Radeon RX 6800 reviews arrive this week, in the meantime, let's watch Steve's unboxing

[Julio Franco]

Something to look forward to: AMD has two new powerful GPUs to stack against Nvidia's RTX 30 series in both 1440p and 4K gaming. The company says that when combined with its Zen 3 CPUs, these should deliver killer gaming performance at a price that will be hard for Nvidia to beat. Of course, that's when you are able to buy either since we don't expect neither GeForce nor Radeon availability to be great until next year.

The two cards coming out this week are the Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT and Steve has them already on-hand and has been testing them for the past week or so.

The RX 6800 XT is the more powerful of the two, sporting 72 compute units that run at a base clock of 2,015 MHz and capable of boost clocks of up to 2,250 MHz. It comes with 16 GB GDDR6 memory buffer and a total board power of 300 watts. It has more memory than Nvidia's RTX 3080, which only comes with 10 GB (of the faster, GDDR6X kind), and has a power rating of 320 watts.

According to AMD, the RX 6800 XT is no slouch against the RTX 3080 at 4K in titles like Battlefield V, Borderlands 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Forza Horizon 4, and (according to AMD's own benchmarks) it matches it in others like Doom Eternal, Gears of War 5, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. But drop the resolution to 1440p and the Radeon tends to do better than Ampere. For a card that costs $50 less than the RTX 3080, the RX 6800 XT should make an attractive option for people looking to get similar performance to the Nvidia offering, but we'll know for sure when we review it later this week.

The vanilla RX 6800 is a $579 graphics card that should perform close to the RTX 2080 Ti and the RTX 3070. The company claims the RX 6800 is able to match or even beat Nvidia's card in a number of games at 1440p and 4K. This is a 250 watt card and comes equipped with 60 compute units that run at a 1,815 MHz base clock and 2,105 MHz boost clock. The RX 6800 isn't short on RAM like Nvidia's offerings, packing a whopping 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. AMD is not just unleashing enthusiast-level cards to make a point, it's trying to sway people away from Nvidia's RTX 3000 series with great value.

The RX 6000 series graphics cards don't feature a dramatic board redesign when compared to their predecessors, as they occupy 2.5 slots and have a length of 267 mm. And unlike Nvidia's newest offerings, they don't come with a redesigned power connector, and instead feature two 8-pin connectors. AMD says they shouldn't put any undue stress on systems equipped with enthusiast-grade, 650 to 750 watt power supplies.

Watch out for our Radeon RX 6800 reviews later this week!

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https://www.techspot.com/news/87618-radeon-rx-6800-reviews-arrive-week-meantime-watch.html

 

[Irata]

Will you be doing some OC testing ? Normally I don‘t care much but seeing reports of reference cards running at 2500 Mhz has piqued my interest, especially if this can be done via software.

 

[Badelhas]

Will you be doing some OC testing ? Normally I don‘t care much but seeing reports of reference cards running at 2500 Mhz has piqued my interest, especially if this can be done via software.

Yeah, me too. I hope they OC the the 6800 as well.

 

[Irata]

So, @Steve , you can‘t tell us yet why Watch Dogs: Legion is not CPU limited @1080p.... will you be able to tell us in...say...two days ? Just picking an arbitrary number here

 

[gigantor21]

So when specifically do the reviews drop?

 

[Steve]

So, @Steve , you can‘t tell us yet why Watch Dogs: Legion is not CPU limited @1080p.... will you be able to tell us in...say...two days ? Just picking an arbitrary number here

I checked at 720p

 

[daimag]

It seems to have plenty of MLCC at the back of the board. I bet OCers must be happy to see this.

 

[Sherwoodnt]

How is AMD’s reputation with driver support post-launch? Couldn’t find any recent posts. Does anyone have any experience? If AMD abandons their products pretty quickly, $50 price difference might not be too steep.

 

[scavengerspc]

Was the video any good? I didnt watch it. I could unbox a new car faster than he unboxed a video card.

 

[candle_86]

How is AMD’s reputation with driver support post-launch? Couldn’t find any recent posts. Does anyone have any experience? If AMD abandons their products pretty quickly, $50 price difference might not be too steep.

Recently AMD cards have come out with crappy drivers, and the cards get faster with age. I think they have an efficiency problem. At lunch AMD cars performe 70% as fast as they could, and get the final 30% over the next year to two years. Nvidia on the other hand launches with about 95% of the performance already unlocked, if trends continue

 

[Irata]

How is AMD’s reputation with driver support post-launch? Couldn’t find any recent posts. Does anyone have any experience? If AMD abandons their products pretty quickly, $50 price difference might not be too steep.

If there's one thing AMD doesn't do it's abandoning their products pretty quickly. The utility of that depends on how long you plan on using the GPU but so far they haven't abandoned nor gimped older GPU.

 

[Nobina]

Was the video any good? I didnt watch it. I could unbox a new car faster than he unboxed a video card.

How do you know if you didn't watch it?

 

[scavengerspc]

How do you know if you didn't watch it?

I clicked on it and saw the length of the video is 21 minutes.

 

[Nobina]

I clicked on it and saw the length of the video is 21 minutes.

So that means he's unboxing the card for 21 minutes straight?

 

[Irata]

So that means he's unboxing the card for 21 minutes straight?

He does it veeeeerrrryyyy slowly to spice things up. You know @Steve ‘s a tease.

 

[amghwk]

I was trying REALLY hard to catch any hint of excitement (or disappointment) in his expressions when he was teasing with the unboxing, regarding these new cards' performances. But sadly, can't figure out anything.....

But truly, this year might turn out to be AMD year, after all.

With scalpers around, I don't think I'll spend anything this year or next year, however.

 

[amghwk]

So that means he's unboxing the card for 21 minutes straight?

There are 3 parts actually. First part is the actual unboxing, and showcasing the look. Second part he talks about availability. And the third is about some gaming benchmarks, though not of these cards.

 

[Nobina]

There are 3 parts actually. First part is the actual unboxing, and showcasing the look. Second part he talks about availability. And the third is about some gaming benchmarks, though not of these cards.

What I was trying to say is does he think because it's a 21min video that means he's opening the box and taking the card out the whole time, that's highly unlikely and silly to think.

 

[amghwk]

What I was trying to say is does he think because it's a 21min video that means he's opening the box and taking the card out the whole time, that's highly unlikely and silly to think.

No, he finishes opening within the first few minutes. He then compares them with the 3080 and 3070.

 

[scavengerspc]

Man. This is a lot of butthurt for a post where I was just poking fun.

 

[Shadowboxer]

These cards are due to go on sale in 2 hours but the review embargo is still in place? Isnt that a bit disgustingly anti-consumer for AMD? Even Nvidia gave us 72 hours to view benchmarks before the cards went on the market.

 

[Irata]

These cards are due to go on sale in 2 hours but the review embargo is still in place? Isnt that a bit disgustingly anti-consumer for AMD? Even Nvidia gave us 72 hours to view benchmarks before the cards went on the market.

I have to agree that launching reviews and cards for sale at the same time is not good. If you try to make an informed decision you will most likely not be able to get a card today.

That said, Kyle Bennett posted on H Forums that AIB cards to be launched next week will have a much greater volume than the reference model launched today.

 

[CBTex]

I have to agree that launching reviews and cards for sale at the same time is not good. If you try to make an informed decision you will most likely not be able to get a card today.

That said, Kyle Bennett posted on H Forums that AIB cards to be launched next week will have a much greater volume than the reference model launched today.

Agree 100%, although I have a feeling that everyone "will most likely not be able to get a card today" regardless of whether or not they read reviews first.

Why is it so hard for every tech company to produce sufficient volume to meet demand lately. Nvidia, AMD, Sony, Microsoft. All of them are leaving money on the table. People are out there wanting to buy there products. Cell phone manufacturers seem to be able to get it right. They at least let people preorder phones instead of letting scalping run rampant.