# ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X



## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2020)

The ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X comes with three 8-pin power inputs, which brings the card's maximum board power to 525 W. The cooler is a big triple-slot, triple-fan monstrosity that achieves excellent temperatures, better than any other RX 6800 XT custom design so far.

*Show full review*


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## Xuper (Dec 22, 2020)

Perf/Watt is king ? The only AIB Card that beat 6800 Ref.Impressive but with that price...

Edit : If we look at all GPU reviews in TPU review, TPU ranked this card as King of Perf/watt.


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## Solid State Soul ( SSS ) (Dec 22, 2020)

Just curios why have you left Deus Ex Mankind Divided from your benchmarks ? 

It was ported by the people behind Tomb raider and is fairly hardware taxing when fully maxed to the point it made controversy when it launched, i think people would like to see that game bench marked instead of say Detroit become human but hey thats just my opinion


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## spnidel (Dec 22, 2020)

noise-normalized cooler performance is worse than reference? 
how do you end up screwing it up like that with a hefty heatsink like this?
no way, something's got to be wrong about that test result, I don't believe a huge slab of metal is worse at cooling the thing than the admittedly great reference cooler


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## dir_d (Dec 22, 2020)

Is the memory in the 6800 series already pushed to the max, is that why AMD does not want anyone to touch the mem speed?


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## Solid State Soul ( SSS ) (Dec 22, 2020)

spnidel said:


> noise-normalized cooler performance is worse than reference?
> how do you end up screwing it up like that with a hefty heatsink like this?


Asus makes the best coolers hands down, since pascal their designs mostly scores the lowest temperatures, their max contact base plates are no joke shiz just works


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## spnidel (Dec 22, 2020)

dir_d said:


> Is the memory in the 6800 series already pushed to the max, is that why AMD does not want anyone to touch the mem speed?


I think if it was pushed to the max you'd see artifacts and crashes when maxed out given the current limits


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## kane nas (Dec 22, 2020)

you probably need to refresh the numbers with SAM also the Intel system holds back high end gpu


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## Ravenas (Dec 22, 2020)

I have mentioned this previously, but I think it is time that we recognize the fact that AMD made a good reference design for the first time in at least a decade. Maybe they caught the vendors by surprise?


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## dj-electric (Dec 22, 2020)

Well this is uh...


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## ARF (Dec 22, 2020)

RTX 3090 performance for half the money. Quite impressive, actually.

The reference AMD cooler must be best-in-class if these can't beat it.


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## lukart (Dec 23, 2020)

Whats the Power limit on the OC bios? 290w?

Also, would be interesting to see how each brand coolers compares to each other, dont know if you can pull all that data into one cooler performance chart?
The card looks pretty impressive, just wish that prices would settle closer to the MSRP, for sure this Taichi would match great with my Taichi X570


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## SirKronan (Dec 23, 2020)

Slightly better temps than reference. Slightly better overclocking than reference. MASSIVE PRICE INCREASE, yet still "Highly Recommended"? 

Excuse me, but how can they justify this? You only have to make something a small bit better and are free to charge an arm and a leg more, and that's worthy of a high recommendation??? 

Ridiculous. The "recommendation" from reviewers needs to be NOT RECOMMENDED. DO NOT BUY UNTIL PRICES COME BACK DOWN TO EARTH. By recommending this, they are literally recommending price hikes, which are harming already strapped consumers that have a hard time finding any high end cards available, let alone close to MSRP. 

This crap needs to stop. I would love sites like TechPowerup to help consumers. Highly recommending a $170 price hike over reference is NOT HELPING.


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## TomTomTom (Dec 23, 2020)

how on earth does the overclocked model have lower power consumption and better perf/watt than the reference card?? this goes against all logic!


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## W1zzard (Dec 23, 2020)

TomTomTom said:


> how on earth does the overclocked model have lower power consumption and better perf/watt than the reference card?? this goes against all logic!


Yup, that's what I was thinking, too, especially since there's no significant VRM changes and voltages are very similar, too. Probably silicon lottery.



SirKronan said:


> Slightly better temps than reference. Slightly better overclocking than reference. MASSIVE PRICE INCREASE, yet still "Highly Recommended"?


It's a VERY good card, fast, quiet, energy efficient. Yup pricing is high, I talked about this in the conclusion. I agree with you, don't get me wrong, but isn't this card MUCH cheaper and better than RTX 2080 Ti half a year ago? If you want to buy a new card and have $1000 budget, what would you buy?



SirKronan said:


> UNTIL PRICES COME BACK DOWN TO EARTH


I'm afraid prices will never come down. I wanted to write "maybe buy a console", but the situation isn't any better there. at least not until someone sues the companies making up fake prices, and wins


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## watzupken (Dec 23, 2020)

TomTomTom said:


> how on earth does the overclocked model have lower power consumption and better perf/watt than the reference card?? this goes against all logic!


It depends. If reference model is more aggressive in feeding power to the chip, then its possible that it will draw more power. Perhaps there is room to undervolt the reference card. But I think it is a combination of silicon lottery and the default power they are feeding the GPUs.


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## Khonjel (Dec 23, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> The "gearwheel" design language of ASRock has been well received by enthusiasts



(X) Doubt

I've literally seen people choosing other brands or models because of the garish looking gearwheels on their boards.


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## ARF (Dec 23, 2020)

Of the Radeon brands, I'd trust Sapphire the most, and then ASRock - all the others including Powercolor, MSI, XFX, etc afterwards... The reference design is also quite good this time.


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## TheinsanegamerN (Dec 23, 2020)

Attrocious value compared to the stock card. Sure it can perform better and have better performance, but not enough to justfy such a large price increase. 26% more money, worse noise normalized thermals, and a bit of OC headroom. No thanks.


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## SirKronan (Dec 23, 2020)

TheinsanegamerN said:


> Attrocious value compared to the stock card. Sure it can perform better and have better performance, but not enough to justfy such a large price increase. 26% more money, worse noise normalized thermals, and a bit of OC headroom. No thanks.



Yet still "Highly Recommended"...


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## N3M3515 (Dec 23, 2020)

1. Great review, up to the part of "highly recommended" that statement defies all logic!
2. Yet another pointless aib gpu ultra-over priced.
3. Highly recomended! -hilarious.
4. Much better to buy a reference model when they become available at msrp, or one of those aib that come at the same msrp as reference.
5. Highly recomended! SERIOUSLY!?
6. I guess amd really outdid themselves with the refeence model.


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## TheinsanegamerN (Dec 23, 2020)

N3M3515 said:


> I guess amd really outdid themselves with the refeence model.


 the thing is there’s room for improvement. XFXs design, for instance, both ran cooler and quieter then reference, and when the fans were cranked up a bit there was more thermal headroom to play with. We’ve seen the AIB cards also consistently overclock better.

The AIBs are just hell bent on jacking up the prices though. If they carried 18gbps memory and coolers that ran 15-20c lower, then maybe, MAYBE they’d be worth the big premium. As it is there is really no reason to buy one over the reference model and a waterbock, except for the utter lack of reference cards. Newegg doesn’t even bother listing them anymore. If you want a 6800xt, you HAVE to buy the expensive AIB ones.


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## critofur (Dec 27, 2020)

The $800 seems way out of line, unless AMD come up with something to equal Nvidia's DLSS 2.x in a future update?


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## watzupken (Dec 28, 2020)

ARF said:


> Of the Radeon brands, I'd trust Sapphire the most, and then ASRock - all the others including Powercolor, MSI, XFX, etc afterwards... The reference design is also quite good this time.


Normally I feel Sapphire cards are one of the best out there. However this time round, I feel Sapphire's Nitro+ series is somewhat disappointing. While the cooler is still capable of keeping the card cool, the results are just slightly better than reference design, and quite a bit behind their competitors like XFX and Powercolor. There are reviews out there that pointed out that the cooler is very light, which I feel is the reason for the not that impressive thermal results. There is no magic here. If the heatsink its light, means less aluminum or copper, which translates to less surface to soak up heat.



TheinsanegamerN said:


> the thing is there’s room for improvement. XFXs design, for instance, both ran cooler and quieter then reference, and when the fans were cranked up a bit there was more thermal headroom to play with. We’ve seen the AIB cards also consistently overclock better.
> 
> The AIBs are just hell bent on jacking up the prices though. If they carried 18gbps memory and coolers that ran 15-20c lower, then maybe, MAYBE they’d be worth the big premium. As it is there is really no reason to buy one over the reference model and a waterbock, except for the utter lack of reference cards. Newegg doesn’t even bother listing them anymore. If you want a 6800xt, you HAVE to buy the expensive AIB ones.


Reference design tend to be the cheapest as the main aim is to deliver sufficient performance/ cooling at the MSRP. So while there is room for improvement, I think AMD have done very well as compared to their previous reference design. AIB will always need to up the game if they want to segregate themselves from competition, but in doing so, they get to charge you a higher price. So no surprises that custom AIB cards tend to and expected to perform better


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## critofur (Dec 28, 2020)

Well, unless companies like AMD and Nvidia are selling their "reference" cards at a _*loss*_, then, AIB makes could theoretically sell cards at a _LOWER _price, since they have fabrication advantages such as, they actually make the cards themselves, and volume of production/volume of sales.


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## mikeljason (Jan 9, 2021)

So... I have this card and I am extremely happy with It. It runs everything I've thrown at it (including cyberpunk) at 4k. It is super quiet in my case. I would say it is well nigh perfect. It is expensive. I would have liked to paid less, but considering I got a 3 year warranty (sapphire is 2) and didn't pay actual scalpers more than the manufacturers price to get it, I'm mostly happy. Of course I had to buy a combo that newegg apparently changed their combo policy the day before I ordered this and I'm now stuck with an itx Intel board for my Ryzen build. Seriously, does anyone have a 3 slot monster like this on an itx Mobo? Why would you do that???  I would have bought the card with no combo, but I never saw it for sale as a single item. Shady as the day is long. If anybody wants a ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 LGA 1200 Intel Z490 SATA 6Gb/s Mini ITX Intel Motherboard, please reach out. I'll sell it for what it cost me plus shipping.

Also

This is an error on this review. The rgb header is an output, not an input. I confirmed this with Asrock. I wish this was not the case as is like to have all my rgb controlled by a single program, but that seems impossible.


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## W1zzard (Jan 9, 2021)

mikeljason said:


> This is an error on this review. The rgb header is an output, not an input. I confirmed this with Asrock. I wish this was not the case as is like to have all my rgb controlled by a single program, but that seems impossible.


Thanks, I've fixed this in my test. Looks like ASRock updated their website since my review to clarify this feature.


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