Gonna pick on you a bit, but not because you're wrong
It is correct that AMD arch RT will probably have to be coded more for it, for example DXR 1.1 allows multiple shaders/compute in a mega shader -> for AMD Infinity Cache that would be very effective while for Nvidia it might not make much of a difference. Once RNDA2 coded optimize RT is done, comparing them should reflect better that feature performance.
This is true, but also painfully so: AMD puts out good GPU hardware, many times even beastly and sometimes clearly superior, but almost always before software can take advantage of it. That isn't to say that they don't put out GPUs that aren't the best option in certain price brackets or for certain gaming and compute workloads, but rather, that there's almost always a lag between the hardware release
and the ability to fully utilize it.
I should qualify the above a little bit too. First and most important, I don't want to see AMD stop innovating, rather much the contrary. I believe that it's important to highlight where they innovate, full stop. Not every innovation bears fruit and that's only loosely related to the efficacy of the innovation itself; in technology there are so many related variables ranging from the basic engineering needed to exploit an innovation all the way up to marketing and beyond to politics! We can only fairly judge innovators like AMD and their innovations for the part that they're actually responsible for.
With that out of the way, the 6700 XT must be judged as it performs at release. Not just so that it is related to its peers but also as a benchmark for future performance gains! If we keep in mind that current markets are volatile, whether or not a buyer finds the 6700 XT to check the most boxes for their usecase is going to fluctuate day to day. We can't expect reviewers to nail that down, but rather, to simply provide the most transparent rundown that they can.
Now, with respect to RT specifically, while AMD
does absolutely deserve praise for producing effective RT hardware, they're simply not the best choice where RT performance is concerned. That can change as I noted above, but right now, AMD presents a better solution for non-RT usecases than for RT usecases.
As for AMD FSR vs DLSS -> AMD has not delivered yet, not known of the quality/performance benefits between them. So one cannot decide well if AMD methods will be more or less useful, if they even become available and are used in games. With Nvidia, DLSS is here, can work good, while I've have had issues with it in every title except COD, some or most do not. Titles using DLSS is increasing more rapidly now.
I'm critical of DLSS, not specifically for the technology that Nvidia has developed nor the functional equivalent that AMD claims to be developing in response, but of the basic premise of the technology itself, in that it purports to use 'learned' techniques in order to produce more detail from less detail. As you note that you've personally had issues, I'm personally surprised that there aren't more examples of undesirable artifacts.
On the one hand I can understand a bit of 'honeymoon syndrome' where users are elated to simply have games running better than they otherwise would have, and this is the feeling that I share; on the other hand, the photographer in me has seen this approach to producing detail before, and I'm waiting for complaints from professional gaming communities as an example, where DLSS and similar technologies are either producing detail that isn't really present that is distracting, or worse, missing detail that
should be there, and in both cases representing a competitive disadvantage one way or the other!
Outside of the concerns, though, it is also fair to say that DLSS is established and broadly works to its marketed purpose, and that AMDs competing technology is not only not established, but in being so cannot be rated as working or not, and that while AMD does have Nvidia's previous work on getting DLSS to an effective state to reference, having witnessed the evolution of DLSS ourselves, AMD is certainly going to have to put in a lot of effort to catch up!
