Liquid-nitrogen-cooled Radeon RX 6800 XT busts single-GPU 3DMark record

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
(Image credit: AMD)

Remember that air-cooled AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT that set a new single-GPU record in 3DMark? Yeah, well, it's toast, consigned to history, an ex-record (not really). All hail, just a few days later, the new king. We give you overclocker Takakou from TecLab who cranked his reference AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card to a merciless 2.8 GHz using liquid nitrogen.

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He also ramped his Ryzen 9 5950X to 5.6 GHz, again using LN2 liquid nitrogen.  The net result? 48,890 points in 3DMark Fire Strike overall score and 61,831 points in Graphics officially logged in the all-important HWBOT register. That's up from the 47,932 points achieved by one LUCKY_NOOB last week.

Not a huge uptick in return for LN2 cooling, you might think. Then again, it's early days for AMD's new Big Navi GPU. Almost certainly,  this new target will be surpassed in the coming days and weeks. And the previous record was only using air cooling for the GPU. LUCKY_NOOB used LN2 cooling for his Ryzen chip. 

Anyway, the near-certainly that Takakou's new record (via Videocardz) won't last long will no doubt transmogrify into a nailed-on fait accompli when AMD releases the fully unlocked Big Navi GPU, AKA Navi 21, in the upcoming Radeon RX 6900 XT chipset.

Arguably all not terribly relevant for real-world gaming. But it doesn't hurt AMD's rep to be seen taking back these records.

Jeremy Laird
Hardware writer

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.