General Gaming AMD's Big Navi / RDNA2 Conference : Starts at 12pm EST

[Zaku3]

God the the 6900XT makes no sense but I want it.

[Mr.Vic20]

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Are these cards going to be able to run the ray-tracing effects in games already out, like Control?  Or is Control, and other games, using Nvidia's proprietary code?  The only reason I would want to upgrade right now is to see how ray tracing looks for myself.  

[crispy4000]

34 minutes ago, cusideabelincoln said:

Are these cards going to be able to run the ray-tracing effects in games already out, like Control?  Or is Control, and other games, using Nvidia's proprietary code?  The only reason I would want to upgrade right now is to see how ray tracing looks for myself.  

I’d expect it for Control since it’s getting RT on consoles.  But who knows for sure.

[Spork3245]

1 hour ago, cusideabelincoln said:

Are these cards going to be able to run the ray-tracing effects in games already out, like Control?  Or is Control, and other games, using Nvidia's proprietary code?  The only reason I would want to upgrade right now is to see how ray tracing looks for myself.  

 

I believe the devs would have to patch it in since it's using RTX Ray-Tracing and not DX12-RT.

[cusideabelincoln]

2 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

 

I believe the devs would have to patch it in since it's using RTX Ray-Tracing and not DX12-RT.

 

Is that true for every current ray-traced game?  In other words does any game currently use DXR?

[Spork3245]

3 minutes ago, cusideabelincoln said:

 

Is that true for every current ray-traced game?  In other words does any game currently use DXR?

IIRC Crysis Remake uses DX12 RT and not RTX. I also don’t know what would actually be involved in “converting” from DX12 RT from RTX to add support for AMD cards (it’s also unknown if nVidia cards could/will be negatively impacted in terms of RT performance by doing RT via DX12 and not RTX)

[SimpleG]

@Spork3245

So RTX RT is like Dolby Vision and DXR is like HDR10?

[Spork3245]

Just now, SimpleG said:

@Spork3245

So RTX RT is like Dolby Vision and DXR is like HDR10?

No, because Dolby Vision is actually better than HDR10  

DX12 RT and RTX produce the same effect. There’s unlikely to be a performance difference between RTX vs DXR, it’s just currently unknown either way. RTX is obviously optimized for nVidia’s architecture, whereas DXR is a neutral ground - that’s the reason I think it’s worth pointing out it could make for a difference.

[Massdriver]

AMD Radeon RX 6800 RDNA 2 Graphics Card DXR Raytracing Benchmarks Leak Out

WCCFTECH.COM

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The first DXR raytracing performance benchmark of the AMD Radeon RX 6800 "Big Navi" RDNA 2 GPU based graphics card have leaked out.

I’m very skeptical of this because if it was this good, then I would have thought AMD would have shown it off by now. It’s not confirmed.

[Brian]

AMD is

[TomCat]

On 10/31/2020 at 1:23 PM, Massdriver said:

AMD Radeon RX 6800 RDNA 2 Graphics Card DXR Raytracing Benchmarks Leak Out

WCCFTECH.COM

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The first DXR raytracing performance benchmark of the AMD Radeon RX 6800 "Big Navi" RDNA 2 GPU based graphics card have leaked out.

I’m very skeptical of this because if it was this good, then I would have thought AMD would have shown it off by now. It’s not confirmed.

I told yall it was going to be this good but I'm a Quack according to some of you  Hell its better then i actually thought

[AbsolutSurgen]

3 hours ago, TomCat said:

I told yall it was going to be this good but I'm a Quack according to some of you  Hell its better then i actually thought

[Mr.Vic20]

 

[Ominous]

So is this their mid tier or bottom tier card?  

[crispy4000]

 

[crispy4000]

 

 

[Massdriver]

 

 

 

Quote

 

The Radeon RX 6800 XT delivers excellent performance. Just two months ago, the RTX 3080 completely blew us away with its performance, and we weren't overly confident AMD could pull this one off. But for the first time in a long time, the latest Radeons are able to catch up to newly released high-end GeForce GPUs. As it's often the case, depending on the game and even the quality settings used, the RX 6800 XT and RTX 3080 trade blows, so it’s impossible to pick an absolute winner, they’re both so evenly matched.

 

The advantages of the GeForce GPU may be more mature ray tracing support and DLSS 2.0, both of which aren’t major selling points in our opinion unless you play a specific selection of games. DLSS 2.0 is amazing, it’s just not in enough games. The best RT implementations we’re seen so far are Watch Dogs Legion and Control, though the performance hit is massive, but at least you can notice the effects in those titles.

 

The advantages of the Radeon RX 6800 XT includes a much larger VRAM buffer, SAM support, and a slight price decrease. The 16GB VRAM buffer is almost certainly going to prove beneficial down the track, think 1-2 years. Support for SAM is potentially a big one, but by being limited to Ryzen 5000 CPUs on a 500 series motherboard, its impact is less significant. Nvidia claims they're working on getting this working with Ampere GPUs, too, and for all platforms, which is a good thing as it will force AMD to open up support to all users.

 

As for availability, all indications point to horrid availability for this initial wave of reference models. The release date for custom cards is November 25, a week from this review. We’re hearing stock levels are better for those models, but there’s no way they’re not going to sell out in seconds. Expect availability pain until at least December, that’s just par for the course with popular GPU releases. We’d expect AMD to be on top of demand within two months though, if not, it will be another Ampere-like disaster.

 

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Review

WWW.TECHSPOT.COM

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The Radeon RX 6800 XT is AMD's new high-end gaming graphics card targeting the GeForce RTX 3080. We've had the card in our labs for a while,...

 

 

 

 

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AMD has achieved the unthinkable—they now have parity with NVIDIA. Just a few weeks ago, people thought NVIDIA was so far ahead that they couldn't be caught anymore. The new RDNA II architecture brings with it substantial improvements in every area, that made this achievement possible. 

The Radeon RX 6800 XT is almost twice (!) as fast as the Radeon RX 5700 XT, quite a huge gain generation-over-generation. Now of course these cards are at different price points, but they are the best AMD had at the time. Compared to NVIDIA's offerings, we see great results, too. The RX 6800 XT is just 6% behind the RTX 3080, 25% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti and the RTX 3070. Before AMD's announcement I've heard people say "oh if AMD could only match 2080 Ti, that would be huge win for them". NVIDIA's fastest, the RTX 3090 is 16% faster than the RX 6800 XT, at much higher pricing. AMD has the RX 6900 XT ready for that, we'll know more details soon.

With these performance numbers, Radeon RX 6800 XT is the perfect choice for 4K gaming at 60 FPS. It achieved that mark in nearly all titles in our test suite. Things are different once you turn on raytracing. Just like on NVIDIA, there's a hefty performance hit when running with the DirectX Raytracing API. We only tested two games so far, but it seems the loss in performance is bigger than on NVIDIA, who improved in that area with Ampere. Remember, this is AMD's first generation raytracing. Performance is still very respectable. I expected RT performance similar to Pascal cards, where RT is emulated in shaders. RX 6800 XT does much better than that, I'd say we will see performance roughly around RTX 2080 Ti levels, with big differences depending on the title. AMD has a clear advantage here—they are the hardware provider for the new gaming consoles, which have raytracing as one of their new features. This means that game developers will optimize their games for this architecture's RT capabilities. What we've seen so far is that RT on the consoles will be minimal, just some basic eye candy, but I'm sure developers will figure out new innovative ways in the coming years. NVIDIA is big on raytracing and they have to, to keep their performance lead.

/review/amd-radeon-rx-6800-xt/images/small.png

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Review - NVIDIA is in Trouble

WWW.TECHPOWERUP.COM

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The Radeon RX 6800 XT is a worthy opponent to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. It offers similar performance at better power efficiency and lower noise levels. In our Radeon RX 6800 XT review we also take a closer look at raytracing and the "Rage Mode", a new 1-click method for overclocking.

 

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT review | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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The RX 6800 XT is a fantastic 4K graphics card—no ifs, ands, or buts.

 

[Zaku3]

My local MC got 10 6800 non XT. 

[Massdriver]

http://videocardz.com//favicon-16x16.png AMD Radeon RX 6800 Series Review Roundup - VideoCardz.com

VIDEOCARDZ.COM

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AMD launches Radeon RX 6800 Series Today AMD lifts the embargo on Radeon RX 6800 series reviews and product sales. Learn more about the graphics cards before you buy them… or buy them and then read/watch the review AMD Radeon RX 6800 series AMD Radeon RX 6800 Series AMD Radeon RX 6800 Series Media […]

 

Roundup above.

 

I've seen conflicting info on power efficiency. This seems to be the more favorable review on it: 

/review/amd-radeon-rx-6800-xt/images/small.png

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Review - NVIDIA is in Trouble

WWW.TECHPOWERUP.COM

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The Radeon RX 6800 XT is a worthy opponent to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. It offers similar performance at better power efficiency and lower noise levels. In our Radeon RX 6800 XT review we also take a closer look at raytracing and the "Rage Mode", a new 1-click method for overclocking.

 

[Zaku3]

So far it seems if you want 4K perf and RT then go Nvidia. 

 

I am of the opinion though that you should get what you can get. AIBs launch next wed supposedly.

[Massdriver]

3 minutes ago, Zaku3 said:

So far it seems if you want 4K perf and RT then go Nvidia. 

 

I am of the opinion though that you should get what you can get. AIBs launch next wed supposedly.

The rumor is low stock for AMD, but there is speculation that they will ramp up quicker than Nvidia. We shall see.

 

AMD seems to beat the 3080 in 1080p and trade blows in 1440p. 

[Zaku3]

Just now, Massdriver said:

The rumor is low stock for AMD, but there is speculation that they will ramp up quicker than Nvidia. We shall see.

 

What I have seen is AMD send most of their chips to AIBs. So AIBs should flood the market in the coming weeks.

[cusideabelincoln]

I'm impressed how power efficient it is; so there seems to be room to make a bigger version.  

 

It does fall off the 3080 at 4k, so I bet memory bandwidth is the priblem.  and I'll need to see how the RT performance stacks up in other games, but almost half a 3080 in Control is kinda bad.

[Massdriver]

RDNA 2 has exceeded my expectations dramatically. It feels a lot like Zen 2 (Ryzen 3000 series). AMD got really close to Intel with Zen 2 and it was more efficient, but it wasn't quite there with gaming. RDNA 2 is close in many respects, but falls behind with RT and the lack of DLSS (for now).  Will AMD come out the gate to actually beat Nvidia with RDNA 3? I always thought RDNA 3 would be where AMD would be competitive because their R&D budget would finally be where it needs to be to compete. The fact they are already doing this well with RDNA 2 says a lot.

[Zaku3]

9 minutes ago, cusideabelincoln said:

I'm impressed how power efficient it is; so there seems to be room to make a bigger version.  

 

It does fall off the 3080 at 4k, so I bet memory bandwidth is the priblem.  and I'll need to see how the RT performance stacks up in other games, but almost half a 3080 in Control is kinda bad.

 

That is my biggest concern. I bought control and saw medium for my 5700 XT and figured I'd wait. I still want an AMD card but if I can find a 3080 I might jump on it.

[AbsolutSurgen]

10 minutes ago, cusideabelincoln said:

I'm impressed how power efficient it is; so there seems to be room to make a bigger version.  

 

It does fall off the 3080 at 4k, so I bet memory bandwidth is the priblem.  and I'll need to see how the RT performance stacks up in other games, but almost half a 3080 in Control is kinda bad.

 

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Eurogamer: AMD Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT review: the Digital Foundry verdict

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The conclusion of this review will be a bit different based on your outlook. If you're an AMD fan, then yes, this is the Red Team's best showing in years: competitively priced and potently performant graphics cards, capable of substantially improved frame-rates and armed with a far stronger feature set than the 'Little Navi' cards we saw last year. The inclusion of support for ray tracing, variable rate shading, mesh shaders and DirectStorage means that you'll be well set up to take advantage of cross-gen games that use these features on Xbox Series X and PC. The addition of Smart Access Memory also does genuinely deliver performance gains in some games without hampering it in others, making it a nice value add for users with Ryzen 5000 CPUs and AMD 500-series motherboards. Meanwhile, Rage Mode overclocking presents an easy way of wringing extra power from your card without invalidating your warranty or requiring any specialist knowledge, and power efficiency has improved sharply over AMD's last-gen options. It's all great stuff, and to have it wrapped up in a stylish metal-clad card that really looks the part is just fantastic.

For buyers considering both Nvidia and AMD offerings, the Radeon 6000 series is a more complex proposition. When we first outlined how the new cards fit into the existing landscape, we noted that the RX 6800 operated at an $80 premium over the RTX 3070, so we'd expect to see roughly 15 per cent better performance than its closest Nvidia counterpart. Likewise, with the 6800 XT costing $50 less than its Team Green equivalent, then getting within five per cent of the Nvidia card would make it the better value option.

AMD largely achieves those aims, yet outside of base performance there are some areas of weakness. We recorded great performance from the RX 6800 over the RTX 3070, with the AMD card managing around 10 to 15 per cent more 4K performance than the 3070 in most games we tested. It's an even stronger proposition at 1440p, where the RX 6800 doesn't lose a single head-to-head and often holds a double-digit lead. However, that doesn't take into account RT performance, where the 3070 recorded 20 to 34 per cent faster frame-rates in our testing.

Similarly, let's consider the RX 6800 XT and the RX 3080. At 4K, we're seeing anywhere from a narrow three per cent lead over the 3080 to a 24 per cent deficit, although the disadvantage is normally in the region of three to eight per cent. That's enough to stay competitive, and doesn't factor in Rage Mode, manual overclocking or Smart Access Memory (SAM), all of which could tip the scales a little further in AMD's favour. At 1440p, the AMD card is relatively stronger, ranging from a three per cent deficit to a six per cent lead, discounting Control where the 3080 leads by 14 per cent even with RT and DLSS disabled. Again, RT performance is poor for the RX 6800 XT, with the AMD card trailing by between 34 and 64 per cent depending on the game.

Some games won't run in RT at all, either - Quake 2 RTX, an open-source but Nvidia-backed project, refuses to start, while Shadow of the Tomb Raider enables RTX and DLSS together, so you don't have the option to turn on ray traced shadows on AMD hardware at all. There's also no DLSS equivalent to really address this significant performance differential - yet. AMD is working on FidelityFX Super Resolution, an open solution they promise will be easier for developers to adopt, but it's still under development and not available to test just yet. However, we've got to keep in mind that this is AMD's first-generation RT implementation, so they still have a grace period to turn things around and deliver more competitive results here.

While RT isn't yet AMD's strong point, there are still excellent engineering feats in Big Navi that we have to applaud. Smart Access Memory is a really cool technology that does work great in some games, even though 10 per cent performance gains seem to be the exception rather than the rule. In most of our testing, we saw only one or two per cent uplifts in performance, especially at 4K where AMD really needs the additional firepower that SAM could provide. However, this is essentially free performance if you have the right hardware, so even minor gains are still a net positive. Likewise, the fact that AMD can compete with the 3080's GDDR6X memory proves that their Infinity Cache idea holds water - even though the broadly stronger relative performance at 1440p than at 4K suggests that the approach might have its limitations.

Ultimately, Big Navi is the big step forward that AMD's fans were hoping for, bringing the brand in closer contention with Nvidia than we expected. If Team Red is able to keep its cards on store shelves, then it could capitalise on an unexpected moment of weakness from its competition. Given its use of TSMC 7nm GPUs and GDDR6 memory rather than rarer Samsung 8nm GPUs and GDDR6X memory, that actually may be a possibility too.

We're fascinated to see how the remainder of the Big Navi family performs, and we remain hopeful that we'll see EVEN LARGER NAVI in a few years' time. After all, the fans deserve nothing less.

 

[Zaku3]

These scalpers are crazy. 1k+ for the 6800.

[AbsolutSurgen]

Tom's Hardware: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 Review: Nipping at Ampere's Heels

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It's been a long time since AMD had a legitimate contender for the GPU throne. The last time AMD was this close … well, maybe Hawaii (Radeon R9 290X) was competitive in performance at least, while using quite a bit more power. That's sort of been the standard disclaimer for AMD GPUs for quite a few years. Yes, AMD has some fast GPUs, but they tend to use a lot of power. The other alternative was best illustrated by one of the best budget GPUs of the past couple of years: AMD isn't the fastest, but dang, look how cheap the RX 570 is! With the Radeon RX 6800 series, AMD is mostly able to put questions of power and performance behind it. Mostly.

The RX 6800 XT ends up just a bit slower than the RTX 3080 overall in traditional rendering, but it costs less, and it uses a bit less power (unless you kick on Rage Mode, in which case it's a tie). There are enough games where AMD comes out ahead that you can make a legitimate case for AMD having the better card. Plus, 16GB of VRAM is definitely helpful in a few of the games we tested — or at least, 8GB isn't enough in some cases. The RX 6800 does even better against the RTX 3070, generally winning most benchmarks by a decent margin. Of course, it costs more, but if you have to pick between the 6800 and 3070, we'd spend the extra $80.

The problem is, that's a slippery slope. At that point, we'd also spend an extra $70 to go to the RX 6800 XT … and $50 more for the RTX 3080, with its superior ray tracing and support for DLSS, is easy enough to justify. Now we're looking at a $700 graphics card instead of a $500 graphics card, but at least it's a decent jump in performance.

Of course, you can't buy any of the Nvidia RTX 30-series GPUs right now. Well, you can, if you get lucky. It's not that Nvidia isn't producing cards; it's just not producing enough cards to satisfy the demand. And, let's be real for a moment: There's not a chance in hell AMD's RX 6800 series are going to do any better. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but these cards are going to sell out. You know, just like every other high-end GPU and CPU launched in the past couple of months.

What's more, AMD is better off producing more Ryzen 5000 series CPUs than Radeon RX 6000 GPUs. Just look at the chip sizes and other components. A Ryzen 9 5900X has two 80mm square compute die with a 12nm IO die in a relatively compact package, and AMD is currently selling every single one of those CPUs for $550 — or $800 for the 5950X. The Navi 21 GPU, by comparison, is made on the same TSMC N7 wafers, and it uses 519mm square, plus it needs GDDR6 memory, a beefy cooler and fan, and all sorts of other components. And it still only sells for roughly the same price as the 5900X.

Which isn't to say you shouldn't want to buy an RX 6800 card. It's really going to come down to personal opinions on how important ray tracing will become in the coming years. The consoles now support the technology, but even the Xbox Series X can't keep up with an RX 6800, never mind an RTX 3080. Plus, while some games like Control make great use of ray tracing effects, in many other games, the ray tracing could be disabled, and most people wouldn't really miss it. We're still quite a ways off from anything approaching Hollywood levels of fidelity rendered in real time.

In terms of features, Nvidia still comes out ahead. Faster ray tracing, plus DLSS — and whatever else those Tensor cores might be used for in the future — seems like the safer bet long term. But there are still a lot of games forgoing ray tracing effects, or games where ray tracing doesn't make a lot of sense considering how it causes frame rates to plummet. Fortnite in creative mode might be fine for ray tracing, but I can't imagine many competitive players being willing to tank performance just for some eye candy. The same goes for Call of Duty. But then there's Cyberpunk 2077 looming, which could be the killer game that ray tracing hardware needs.

We asked earlier if Big Navi, aka RDNA2, was AMD's Ryzen moment for its GPUs. In a lot of ways, it's exactly that. The first generation Ryzen CPUs brought 8-core CPUs to mainstream platforms, with aggressive prices that Intel had avoided. But the first generation Zen CPUs and motherboards were raw and had some issues, and it wasn't until Zen 2 that AMD really started winning key matchups, and Zen 3 finally has AMD in the lead. Perhaps it's better to say that Navi, in general, is AMD trying to repeat what it did on the CPU side of things.

RX 6800 (Navi 21) is literally a bigger, enhanced version of last year's Navi 10 GPUs. It's up to twice the CUs, twice the memory, and is at least a big step closer to feature parity with Nvidia now. If you can find a Radeon RX 6800 or RX 6800 XT in stock any time before 2021, it's definitely worth considering. RX 6800 and Big Navi aren't priced particularly aggressively, but they do slot in nicely just above and below Nvidia's competing RTX 3070 and 3080.  

 

[cusideabelincoln]

8 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

 

 

 

 

Oh boy, AMD will desperately need a DLSS alternative to compete in the 4K+RT space..  These numbers do seem to align with the RT performance we seem to be getting from the PS5/XSX, so these cards could be fine through most of this generation the consoles act as the baseline for game devs much like the PS4/Xbone did.

 

  

5 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Tom's Hardware: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 Review: Nipping at Ampere's Heels

 

 

And digging through Tom's ray-tracing numbers, it looks like the 6800s' raw RT performance is closer to a 2070 or 2060 Super than a 2080 Ti.  Which isn't terrible surprising, considering Digital Foundry did find the PS5's RT performance-per-image-quality was a bit worse than a 2060 Super.  And speaking of Watch Dogs, review sites should probably have thrown out the RT results because it's obvious the Radeon cards are using fewer RT effects.

[crispy4000]

57 minutes ago, cusideabelincoln said:

 

 

Oh boy, AMD will desperately need a DLSS alternative to compete in the 4K+RT space..  These numbers do seem to align with the RT performance we seem to be getting from the PS5/XSX, so these cards could be fine through most of this generation the consoles act as the baseline for game devs much like the PS4/Xbone did.

Actually, no.  The consoles are quite a bit behind both AMD cards.  Watch Dogs Legion can’t hold 4k30 at a ‘low’ RT setting on them, which isn’t even a menu option on PC.

 

These cards should be more than enough until a console refresh.  You might have to make some compromises though depending on the game.  (ie: 1440p, 30fps, lowering RT settings)

[cusideabelincoln]

13 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Actually, no.  The consoles are quite a bit behind both AMD cards.  Watch Dogs Legion can’t hold 4k30 at a ‘low’ RT setting, which isn’t even a menu option on PC.

 

These cards should be more than enough until a console refresh, unless developers scale RT to Nvidia’s spec. 

 

Read the rest of my reply, as I mean "align" to be the RT performance scales as you would have expected from PS5->XSX->6800->6800XT.  Going through various RT results from Tom's, Gamer's Nexus, Hardware Unboxed, and Arstechnica, the pattern seems to be the 6800XT can slightly exceed 3070/2080 Ti performance in games that use RT effects minimally, but performance relative to Nvidia cards gets worse with more effects used, dropping closer to RTX 2070 levels.

 

Edit:

I misremembered the Digital Foundry Watch Dogs RT video, as I was currently thinking they tested with a PS5.  But they actually tested with an XSX, so the fact they found its performance to be slightly below a 2060 Super makes sense, considering in Control, a game with similar RT effects as WD, without using DLSS, the 6800 performs around a 2070 with the 6800 XT performing around a 2080/Super.  Watch Dogs on PC with 6800 cards appears to be bugged and not using the same RT effects as Nvidia cards.  Perhaps the game is trying to use the "hidden" console settings when it detects Navi 2?

[Zaku3]

Just got my card in. About 2-2.5 times the performance of my 5700XT. Super happy with it. Wish I had a day off today but eh.

[Ominous]

So it's AMD.