Review: ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X 16G OC

Results

Analysis

These results are in line with expectations of a premium PC graphics card. Most games are run with their most demanding settings, including four instances of ray tracing alongside feature tests.

Blending a mix of old and new, it is fair to say the ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X OC is a 4K60 card in the majority of tests. The two outliers are Shadow Of The Tomb Raider and Watch Dogs. The former has first-generation implementation of ray tracing - read heavy penalty - and the latter is a framerate pig even on rival GeForce cards.

For most, then, you can crank the image quality up to maximum, dial the display to maximum, and have solid framerates. Either a high-refresh QHD or 4K60 FreeSync panel would make ideal visual companions.

Pulling over 300W from the board alone means total system-wide power consumption is pretty high, but you certainly don't need a 1,000W PSU - our test system has a Ryzen 9 5950X after all.

ASRock does very well with respect to temperature and, to a lesser degree, noise output. The card is cool, reasonably quiet and composed at all times, and though this may well be sample specific, it has less coil whine on high-framerate loading screens than the MBA card - ASRock's engineering team have done a good job. Switching over to the Quiet BIOS reduces performance by only a couple of per cent yet drops the noise level from 39.1dB to 36.8dB. We'd run it in that mode if it was our PC.

We've previously lamented the lack of overclocking headroom on Radeon RX 6800 XT cards. This model boosts to an average 2,661MHz core and is artificially limited to 17.2Gbps memory, resulting in between five and 10 per cent extra performance. The downside is board power escalates to 347W.

Overall, no complaints from a performance perspective. This really is a premium solution that, unfortunately, like most, remains rarer than hen's teeth.