Wednesday, October 28th 2020
AMD Announces the Radeon RX 6000 Series: Performance that Restores Competitiveness
AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today unveiled the AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards, delivering powerhouse performance, incredibly life-like visuals, and must-have features that set a new standard for enthusiast-class PC gaming experiences. Representing the forefront of extreme engineering and design, the highly anticipated AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series includes the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics cards, as well as the new flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT - the fastest AMD gaming graphics card ever developed.
AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards are built upon groundbreaking AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture, a new foundation for next-generation consoles, PCs, laptops and mobile devices, designed to deliver the optimal combination of performance and power efficiency. AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture provides up to 2X higher performance in select titles with the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card compared to the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card built on AMD RDNA architecture, and up to 54 percent more performance-per-watt when comparing the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card to the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card using the same 7 nm process technology.
AMD RDNA 2 offers a number of innovations, including applying advanced power saving techniques to high-performance compute units to improve energy efficiency by up to 30 percent per cycle per compute unit, and leveraging high-speed design methodologies to provide up to a 30 percent frequency boost at the same power level. It also includes new AMD Infinity Cache technology that offers up to 2.4X greater bandwidth-per-watt compared to GDDR6-only AMD RDNA -based architectural designs.
"Today's announcement is the culmination of years of R&D focused on bringing the best of AMD Radeon graphics to the enthusiast and ultra-enthusiast gaming markets, and represents a major evolution in PC gaming," said Scott Herkelman, corporate vice president and general manager, Graphics Business Unit at AMD. "The new AMD Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT graphics cards deliver world class 4K and 1440p performance in major AAA titles, new levels of immersion with breathtaking life-like visuals, and must-have features that provide the ultimate gaming experiences. I can't wait for gamers to get these incredible new graphics cards in their hands."
Powerhouse Performance, Vivid Visuals & Incredible Gaming Experiences
AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards support high-bandwidth PCIe 4.0 technology and feature 16 GB of GDDR6 memory to power the most demanding 4K workloads today and in the future. Key features and capabilities include:
Powerhouse Performance
Robust Gaming Ecosystem and Partnerships
In the coming weeks, AMD will release a series of videos from its ISV partners showcasing the incredible gaming experiences enabled by AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards in some of this year's most anticipated games. These videos can be viewed on the AMD website.
AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards are built upon groundbreaking AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture, a new foundation for next-generation consoles, PCs, laptops and mobile devices, designed to deliver the optimal combination of performance and power efficiency. AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture provides up to 2X higher performance in select titles with the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card compared to the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card built on AMD RDNA architecture, and up to 54 percent more performance-per-watt when comparing the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card to the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card using the same 7 nm process technology.
"Today's announcement is the culmination of years of R&D focused on bringing the best of AMD Radeon graphics to the enthusiast and ultra-enthusiast gaming markets, and represents a major evolution in PC gaming," said Scott Herkelman, corporate vice president and general manager, Graphics Business Unit at AMD. "The new AMD Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT graphics cards deliver world class 4K and 1440p performance in major AAA titles, new levels of immersion with breathtaking life-like visuals, and must-have features that provide the ultimate gaming experiences. I can't wait for gamers to get these incredible new graphics cards in their hands."
Powerhouse Performance, Vivid Visuals & Incredible Gaming Experiences
AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards support high-bandwidth PCIe 4.0 technology and feature 16 GB of GDDR6 memory to power the most demanding 4K workloads today and in the future. Key features and capabilities include:
Powerhouse Performance
- AMD Infinity Cache - A high-performance, last-level data cache suitable for 4K and 1440p gaming with the highest level of detail enabled. 128 MB of on-die cache dramatically reduces latency and power consumption, delivering higher overall gaming performance than traditional architectural designs.
- AMD Smart Access Memory - An exclusive feature of systems with AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processors, AMD B550 and X570 motherboards and Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards. It gives AMD Ryzen processors greater access to the high-speed GDDR6 graphics memory, accelerating CPU processing and providing up to a 13-percent performance increase on a AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card in Forza Horizon 4 at 4K when combined with the new Rage Mode one-click overclocking setting.9,10
- Built for Standard Chassis - With a length of 267 mm and 2x8 standard 8-pin power connectors, and designed to operate with existing enthusiast-class 650 W-750 W power supplies, gamers can easily upgrade their existing large to small form factor PCs without additional cost.
- DirectX 12 Ultimate Support - Provides a powerful blend of raytracing, compute, and rasterized effects, such as DirectX Raytracing (DXR) and Variable Rate Shading, to elevate games to a new level of realism.
- DirectX Raytracing (DXR) - Adding a high performance, fixed-function Ray Accelerator engine to each compute unit, AMD RDNA 2-based graphics cards are optimized to deliver real-time lighting, shadow and reflection realism with DXR. When paired with AMD FidelityFX, which enables hybrid rendering, developers can combine rasterized and ray-traced effects to ensure an optimal combination of image quality and performance.
- AMD FidelityFX - An open-source toolkit for game developers available on AMD GPUOpen. It features a collection of lighting, shadow and reflection effects that make it easier for developers to add high-quality post-process effects that make games look beautiful while offering the optimal balance of visual fidelity and performance.
- Variable Rate Shading (VRS) - Dynamically reduces the shading rate for different areas of a frame that do not require a high level of visual detail, delivering higher levels of overall performance with little to no perceptible change in image quality.
- Microsoft DirectStorage Support - Future support for the DirectStorage API enables lightning-fast load times and high-quality textures by eliminating storage API-related bottlenecks and limiting CPU involvement.
- Radeon Software Performance Tuning Presets - Simple one-click presets in Radeon Software help gamers easily extract the most from their graphics card. The presets include the new Rage Mode stable over clocking setting that takes advantage of extra available headroom to deliver higher gaming performance.
- Radeon Anti-Lag - Significantly decreases input-to-display response times and offers a competitive edge in gameplay.
In the coming weeks, AMD will release a series of videos from its ISV partners showcasing the incredible gaming experiences enabled by AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards in some of this year's most anticipated games. These videos can be viewed on the AMD website.
- DIRT 5 - October 29
- Godfall - November 2
- World of Warcraft : Shadowlands - November 10
- RiftBreaker - November 12
- FarCry 6 - November 17
- AMD Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics cards are expected to be available from global etailers/retailers and on AMD.com beginning November 18, 2020, for $579 USD SEP and $649 USD SEP, respectively. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is expected to be available December 8, 2020, for $999 USD SEP.
- AMD Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT graphics cards are also expected to be available from AMD board partners, including ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, PowerColor, SAPPHIRE and XFX, beginning in November 2020.
394 Comments on AMD Announces the Radeon RX 6000 Series: Performance that Restores Competitiveness
RT hasn't been showed. It would mean as a add feature. How I take it, and been explained by AMD, This will work exploit DXR but but some games developed already may not work as intended. It will work slightly different from the NV's RT and that is the reason behind it. AMD claims, 35 games supporting AMD's RT DXR with the Directx12 Ultimate API. I guess we will have to wait and see what the RT is going to look like and how will it perform. The infinity cash is supposedly help a lot with the RT.
We are going to see some real competition from now on and considering rdna2 powers the next gen consoles I expect 90% of games who use ray tracing to optimize it for rnda2.There is NOT going to be any refreshed variants for at least 6 months from Nvidia. They haven't even launched their new cards yet, the 3080/90 have been out for about a month, but its a paper launch and 3070 is launching tomorrow with limited availability.
Accoring to AMD their infinity cache gives then over 3x the bandwidth rate, so that means their 16GB 256bit GDDR6 is DOUBLE the bandwidth of RTX 3080.
Definitely not a killer feature yet and I'll say right now... its good fun if my next GPU can do some of it, but I wouldn't hesitate turning it off.
Where did I say "wowee look how good the 3080 is vs the 2080 ti"?
I've never said that.
As for "AMD didn't improve performance/$ vs the 3070", they haven't. AMD directly compared the 6800 at $579 to the 2080Ti and it was a damn close match. Reviewers (yesterday) proved that the $499 3070 is also a damn close match, so AMD's $579 card is performing like Nvidia's $499 card.
More to the point though, I didn't even compare to Nvidia at all - I specifically said "not moving the performance/$ forward for anyone against their own product stack". We're talking 2080Ti performance for $579 compared to the previous best AMD had to offer, the 5700XT at $399
So, $579 is 45% more expensive than $399, and here's how much faster that extra 45% cost is....
Yeah, AMD's best value 6000-series card has WORSE performance/$ than their current 5000-series card.
The near-future is looking quite nice for AMD; if they can just fully master heterogenous GPU linking as well as MCM GPUs, they could further beat Intel at its own planned game and more readily scale up and down to rival NVIDIA's best.
On a side note, I have to put my 290X back in my system, I'm a my 1080 and wait until Dec unless the RTX 3080 stock issue somehow improves.
6800XT looks a good buy.
If AMD have the better product they should definitely charge for it no doubt about it, but if you think they are your friend.... prepare to be disappointed.
But in a general sense, disregarding the politics and mindshare components entirely - AMD does charge a 'fair' price compared to the competition. And nobody did really complain about the price/perf of the 3080 to begin with. Its a pretty decent deal. We can't expect a hard price point to remain fixed over prolonged periods of time, the value of coin does change.
Doesn't make me a fan of it though and I'll still wait until the price suits me. Patience always works out well, in my experience.
I didnt buy any 3080s or 3090s because I dont buy computers to resell. I usually buy other items like iphones, anything apple.
It would be interesting to see if Nvidia replies back with a 3080 TI... or AMD responds with so and so...and price cuts being a possibility too. Exciting times ahead and more importantly it's good to see AMD levelling up.
For me... definitely sticking with my 1080 TI a little while longer until the AMD vs NVIDIA battle blood dries up and dust settles.