I have an RX 6700 XT from AMD themselves and it's great.
The reason I went down that route was that the AIB partners all beef the cards coolers up and thus the dimensions. I build in small SFF cases for travel reasons and usually end up undervolting and downclocking my cards so I really don't need the monster coolers the AIBs are so fond of.
Unfortunately they generally only seem to be available in limited quantities and for a limited time which is a real shame.
It's so bad I thought my card was defective the first time I heard it. It's usually fine if I cap framerate to a reasonable number though.
They have never been top of the line models, but one or two steps down. I've always used "silent" cases, since I hate noise with a passion, but I'm not sure how much that actually changes things.
Switched to XFX Merc 319 6950xt. I hope this serves me better.
The first was used on a machine on my desk while the latter is in a living room gaming machine. It’s harder to judge the 6900 because of the increased distance from it while running but the 5700 had no coil whine.
The EVGA 3080 Ti FTW3 in the machine at my desk on the other hand can be quite audible at times, particularly during some menu screens in games. It’s a great card otherwise.
After experiencing coil whining with one game and loud fans after extended perios of full load on the system (CPU+GPU), I switched to an aftermarket all-in one liquid cooling system, like Alphacool Eiswolf. I just think that the standard 3 fans blowing air onto the GPU kill most useful airflow in every PC case and with every vendor that uses this style.
Every GPU I have ever had, particularly AMD, have been noisy cards. I have hyperacusis and can hear a butterfly fart a block away, so silence is paramount to me.
I don't even allow deep sleep states on my Intel processors because I can hear it. Modern motherboards are beginning to include "acoustic adaptations" to try and fix, but they rarely work in my experience.
I know this isn't always possible with newer CPUs which tend to be stingy with PCIE lanes, but in my case, I have a boatload of them, so I could do it with no issue.
This is based off of me doing a 1 minute search for a comparison, so I could be missing something completely. I haven't really researched things in depth since my last build 3 years ago.
EVGA used to be go-to vendor for Nvidia but since they're gone I'd settle for Gainward and its derivatives (Palit, Galax, KFA2)
And yeah, with the monster-sized high-end GPUs, you'll need to take some precautions no matter the brand.