AMD Radeon 6800 XT group test
AMD’s return to the top end of the market gets better with some cracking partner cards.
If you read our review of the reference AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT in a previous issue of our sister title APC, you’d have seen that it puts AMD back in the race at the high end of the market, and that the 6800 XT nips at the heels of the mighty RTX 3080. Can the tried and true premium tier designs and coolers from AMD’s partners beat out the surprisingly capable reference card?
WHAT MAKES THEM TICK
Before we get to the roundup, let’s revisit some of what’s under the hood of the Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD’s first RDNA2 GPU. The 6800, 6800 XT and 6900 XT are all based on the 7nm Navi 21 GPU. They share the same memory subsystem, consisting of 16GB of 16Gbps memory over a 256 bit bus. The major difference between them is the clock speeds and number of compute units, with all 80 enabled for the 6900 XT, 72 for the 6800 XT and 60 for the 6800. Each CU contains 64 shader units and a single Ray Accelerator (or RT core if you adopted the Nvidia parlance).
The 6800 XT is the sweet spot card of the three. It doesn’t cost too much more than the 6800 and at this end of the market a 10 or 15 percent price premium over the 6800 probably won’t deter too many buyers. Once the market matures, we may see premium 6800s around the same price as an entry level 6800 XT. It will present an interesting conundrum for many buyers. The 6800 XT is quite a bit cheaper than the 6900 XT. Much like the super expensive RTX 3090, diminishing returns set in at the very top end of the market.
ADVANCED TECH FEATURES
The 6000 series brings ray tracing to AMD’s lineup for the first time. AMD is yet to introduce its DLSS competitor it calls Super Resolution, but it is working on it. Until now we’ve been underweighting ray tracing capabilities due to limited game support and the performance hit that comes when you enable it. But with the release of a major title like Cyberpunk 2077 that really shows off the tech at its best, that time is over. It’s now must-have tech and cannot be viewed as a bonus any longer. Ray tracing and resolution up scaling in one form or another are going to become standard graphics features in the coming years. We’re yet to see how AMD’s GPUs and the next-gen consoles handle the advanced Cyberpunk 2077 features, but there’s no underselling it any longer. AMD can’t fall behind. Note that AMD doesn’t have an equivalent to Nvidia’s Tensor cores so it will be interesting to see how AMD performs things like deep learning and AI operations.
AMD offer some interesting features including Smart Access Memory, which allows the CPU to access more or all of the GPU’s memory. Some games see significant gains of 10% or more. As it’s a PCIe feature, it’s being enabled on Intel platforms too. Additionally, Nvidia has also announced it will add support in a future driver update. Make sure you enable the settings in your BIOS. It goes by different names and involves
adjusting one or two settings. Who doesn’t like free performance?
The other particularly interesting feature is something AMD calls Infinity Cache, which is essentially a level 3 cache. At 128MB it’s very large. It takes up a big chunk of the GPU area. AMD claims it reduces the need for very high memory bandwidth. This means a 256bit bus and GDDR6 is sufficient. In theory this means the cards are not overly complex hopefully resulting in lower manufacturing costs. If the availability woes go away, some nice bargains could be possible. A price war would be great for the consumer!
Availability or a lack thereof is the elephant in the room. It’s terrible to put it mildly. Some reports state component shortages are to blame, or is it miners buying up container loads? The coronavirus? Perhaps it’s lack of foundry capacity? At the time of writing it was next to impossible buy a console off the shelf anywhere in the world so there are some serious supply issues. This means pricing is highly volatile. A recommended retail price isn’t reflecting reality.
Some cards are facing months of backorders. It appears that supply and price gouging issues will persist well into this year. There will be many disappointed gamers over Christmas.
PERFORMANCE
Custom cards manufacturers have their work cut out for them. In our testing the reference 6800 XT cooler proved to be a massive step forward over the noisy blower style coolers from previous generations. It’s also much better than the outwardly similar cooler of the short lived Radeon VII. It’s not all about the cooler though. The custom cards tend to have more robust PCBs, support for higher power limits and overclocking and as you’d expect, loads of RGB! The other factor to consider is that the reference card probably won’t be around for long. In six months any comparison to the reference card may well be moot.
Speaking of overclocks, the Asrock and Sapphire cards offer the highest GPU clocks we’ve ever seen at an incredible 2,360MHz, though actually they can sustain themselves even higher than that! AMD and its foundry partner TSMC really deserve credit for extracting this kind of power efficiency from a GPU without having to resort to a brute force approach. The fact that AMD is able to keep the TDP of the 6000 series to 300W is admirable. 300W isn’t the limit though, as some of the partner cards will move beyond this. At least the monster coolers are capable of handling the heat, and doing it quietly, if not silently.
It’s overly simplistic to assume that partner cards are all the same. You need to ask yourself: What is it that you look for in a GPU? Ask ten different people and you’ll probably get ten different answers. Do you want the fastest card you can get? The quietest? The best looking one? Do you want bang for your buck? In the current climate perhaps you’ll take whatever you can find in stock! Whatever your priority, one of these cards will suit you. These 6800 XTs are quite distinct from one another and one of these cards will surely impress. Let the games begin!