AMD Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT Review
RDNA 2 Overview
Published: 18th November 2020 | Source: AMD | Price: |
RDNA 2 Overview
We could write a lot of text explaining exactly what you read in the following slides, but why duplicate the work of the AMD author? The main points are that the new RDNA 2 architecture comes with hardware ray tracing as well as some clever tricks to help give you higher frame rates at no perceptible loss in quality.
With RDNA 2, AMD is taking a software an hardware approach to proceedings, pushing the GPUOpen Ecosystem and their FidelityFX series of Open Source features to complement their RDNA 2 products. In time, AMD's FidelityFX suite will include Radeon's own take on Nvidia's DLSS formula, and we know how successful that has been. By leveraging RDNA 2's use within Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5, AMD hopes to push developers to optimise for Radeon, which could be good news for Radeon in the long term. That said, this is all wishful thinking until Radeon can deliver on these promises.
Of further interest is the many methods available to you if you like to overclock your card, with automatic tuning which uses the driver to push to your thermal and power limits, manual overclocking like the old days and, on the XT cards, Rage mode which are some preset performance levels.
Most Recent Comments
Look foward to the 6900/XTQuote
600 € and 670 € here in Spain respectively (out of stock). Next year we'll have enough stock I guess.Quote
Thanks so much for the thorough review, as always.
I noticed TPU had much lower power consumption numbers. I know everyone tests differently with different systems, so I'm not comparing them. I just want to add to how competitive AMD is. Looking at TPU's numbers, the 6800 draws less power than the 5700XT in gaming... and obviously way less than the 3080 and even the 3070. That's an incredible feat for the same 7nm process!
And the temperatures are definitely there as well. The cooler seems to be performing admirably. It's the first time in donkey's years where you could buy the AMD reference design and not feel like you're compromising on anything.
Ray-tracing is certainly behind Nvidia; they have a strong lead on AMD it seems. I wouldn't consider that a deal-breaker, but the 3070 and 3080 offer better value for money if you care a lot about RT. Add DLSS to that and Nvidia aren't in trouble of losing too many sales I don't think.
Good performance. Mediocre Raytracing for now. Great power consumption. Negligible overclocking gains.
600 and 670 here in Spain respectively (out of stock). Next year we'll have enough stock I guess. |
Time to retire the VegaQuote