitable for record-chasing benches, such as dual-BIOS, consolidated voltage measurement points, PCB surface-treatment for extreme cooling, and more. ASRock is pricing the card at $1100, so at no premium over the $1100 AMD reference MSRP.