Watch AMD's Radeon RX 6000 announcement right here at 9 am PT/12 pm ET

[midian182]

Highly anticipated: The waiting is almost over. After endless months of rumor, speculation, and leaks, AMD is revealing its Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards later today. You can watch proceedings right here at 9 am PT/12 pm ET/4 pm GMT.

Follow up: AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards revealed, feature double the performance of the RX 5000 series

Following on from its Ryzen 5000-focused 'Where Gaming Begins' event earlier this month, AMD says 'Where Gaming Begins: Ep 2' will showcase "the new AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards powered by the RDNA 2 architecture, the most powerful gaming graphics cards ever built by AMD."

The new Radeon line will be going up against Nvidia's impressive RTX 3000-series, including the amazing RTX 3070 that we praised in our review, calling it the $500 king and awarding a score of 95. Whether Big Navi will be able to match or better its rival's cards remains to be seen, but AMD does seem confident.

During the Zen 3 announcement, AMD teased some official RDNA 2 benchmarks, though it never specified which card it was using—it's presumed to have been either the RX 6800 XT or RX 6900 XT. It showed performance on par with the RTX 3080, and AMD's product is expected to be significantly cheaper than Nvidia's.

Earlier this month, purported specifications of a Navi 21 XT graphics card, likely the flagship 6900 XT, claimed it would feature 16 GB of VRAM, more than the RTX 3080, and have a 320W TGP. We've also heard that Navi 21 will come with 5,120 cores.

With the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090—and the RTX 3070, probably—experiencing difficult launches marred by scalpers' bots, AMD is rumored to have sent out instructions to retailers outlining measures on how to prevent the same scenario with the next Radeon line. Let's hope they work.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/87327-watch-amd-radeon-rx-6000-announcement-right-here.html

 

[Avro Arrow]

HAPPY RED OCTOBER!

(Tech history buffs will think the flag is clever, people who don't know will be confused)

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I'm anxious to see the competition against the 3080 and the 3090.

 

[VitalyT]

 

[noel24]

HAPPY RED OCTOBER!

(Tech history buffs will think the flag is clever, people who don't know will be confused)

By Your nickname, I reckon You torment Yourself over things that Americans took away from Canada?

 

[fps4ever]

Here is hoping AMD can give Nvidia some competition for competition's sake...

 

[Avro Arrow]

By Your nickname, I reckon You torment Yourself over things that Americans took away from Canada?

You reckon wrong. I just love that plane. It's beautiful.

It's also pretty amazing that it was made in the 50's:

It wouldn't look out of place today.

 

[amghwk]

Waiting with anticipation if the 6xxxx card is worthy of my upgrade from my 5700XT. If it's faster than the just released 3070 and lower in price than 3080, I'm game.

Else, I'll go for the 2080Ti killer - 3070.

 

[noel24]

You reckon wrong. I just love that plane. It's beautiful.

It's also pretty amazing that it was made in the 50's:

It wouldn't look out of place today.

Agree.
It's a shame It didn't see a service It deserved.

 

[fadingfool]

Agree.
It's a shame It didn't see a service It deserved.

Imagine another timeline where the Avro Arrow and TSR2 both saw service....

 

[Zinixo]

The king is dead, long live the king

 

[nnguy2]

I was right. Nvidia rushed to launch rtx 3000 because they were afraid of Big Navi.

 

[quadibloc]

Having watched the presentation, I am quite surprised that there is such close performance parity between the new graphics cards from AMD and those from Nvidia, despite them being designed independently in secrecy over the last year.
Also, while support for DirectX 12 ray-tracing is noted, there was no mention of any dedicated ray tracing cores on the chip, so it could well be that ray tracing on AMD cards is still "software-only", that is, using the compute capabilities of the GPU.
It's not surprising that the card supports direct access to main memory, given that AMD invented this feature for its game console chips; that Nvidia has it too is what's surprising. But AMD has added the ability for the CPU to access the video memory... but it works only for AMD CPUs. Neat trick.
Also, of course, their release schedule is different from Nvidia's. Nvidia released the 3080 and 3090 simultaneously, with the 3070 last. AMD is releasing the 6800 and 6800 XT first, with the 6900 XT last.
Interestingly, all three AMD cards have the same amount of memory, 16 gigabytes; that's very different from the Nvidia product.
But unlike the 3090, even the 6900 XT is not claimed to support 8K gaming in any form.

 

[maroon1]

If RX 6900 XT performs on par with 3080 then huge fail because it cost 999 dollars

However we do not know if the AMD slide benchmark was for 6900 XT or 6800. They just said big navi which might mean 6900 XT

 

[Gypsygib]

My armchair analysis..

6900XT pricing is amazing, 3090 looks dead - that's a confirmed kill for AMD. Small market though.

6800XT pricing probably should have been a bit lower without equivalent raytracing and DLSS. Unless performance is better in the majority of popular/new titles - Nvidia probably wins this segment still given AMD's driver history is considered much worse, Nvidia's additional features, and a lot of people would pay $50 for established raytracing and DLSS.

AMD has to get the drivers right this time too, not that Nvidia is perfect but they're more reliable in that regard for hassle free gaming and 10GB doesn't sound nearly as bad as 8GB longer term, seems like just enough to squeak by a couple GPU gens without textures being a bottleneck, something that's a MAJOR annoyance when with enough VRAM they generally cost so few frames and can noticeably improve image quality. No one wants VRAM being the performance limit.

6800 pricing, why buy it when you can spend a bit more for seemingly a lot more performance in the 6800XT? But I guess that 8GB 3070 looks like a major weakness on the cusp of a new console gen where we know VRAM requirements will increase.

It's amazing that AMD is finally competing at every level but if they wanted a Ryzen Event, the 6800XT would have been priced like the 6800 or at most $600.

The real secret sauce could just be availability, if AMD can keep up with stock a lot of frustrated Nvidia customers may just go AMD, won't cost them anything but (probably better) raytracing and DLSS which is worth paying a bit more for but still not that widely supported.

 

[Vulcanproject]

High end competition returns after 5 years. It's been that long since the Fury X and 980Ti battle. Ever since 2016 Nvidia have walked it.

Who would have thunk it? AMD's ship has been turned right around. Top class CPUs putting the hurt on Intel, about to do so more next month. Now a potential challenger for Nvidia's xx80 series card, without the Fury X caveat of much higher power consumption?

Perhaps it'll end up a little slower overall when tested on games that aren't AMD favourites, but at $50 less and packing 6GB more video memory it'll be very attractive indeed.

No blower coolers either, which is a relief. AMD gambled and bought into TSMC 7nm hard several years ago, and this is the payoff.

 

[gerjy5w]

Oh you bought a 3080/3090? I like your wallet g.

 

[quadibloc]

I see I made one mistake. Apparently I missed it when it was mentioned that the design of the Compute Units in RDNA2 was tweaked to significantly improve at least some aspects of ray-tracing performance. This is still technically "software-only", since there are no dedicated ray-tracing cores, but it could offer good ray-tracing performance even so.

 

[neeyik]

Also, while support for DirectX 12 ray-tracing is noted, there was no mention of any dedicated ray tracing cores on the chip, so it could well be that ray tracing on AMD cards is still "software-only", that is, using the compute capabilities of the GPU.

It's not software-based: there are dedicated units for the BVH sampling and ray intersection. These units are within the TMUs, which operate as texture units or RT units, depending on what the scheduler determines the TMUs should be doing. Read more about it here.

Edit: Microsoft said a little about it, when talking about the GPU specs in the Series X

 

[mistyrain]

My armchair analysis..

6900XT pricing is amazing, 3090 looks dead - that's a confirmed kill for AMD. Small market though.

6800XT pricing probably should have been a bit lower without equivalent raytracing and DLSS. Unless performance is better in the majority of popular/new titles - Nvidia probably wins this segment still given AMD's driver history is considered much worse, Nvidia's additional features, and a lot of people would pay $50 for established raytracing and DLSS.

AMD has to get the drivers right this time too, not that Nvidia is perfect but they're more reliable in that regard for hassle free gaming and 10GB doesn't sound nearly as bad as 8GB longer term, seems like just enough to squeak by a couple GPU gens without textures being a bottleneck, something that's a MAJOR annoyance when with enough VRAM they generally cost so few frames and can noticeably improve image quality. No one wants VRAM being the performance limit.

6800 pricing, why buy it when you can spend a bit more for seemingly a lot more performance in the 6800XT? But I guess that 8GB 3070 looks like a major weakness on the cusp of a new console gen where we know VRAM requirements will increase.

It's amazing that AMD is finally competing at every level but if they wanted a Ryzen Event, the 6800XT would have been priced like the 6800 or at most $600.

The real secret sauce could just be availability, if AMD can keep up with stock a lot of frustrated Nvidia customers may just go AMD, won't cost them anything but (probably better) raytracing and DLSS which is worth paying a bit more for but still not that widely supported.

True, but why would one go for ray tracing...is it really out there? Is it really noticable everywhere? Is it in majority of games? Or just for the sake of saying "I have ray tracing"...

 

[Irata]

It's not software-based: there are dedicated units for the BVH sampling and ray intersection. These units are within the TMUs, which operate as texture units or RT units, depending on what the scheduler determines the TMUs should be doing. Read more about it here.

Gamer‘s Nexus said that each CU contains a dedicated hw RT accelerator.

 

[mattferg]

If RX 6900 XT performs on par with 3080 then huge fail because it cost 999 dollars

However we do not know if the AMD slide benchmark was for 6900 XT or 6800. They just said big navi which might mean 6900 XT

The 6800XT numbers were compared to the 3080, with the special CPU combination features turned off. The 6800XT was faster, and MUCH faster with the special features.

The 6900XT numbers were compared to the 3090, with the features on, and it was MUCH faster for MUCH cheaper. It was pretty clear which card, it didn't say Big Navi.

 

[Irata]

If RX 6900 XT performs on par with 3080 then huge fail because it cost 999 dollars

However we do not know if the AMD slide benchmark was for 6900 XT or 6800. They just said big navi which might mean 6900 XT

The slides AMD showed were for a 6900XT (on overdrive) vs the 3900. They also compared the 6800XT to the 3800 (not using overdrive this time) and the 6800 to the 2080Ti, so effectively the 3070.

If I paid enough attention to Gamer‘s Nexus video, tests were done on a Ryzen 5900X btw.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Agree.
It's a shame It didn't see a service It deserved.

Well, I blame the government at the time. I'm not nearly old enough to have actually seen one (although I did see the mock-up at the RCAF museum in Toronto once) but I remember seeing it and just loving it. I've always liked delta-wing fighters. It's just a preference I guess. I'm not one of the delusional ones who thinks that Canada should build the Arrow again. I looked in-depth at what is being offered and, to be honest, I think that we should buy Gripens from Sweden.

The Arrow will just have to remain a "what-if?" part of history... but I've still used it as my online screen name since 1992 (the old BBS days..lol).

 

[Avro Arrow]

True, but why would one go for ray tracing...is it really out there? Is it really noticable everywhere? Is it in majority of games? Or just for the sake of saying "I have ray tracing"...

It's a frill and that's all it will ever be. The ray tracing performance of the RTX 2080 Ti was more than good enough so the ray tracing performance of RDNA 2 should also be more than good enough. Ray tracing is still way too new to really be relevant and that's two years after its introduction. I don't see it being universally used in games for at least five more years.

Hell, DirectX 12 was released over five years ago and most games are still using DirectX 11. These developers are never in a hurry to jump on the newest thing.