When AMD announced its first RDNA 2 video cards for PC at the end of 2020, it moved away from its usual strategy of trying to dominate the mid-range market. Instead, it announced three GPUs designed to compete directly with the best NVIDIA had to offer at the time. AMD’s newest video card is something of a return to form. At $479, the RX 6700 XT is $100 more affordable than the RX 3800 and slots in between NVIDIA’s two best value GPUs, the $399 RTX 3060 Ti and $499 RTX 3070. It’s also the successor to AMD’s most important video card in recent years, the RX 5700 XT.

The 6700 XT offers 40 compute units, a 2,424MHz game clock and 12GB of GDDR6 RAM while consuming 230 watts of power. How does that compare to the RX 6800? AMD’s latest features 20 fewer compute units and 4GB less RAM. A downgrade, to be sure, but in practical terms, those capabilities translate to a GPU that…

