AMD has finally revealed their much-awaited Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800XT graphic cards today, with full availability expected to hit the stores on November 18th.
These two cards will surely compete neck to neck with NVIDIA. The higher-end Radeon RX 6800 XT is priced at $649 and Radeon RX 6800 is priced at $579, directly targeting NVIDIA’s higher-end $699 RTX 3080 and $499 RTX 3070.
While both of these cards will be offering water block support right at the launch, the AMD; however, has kept the conventional design of three-fan coolers with no vents at the front or rear.
Since AMD has had issues with high GPU temperatures back in their 5000 series, only time will tell how stable the performance of these new card will turn out in benchmarks.
In terms of performance, these cards are set to be a major contender for Nvidia especially in terms of 4K gaming with 60 frames per second. For a rough comparison, NVIDIA’s higher-end 3080 offers a memory size of 10GB whilst even the lower-end RX 6800 comes with 16 GB memory size. And that’s not it, both of these cards take the lead in terms of both base clock and boost clock. To push the limit on these cards, AMD has implemented both Anti-Lag and Radeon boost, that will certainly mean a truly immersive gaming experience.
To further strengthen their hold in the e-sports gaming arena, AMD has executed a perfect combo of Radeon Image Sharpening and AMD Free Sync™ Technology.
And that’s doesn’t end here! It even has USB Type-C port for no-tearing and no- stuttering power delivery and display. These cards will surely mean immersive displays up for the top 360hz monitors.
For enthusiastic gamers with an RGB gaming setup, these graphic cards offer a lot to peer into. Whilst the Radeon RX 6800 XT Nitro + offers a grey and black accent with an RGB logo and lighting to further extend the show, RX 6800 Pulse offers more of a classic gamer look with greyish black livery disrupted by red lines on the edges.
RX 6800 vs RX 6800 XT – Specifications
In terms of the GPU architecture, both the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT are equipped with AMD RDNA2 7nm GPUs, the same GPU architecture used in latest PS5 and X series X. It offers 50% improvement in terms of performance per watt over its predecessor RDNA 1. Now even though Radeon RX 6800XT features Navi 21XT and Radeon RX 6800 has NAVI 21XL, the transistors on the GPUs are same, i.e., 26.8B.
The Radeon RX 6800 has a TGP of 250W, and offers base and boost clocks speeds of 1700 MHz and 2105 MHz. On the contrary, the Radeon RX 6800 XT has a TGP of 250W but feature higher base frequency and higher boost clock speeds i.e., 1825 MHz and 2250MHz.
There isn’t a lot of difference in the RT accelerators and Texture units on both of these cards. The higher-end Radeon RX 6800XT features 72 RT accelerators and 288 Texture units; on the other hand, the Radeon RX 6800 features 60 RT accelerators and 240 Texture units.
Now, the higher frequencies on the RX 6800XT obviously require to draw more power but this will definitely mean higher framerates in the forthcoming game titles. But if you’re planning to play the new titles on just the optimal frame rates without spending a lot of cash, you can save those bucks since both of these cards offer the same memory size and memory clocks, i.e., 16 GB and 16Gbps, respectively.
Radeon RX 6800 vs Nvidia RTX 3070
While NVIDIA might have thought they’ve raced far ahead of AMD in terms of graphic race, the new RX 6800 by AMD will surely hold Nvidia back in the race. With each of the companies now focusing on 4K gaming, these two cards will surely have an aggressive competition.
Now the real-world performance comparison between these two cards will surely be available sooner than later but let’s compare it on the specification front.
On the charts, it definitely looks like AMD has definitely nailed it this time. In almost all the areas apart from FP32 cores, it is ahead of the game. Let’s take a look.
The new Radeon RX 6800 features 60 GPU and RT accelerators 240 texture units, a memory size of 16 GB, memory bandwidth of 512 GB/s and memory clock of 16Gbps, whereas RTX 3070 only has 46 GPU/RT accelerators, 184 Texture cores, a memory size of 8 GB (almost half), memory bandwidth of 448 Gbps, and memory clock speed of 14 Gbps.
Looking at these two cards in terms of performance per watt, a TDP of 250W by RX 6800 compared with a TDP of 220W by RTX 3070, the RX 6080 can easily be justified to be more power efficient, especially considering all the improvements it brings in terms of real-world gaming performance.
Radeon RX 6800 XT vs Nvidia RTX 3080
It’s the RX 6800XT that is surely going to make AMD leap ahead of NVIDIA in the graphics cards race for quite some time. Yes, that’s right! With almost double the memory size, with 24% higher base clock speed, 27% faster boost clock speed, this surely will beat NVIDIA in almost all scenarios.
We have no doubt that RX 6800 XT when combined with right set of components will surely yield mind blowing benchmarks in the days to come.
Taking a look at the figures, the GeForce RTX 3080 has a 1440 MHz base clock speed, 1710 MHz boost clock speed, 68 GPU/RT clusters and a memory bus speed of 320-bit at a TGP of 320W. In contrast, the newer RX6800XT is brining about 1825 MHz of base clock speed, 2015 MHz of game clock speed, 2250 MHz of boost clock speed, 72 GPU clusters, 72 RT clusters and a memory bus speed of 256-bit at a 300W TDP, thanks to 7nm GPU architecture. Both of these cards have cutting-edge PCIe 4.0 support and take the full advantage of PCIe 4.0 capabilities when combined with Ryzen 3000 or Ryzen 5000 series processors and PCIe 4.0 supported motherboards.
RX 6800 XT even has another feature that’s not seen in its counterpart, which is the USB-C connector that can be used to connect display port or your VR headsets.
Conclusion
Will AMD take the crown of the best graphics card in the recent days is yet to be determined, but we’re sure that the long-era of Nvidia’s dominance is long over and AMD has done a marvellous job both in terms of both the GPUs and CPUs in the recent years and Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800XT is just a cooler addition to their list.
Other Topics:
Best Motherboards for Ryzen 9 5900X
Best Motherboards for Ryzen 3 3200G
Best Motherboards for i9 10900k
There are people who love playing video games, and then there are enthusiasts who devote their lives to gaming.
Corey has been playing games since The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy III were still young.
Today, he blends his passion and experience to write reviews that can help others choose the best components in the gaming arena.