AMD: RX 6800 and 6800 XT performance and market situation

AMD Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT

AMD and Nvidia have both launched a new generation of graphics cards. "Team Green" presented the GeForce RTX 3070 in October (see our performance analysis) and with the 3080 and 3090 (we also have a test analysis ready for this) in September. Since last week, AMD has stepped up with the Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT. It was already quite clear in advance that AMD could offer graphics cards for the first time in a long time, which not only play a role in the price range below 400 euros.

Table of contents

Page 1 AMD Big Navi : AMD back with the RX 6800 and 6800 XT; Technical data 1.1 AMD: Back with Big Navi? 1.2 RX 6800 and 6800 XT: The Technology Page 2 AMD Big Navi: Performance Analysis of the RX 6800 and 6800 XT 2.1 Performance Analysis Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT Page 3 AMD Big Navi: Preliminary Conclusion; General market situation from 400 euros 3.1 Conclusion with reservation 3.1.1 Market situation above 400 euros Page 4 AMD Big Navi: graphics card purchase advice under 400 euros 4.1 Purchase advice: graphics cards up to 400 euros Page 5 Image gallery for "AMD: Performance RX 6800 and 6800 XT as well Market situation "Aufklappen Our special will clarify whether AMD has succeeded and also offer you an up-to-date graphics card purchase advice. The current market situation for graphics cards in general plays a major role, but we will come to that later.

AMD: Back with Big Navi?

AMD launched the Radeon RX 6800 for € 549 and the RX 6800 XT for € 649. This already shows that the two graphics cards with the first new Big Navi GPU are well above the current top AMD graphics card RX 5700 XT and not only want to compete with the 2000 generation from Nvidia.

Powercolor Radeon RX 6800 XT Red Devil Source: PC Games Hardware The direct opponents of the new AMD graphics cards are rather the GeForce RTX 3080 and its little sister RTX 3070, which were released as Founders Edition 699 and 499 euros respectively . As far as the timing of the release of the RXT 2000 series is concerned, AMD also offered the Radeon VII, which is stronger than the RX 5700 XT. However, the Radeon VII was aimed more at professional users and was never a real option for gamers because of the high price, so that Nvidia had no real competition for graphics cards for gamers above around 400 to 450 euros. Even in previous generations, AMD was only able to attack mid-range GTX graphics cards with models such as the Radeon R9 290X or RX 590. Above about 300 euros or after the release of the RX 5700 series, which initially cost over 400 euros, Nvidia had free hand for a long time above 400 euros. Now, however, Nvidia finally seems to be facing headwinds with graphics cards over 500 euros - we are now taking a closer look at the most important technical key data of the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT.

RX 6800 and 6800 XT : The technology

Together with Big Navi, AMD is also introducing the new RDNA2 architecture into gamer PCs. A difference that is directly relevant for gamers is that RDNA2 - like the Nvidia RTX graphics cards - supports ray tracing. However, this property is weaker with AMD graphics cards, so that the expected drop in performance with activated ray tracing is higher than with RTX graphics cards.

Use the two RX 6800 graphics cards as well as the upcoming RX 6900 XT the GPU with the name Navi 21. In the RX 5700 models, Navi 10 GPUs are still used. Navi 21 is manufactured using the 7nm process, just like Navi 10 - but in an optimized version. A smaller production, this to explain, opens up the option of placing the filigree conductor tracks and transistors closer together. This potentially creates more power per square millimeter of chip area. In the case of Navi 21, the GPU is also significantly larger than Navi 10, so you can expect more performance for that alone. But AMD has also modernized the rest of the technology and offers more than the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT in all points - we summarize the technical data in the following table.

Graphics card RX 6800 RX 6800 XT RX 5700 RX 5700 XT GPU Navi 21 Navi 21 Navi 10 Navi 10 Chip area 519 m2 519 m2 251 m2 251 m2 Transistors 26.8 billion 26.8 billion 10.3 billion 10.3 billion shader units 3840 4608 2304 2560 base clock 1700 MHz 1825 MHz 1465 MHz 1606 MHz boost clock 2105 MHz 2250 MHz 1705 MHz 1905 MHz RAM 16Gb GDDR6 16Gb GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 Bandwidth RAM 512 GB / s 512 GB / s 448 GB / s 448 GB / s Power consumption approx. 250 watts 300 watts 185 watts 225 watts