AMD quietly makes the Radeon RX 6700 official, launches special 22.5.2 driver too

Generally speaking, companies like to announce a product so that it draws the maximum public attention and video card makers like AMD or Nvidia, and soon Intel (with these new photos), are no different. However, it looks like AMD has launched a new graphics card SKU, the Radeon RX 6700, and hasn't really made much fuss about it. The GPU was launched a few days back on the June 9, and with this, Team Red has expanded the RX 6700 series.

The new RX 6700 is based on a cut-down Navi 22 die and hence features 36 Compute Units or 2,304 Stream Processors. The memory has also been stripped as this is a 160-bit width interface GPU and comes with 10 GB of VRAM instead of 12 GB on the 6700 XT. The Infinity Cache has correspondingly also been brought down to 80 MB from 96 MB on the XT GPU.

Basically the new RX 6700 is just a higher clocked desktop variant of the RX 6700M mobile GPU which AMD introduced last year. To put it simply, the card should be a bit faster than the recently released RX 6650 XT and should trade blows with Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti in non-ray traced scenarios. And although there is no MSRP, the 6700 should be priced between the 6650 XT and the 6700 XT, ie, somewhere between $399 and $479.

There is also a new driver which brings optimizations for the new release in the form of the 22.5.2 driver for the 6700. Here are the release notes:

Highlights

Support For

• AMD Radeon™ RX 6700 Graphics
• Sniper Elite 5™
• Hitman 3™ Ray Tracing Update

Additional Vulkan® extensions:

• VK_KHR_push_descriptor

• VK_KHR_ray_tracing_maintenance1

• VK_AMD_shader_early_and_late_fragment_tests

Radeon™ Super Resolution

• Additional support – RSR is now compatible with AMD Ryzen™ 6000 series processors with integrated graphics.
• New “Sharpen Effect” slider that allows you to fine-tune the sharpness effect of RSR to your own desired settings.

AMD Privacy View

• A unique software powered by cutting-edge, eye tracking technology built in partnership with the team at Eyeware – monitors your eye movement and reveals only the spot on the screen you are looking at while dimming the rest, keeping prying eyes away from your screen and your information safer.

DirectX® 11 optimizations for Radeon™ RX 6000 series

• Up to 8% increase in performance in DirectX® 11-based games, using AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 22.5.2 on the Radeon RX 6950 XT, versus the previous software driver version 22.5.1 RS-470

AMD Smart Access Memory optimizations for Death Stranding™ and Watch Dogs™: Legion

• Up to 10% increase in performance with new SAM optimizations in Death Stranding™ @ 1440p Very High settings and up to 13% increase in performance with new SAM optimizations in Watch Dogs™: Legion, using AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 22.5.2 on the Radeon RX 6950 XT, versus AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 22.5.1RS-471
• Up to 12% increase in performance with new SAM optimizations in Death Stranding™ @ 1440p Very High settings and up to 24% increase in performance with new SAM optimizations in Watch Dogs™: Legion, using AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 22.5.2 on the Radeon RX 6750 XT, versus AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 22.5.1RS-472
• Up to 6% increase in performance with new SAM optimizations in Death Stranding™ @ 1440p Very High settings and up to 6% increase in performance with new SAM optimizations in Watch Dogs™: Legion, using AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 22.5.2 on the Radeon RX 6650 XT, versus AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 22.5.1RS-473

Known Issues

• Performance drop may be experienced while playing Fortnite™ with Multithreaded Rendering and DirectX® 11 API on some AMD Graphics Products such as the Radeon® RX 6900 XT Graphics.
• Stuttering may be experienced while playing Call of Duty®: Warzone™ on the Caldera map with some AMD Graphics Products such as the Radeon® RX 6900 XT Graphics.
• Higher than expected CPU usage when Instant Replay is enabled on some AMD Graphics Products such as the Radeon® RX 6900 XT Graphics.
• GPU utilization may be stuck at 100% in Radeon performance metrics after closing games on some AMD Graphics Products such as Radeon™ 570.
• Display may flicker black during video playback plus gameplay on some AMD Graphics Products such as the Radeon™ RX 6700 XT.
• Using Radeon™ Super Resolution on 2560x1600 resolution displays may produce a system hang. A temporary workaround is to set the display Scaling Mode to Full Panel.
• Enhanced Sync may cause a black screen to occur when enabled on some games and system configurations. Any users who may be experiencing issues with Enhanced Sync enabled should disable it as a temporary workaround.
• Radeon performance metrics and logging features may intermittently report extremely high and incorrect memory clock values.

To download the driver, head over to the official page on AMD's website here.

As you can see above, the new 22.5.2 driver does seem to help out the RX 6700 nicely and so if you happen to buy this GPU, make sure to install this driver. Also, this driver should not be confused with the general 22.5.2 AMD driver.

Via: @KOMACHI_ENSAKA (Twitter)