Tested: 5 things to know about AMD's Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT - hagamanchimplas

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AMD's succeeding-gen Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards are here, and they'Re amazing. The $579 Radeon RX 6800 and $649 Radeon RX 6800 XT bring a fierce battle to Nvidia's flagship GeForce CPUs, offering flat-out outstanding performance, a vastly better cooling answer, and more.

We've already dug deep into AMD's fresh RDNA 2 architecture, and delivered our comprehensive verdict on the Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT. After a week's check, custom versions are striking the streets on November 25, and we've also reviewed the hot, uncommunicative XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319. Check those out if you want Sir Thomas More detailed information, but for the quickest hit, here are the five things you need to screw about AMD's new Radeon RX 6800-serial graphics cards.

1. They're iniquitous-sudden

Both of these cards absolutely scream while gaming—regular at 4K settlement with all the eye sugarcoat cranked. The Radeon RX 6800 beatniks the GeForce RTX 3070 in every gaming benchmark we threw at it, omit for in Total Warfare: Troy, which strongly favors Nvidia's architecture. The Radeon RX 6800 XT trades blows with the GeForce RTX 3080 at 4K for $50 less.

Just as vitally, Nvidia's new graphics cards execute their best at 4K resolution. AMD's Radeon RX 6800-series GPUs scale down to lower resolutions with much more potency. If you'atomic number 75 planning to pair your graphics card with a high-refresh rank 1440p or 1080p monitor, you'll get more frames out of AMD's graphics cards—especially at 1080p declaration, where the Radeon RX 6800-series surges outgoing Nvidia's execution in more games.

2. They have a lot of memory

Nvidia opted to kick in the GeForce RTX 3070 8GB of GDDR6 memory, and the RTX 3080 has 10GB of faster GDDR6X. That's fine for most of today's games, simply if you're acting at higher resolutions it might feel a bit incommodious in a year or two. We're already beholding some games exceed 8GB of VRAM usage true at 1440p with ray trace active, and Doom Eternal can go over 10GB with its Incubus settings.

infinity cache latency — The sizeable 16GB of GDDR6 in the Radeon RX 6800-series GPUs is augmented by AMD's Infinity Cache technology.

AMD outfit the Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT with a beefy 16GB of GDDR6, so memory capacity shouldn't be a concern for these graphics cards flatbottomed if demands go along creeping skyward. Better yet, that massive remembering configuration is bolstered by a 128MB "Infinity Cache" located on the GPU itself. The Infinity Cache can handle a great deal of the information for a given skeleton right the die out, lowering latency and energy costs. You can find a lot more info virtually the technical details in our RDNA 2 architecture deep dive.

3. They have ray tracing, but not DLSS

Yep, AMD does ray tracing now. Corresponding Nvidia's rival GeForce RTX GPUs, RDNA 2 bakes consecrated ray acceleration hardware into each Radeon compute unit. AMD's entry offering is fast enough to let you game at some 1440p and 1080p with irradiate tracing along and visual options by and large cranked to the max.

RDNA 2 isn't as efficient at ray trace every bit Nvidia's intermediate-gen applied science, though. Turning on beam of light tracing drops frame rates by or s 38 to 45 percent on the Radeon RX 6800-series cards, compared to 28 to 37 per centum on the GeForce GPUs. That said, Nvidia's card game are smasher harder in Watch Dogs: Legion, with their qualified memory capacity the likely culprit.

The biggest missing piece for Radeon? DLSS. Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sample distribution feature uses consecrated tensor cores to upscale games victimization AI, letting the games render at lower resolutions to increase performance. DLSS 2.0 works care black magic in games that support IT, clawing indorse most OR completely of the frames unoriented to ray tracing's hefty performance impact. The Radeon RX 6800-series lacks an answer to Nvidia's tensor cores operating theater DLSS. AMD has titillated a more open "FidelityFX Superintendent Resolution" feature that could serve As its DLSS challenger across Radeon and next-gen consoles alike, simply details are non-existent, as is the feature article itself.

Beam of light trace is just one and only of umteen DirectX 12 Ultimate features that RDNA 2 supports. AMD's card game will also support Microsoft's DirectStorage API that hopes to kill game-loading multiplication on the Microcomputer.

4. They're faster with Ryzen

AMD is in a unique position as a vendor of both CPUs and GPUs, and the party has lastly figured out a way to turn that to its vantage. If you pair a Radeon RX 6000-serial publication GPU with a Ryzen 5000 mainframe in an X570 motherboard, AMD's new Smart Access Store technology gives the CPU full, unfettered admittance to the artwork card's VRAM, rather than limiting it to the usual 256MB chunks. That bathroom improve performance in some scenarios, sometimes significantly so. It's a compelling reason to buy into AMD's "Ultimate Gaming Platform," as they're calling the Ryzen-Radeon combination nowadays that the companion's CPUs have toppled Intel in play.

It probably won't be an advantage forever. Smart Access Computer storage is essentially AMD's stigmatisation of the "Resizable BAR" PCIe specification, thusly Nvidia and Intel could feasibly flip on the same capabilities. Nvidia told us they already have the feature working on GeForce cards in its labs, in fact. But everything should just work on this inexperienced AMD hardware out of the box. If Intel and Nvidia decided to support Resizable BAR, it would in all probability require BIOS updates more complex than mere driver upgrades.

5. The new coolers are a gravid improvement

AMD is ill-famed for its terrible reference board designs. Enthusiasts cringe when you reboot the hot, loud wailing of the Lope de Vega 64 and infamous Radeon R9 290X. No more.

The Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT finally chuck AMD's cetacean mammal-dash designs for a more common triple-rooter lengthways shape. The results? Significantly cooler temperatures and vastly improved noise levels. They'rhenium not quite as quiet A the radical "menses-through" ice chest on Nvidia's a la mode Founders Edition models, but the new cooling result isn't tatty either. You won't rue having these cards in your system, peculiarly since they'atomic number 75 damned attractive to a fault, as you can see in our Radeon RX 6800-series unboxing.

If reference cards aren't your matter, custom variants from AMD partners like Asus, Sapphire, and XFX started arriving on Nov 25. We've already reviewed the partisan-grade, utterly inaudible XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319.

That's it for the must-know facts. Again, for untold deeper information and graphs abundant, be for certain to hold in out our Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT review, likewise as our deep-nose dive into AMD's RDNA 2 architecture.

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