AMD introduces Radeon RX 6800, 6800 XT and 6900 XT
With the Radeon RX 6800, 6800 XT and 6900 XT, AMD seems to be catching up with Nvidia. The cards are said to be particularly impressive in terms of performance per watt.
AMD delivers. And how. If the manufacturer's figures are indeed correct, the cards can keep up with the recently introduced RTX 3090, 3080 and 3070 Ampere cards - at least for non-raytracing titles. And at a truly competitive price.
| Graphics card | Compute Units | Game Clock / Boost Clock | Infinity Cache | Memory | Total Board Power | Publication date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Radeon RX 6900 XT | 80 | 2015 / 2250 MHz | 128 MB | 16 GB GDDR 6 | 300 watts | 8 December 2020 |
| Radeon RX 6800 XT | 72 | 2015 / 2250 MHz | 128 MB | 16 GB GDDR 6 | 300 watts | 18 November 2020 |
| Radeon RX 6800 | 60 | 1815 / 2105 MHz | 128 MB | 16 GB GDDR 6 | 250 watts | 18 November 2020 |
The Radeon RX 6900 XT
With the 6900 XT, AMD is attacking the Nvidia RTX 3090. The manufacturer also provides its own benchmarks. In six out of ten titles in 2160p resolution, the 6900 XT beats the 3090. It should be mentioned here that AMD has activated "Rage Mode" and "Smart Access Memory". This means that the card is overclocked and benefits from this performance boost. And as always, you should always take benchmarks from manufacturers with a grain of salt.
Compared to RDNA, the RDNA2 card is said to offer 65 per cent more performance per watt. With 80 compute units, a boost clock of 2250 MHz, 16 GB of memory and a total board power (TBP) of 300 watts, the card packs quite a punch. AMD is promoting the card primarily for gaming in 4K. The card will cost 999 dollars in the States and will be released on 8 December. You should take the price with a pinch of salt, as the price is always quoted without tax.
The Radeon RX 6800 XT
The 6800 XT is AMD's direct competitor to the RTX 3080. According to the benchmarks, the 6800 XT beats the RTX 3080 in five out of six titles in 2160p resolution. According to AMD's slides, neither Rage Mode nor Smart Access Memory appear to be activated here. In 1440p resolution, the 6080 XT even beats the RTX 3080 in eight out of ten titles. Here too: Enjoy the benchmarks with caution. In addition, you don't know exactly which feature sets are activated. The Radeon 6000 series does support DirectX ray tracing, but ray tracing does not appear to be activated in any benchmark game.
With 72 compute units, a boost clock of 2250 MHz, 16 GB of memory and a TBP, the card offers a lot of performance. It will cost 649 dollars in the USA and will be released on 18 November.
The Radeon RX 6800
At the lower end of the line-up is the RX 6800. In a sabre-rattling match with the RTX 2080 Ti in 4K, the AMD card wins in all ten games. Smart Access Memory is activated here and the card benefits from this performance boost.
With 60 compute units, a boost clock of 2105 MHz, 16 GB of memory and a TBP of 250 watts, this card also packs a decent punch and is likely to compete with the RTX 3070 at a price of 579 dollars. The card is due to be released on 18 November.
All tests were carried out with an upcoming Ryzen 9 5900X CPU. Independent benchmarks will then show the actual performance. I'm definitely looking forward to getting my hands on these things and testing them out.
If you want to find out more about the technologies presented, watch the following video.
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