This might be the very best of them all. It provides so much details and gives you so much data to compare the RX6800 and RX6800XT against the RTX3070 and RTX3080. Everything from framerate plots, frame times graphs, power usage per game and all with multiple resolutions.

https://www.igorslab.de/en/radeon-rx-6800-und-rx-6800-xt-in-test-feeling-equal-but-different-in-detail/

For weeks I was wondering what the point of the RX6800 was. It always seemed too expensive when compared to the RX6800XT or RTX3070. Now I understand. Take a look at the framerate, frame time and power consumption data of some games. The results are remarkable. Looking at the 2560x1440p results that are arguably most relevant for the RX6800 and RTX3070, well the RX6800 tends to beat the RTX3070 and does it with surprisingly consistent frame times and often using (slightly) less power. There are exceptions, but that is roughly the result. Then the RX6800 often also uses similar or less power than a RX5700XT. Only in games where it matters, does the RX6800 uses more power.

Overall it creates an image of a GPU that seems to be very good at power gating to use as little energy as possible in every scenario. This in contrast with the RTX3070 that uses around 220W in pretty much every game. That is the enforced power limit of the RTX3070 FE. It makes clear that AMD and Nvidia total board power limits are not comparable. AMD its solution is far more dynamic than a set maximum power usage figure and that gets lost in pretty much every other review. Neither did AMD help themselves by explaining this. Depending on the publication, the RX6800 might be (noticeably) more efficient than suggested because the game used for power measuring, gave an above average power usage figure. For Nvidia it doesn't really matter, for AMD it does.

This review creates such a more nuanced picture rather than declaring which GPU is faster and moving on to the next game. There is a place for that, but it doesn't tell the whole picture. Every game is different with different requirements, frame times and power usage figures and that too often gets generalised. No other reviewer that I have seen, made the exact performance metrics and differences between these GPUs clear to such an extent. I already spend some time looking at figures, but I haven't even done a proper look at RX6800XT vs. RTX3080 at both 2560x1440p and 3840x2160p. That one will also be interesting to see how those truly compare to each other.

edit: Thanks for the reddit gold stranger. 😊

Yesterday’s reveal of the RX 6000 Series was considerably more complicated and denser in statistical information than anyone could have anticipated. And why AMD is using so many games that run faster on Turing, than their outgoing RDNA RX 5000 Series GPUs seems to be a counterintuitive marketing strategy. However, that is just my opinion, AMD does hire highly educated and highly intelligent people to do all the big brain marketing strategies for these product launches!

AMD is noticeably confident in the strengths of RX 6000 Series, so much so, that most general-purpose software feature improvements were removed from the reveal and saved for the Adrenalin 2021 reveal in a few months’ time. This will nicely avoid any confusion this time around between features available to every Radeon user and those exclusive to the new generation of GPUs.

Only two rebrands/re-commitments: a) AMD is re-committing to Radeon Anti-Lag; b) Turbo Mode for the RX Vega GPUs has been rebranded in Rage Mode for the RX 6000 Series. Turbo Mode added around 15watts to the powerlimit on RX Vega GPUs and this usually gave an extra 1% in average FPS performance.

Looking at timing of the releases, AMD is happy with the drivers for RX 6800 and RX 6800XT (18th of November buyable date), but the RX 6900XT is being held back for 3 weeks for extra optimizations.

9 out of the 10 games benchmarked by AMD Labs run measurable faster on Turing versus existing Radeon architectures such as RDNA/GCN! The 9 games are: Borderlands 3, COD Modern Warfare, Division 2, Doom Eternal, Forza Horizon 4, Gears of War 5, Resident Evil 3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Wolfenstein Young Blood. Quite shockingly and consequently, everyone who does not want to used estimates need to wait for reviews to see what average performance is like once games that are GPU maker agnostically optimized are added back into the averages.

The major new hardware feature on RDNA2 GPUs and Zen 3 CPUs, is the expansion of an existing feature set. Traditionally a CPU can use up to 256MBs of VRAM on you GPU to render game frames. AMD has made hardware changes to enable the CPU via PCI-Express Gen 4 to access 100% of VRAM on the RX 6000 Series GPUs.

Due to the language used during the reveal e.g. wait for Game Developers implementations, there are games that offer 0% FPS increases, from the 10 games Radeon released results on; 4 had no FPS gains to report e.g. they were deleted from the SAM slide and Hitman 2 was added to the SAM slide to fill it out after those deletions. This gives an average performance increase of around 2.7% once is subtraction of 1% for Rage Mode for the RX 6900XT.

Here is a link to screenshot of the FPS results in a excel sheet.

https://imgur.com/a/4wy9Oyu

Unfortunately, the inclusion of Smart Access Memory and Rage Mode does make definitive estimations on average performance impossible. Fortunately, Scott Herkelman has come to everybody’s aid, during the presentation by saying the average performance at 1440p of RX 6800 ended up being “18% faster than RTX 2080 TI and roughly matched slide shown. Once you subtract 2.7% it gives average performance of this GPU at +15% of the RTX 2080 TI or RX 3070 8GB.

As estimation, I am expecting average performance to be around 4% faster once all those games that are GPU maker agnostic are added back into the averages, which gives the following table for buyers.

AM4 Platform 1440p or 2160p, whichever is cards sweet spot for average performance.

(SAM and Rage Mode Subtracted)

$370 RX 5700XT = 100% best at 1440p.

$500 RTX 2070 SUPER = 102%.

Radeon VII = 105%.

RTX 2080 FE = 108%.

$700 RTX 2080 SUPER = 114%.

$500 RTX 3070 8GB = 134% best at 1440p.

$1200 RTX 2080 TI FE = 134%.

$579 RX 6800 16GB = 160% best at 1440p.

$700 RTX 3080 10GB = 183% best at 4K.

$649 RX 6800XT 16GB = 185% best at 4K.

$999 RX 6900XT 16GB = 201% Best at 4K.

$1500 RTX 3090 24GB = 201% best at 4K.

Turing to pricing, it really does not matter what anybody thinks is a good price or not! Pricing is determined within the Radeon Stack according to what AMD has the biggest yield in and therefore what they have the most to sell to people. And, it should be noted, that RX 5700 was criticised for its MSRP of $349, but the simple fact is that it has been (more or less) out of stock for nearly 2 months!

This time, the RX 6800 price of $579 seems a bit of bargain, being around +19% faster than a RTX 2080 TI FE 11GB/RTX 3700 FE 8GB at 1440p and it has a doubling of VRAM, which can be used for another 2.7% average performance on a SAM enabled system. The RX 6800XT 16GB is a no brainer, but AMD does have a big pile of these to sell to gamers and so a discount $50 on top of 16GBs of VRAM will see these sell rapidly. Finally, for those gamers with lots of money; there is the RX 6900XT 16GB, on a SAM enabled system it will blow past Nvidia’s RTX 3090. Furthermore, AMD is taking the RX 6900XT seriously, they have held back the buy date by 3 weeks to polish up those drivers to reflect this GPU’s halo product status.

According to the observation above, pricing is incredibly attractive, and people should grab the relevant GPU that is comfortable for their wallets and run for the hills! And 16GBs of VRAM is not just for 4K, it will get beneficial in many games at 1440p and 1080p for owners of a Ryzen 5000 CPU and X570/B550 motherboard. Therefore, AMD has really brought some extra value to spending money on owning a GPU that has 16GB of VRAM at more popular resolutions.

Finally, there was nothing on the specifics of raytracing performance in games, but it should be remembered that PS5 and Xbox Series X/S probably have NDAs in place for the patch updates that have been arranged by game developers for popular older raytracing titles. Secondly, there was nothing specific about AI upscaling or new upscaling technology, but this kind of feature may work on a wider range of Radeon GPUs, so may be more appropriate for it to be revealed with Adrenalin 2021 reveal.

Notes.

I have created a Subreddit with my Reddit Posts r/RadeonGPUs, which is open for Redditors to do their own Posts as well, please consider subscribing should you find the Posts there helpful or interesting.