Wednesday, October 28th 2020

AMD Announces the Radeon RX 6000 Series: Performance that Restores Competitiveness

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Oct 28th, 2020 13:08 Updated: Oct 28th, 2020 13:33 Discuss (394 Comments)

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

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.

True to Life, High-Fidelity Visuals

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.

Elevated Gaming Experience

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.

AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series Product Family

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.

DIRT 5 - October 29
Godfall - November 2
World of Warcraft : Shadowlands - November 10
RiftBreaker - November 12
FarCry 6 - November 17

Pricing and Availability

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.

The complete AMD slide deck follows.

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394 Comments on AMD Announces the Radeon RX 6000 Series: Performance that Restores Competitiveness

#176

SLK

ebivanWell, everything said about RT performance on Radeon is pure speculation at this point. So don't judge it, before there is any evidence! Anyways it remains to be seen how RT will be adopted in the future, right now its a goodie, used on 20 games (none of which interests me). The future may bring broader adoption of RT, as the consoles can do it. But even then, the consoles are slower than the 6800xt and games will be optimized for consoles (as its always been) so RT it will probably run great on the AMD cards too.

I have tried all the different hardware encoders out there, and none of them was good. To be honest they're all shit! Sorry if you want quality, you have to do it in software. So no reason to go green for me there. Only reason to go for NVENC would be if you only had a tiny 4 or 6 core CPU that couldn't handle software encoding. But if you only had such a low tier cpu, you wouldn't buy 3080/6800xt anyways.

DLSS is absolutely overhyped. First of all there is only a handful of games that support it. Then the difference to native rendering is absolutely visible even with 2.0. Its just a blur. And, last but not least, it only makes sense for absolute hardcore esport guys, because 3080 and 6800xt seen to have no problems rendering in 4k/60fps or 1440p/120fps, so its really only a thing for competitive 4k/120fps+ gamers.

While I respect your opinion, for $50 more, I get all these features. At this price bracket, $50 is not much. 5900X and 3080 for me.

#177

Vya Domus

mandeloreIf AMD are going to compare a 6900XT with rage mode (overclocked), surely they should compare it to an overclocked 3090 for a fair comparison.

Or just not use rage mode. Cant get a proper idea of performance, although they "are" just slides.

To be fair, if they are right and it's a one click feature, it's basically PBO for GPUs. No one seems to have a problem with PBO so you have that.

MusselsWhat uhh, what titles out there support AMD's ray tracing right now?

DXR is hardware agnostic, AMD just has to provide a back end implelentation.

#178

SLK

ratirtIt's 5 games at start. double-clicked for some reason and didn't fix it sorry for that.

Where did you get this from? Your thoughts?
There is DLSS in form of Super Resolution. We don't know how it works but it is there and we will have to wait and see what it brings.
You dont know if it will be slower than Amperes RT. 6000 series will use Microsoft DXR API with the Ray Accelerators for every CU.
You way of perceiving this makes me confused.
CUDA support :) , NVENC :)
It's just the same way if I'd said NV sucks cause it doesn't have AMD Cores.

Marketing rule number 1: Always show yr best

Yesterday's Radeon presentation clearly indicates they have matched Ampere's raster performance. They did not show RT numbers and Super Resolution is something they are working on. If the RT was as good as Ampere, they would have shown numbers. Simple deduction.

#179

turbogear

JismAnd if it's not what you need in relation of sound, slap a watercooler and your done. Watercooling always has better efficiency compared to air to be honest. And because of that you could hold the boost clocks longer. I'm glad for AMD to bring back not one but two generations leap forward that competes with the 3090 which costs 1500 compared to 999$. 24GB of Vram is'nt a real reason to pay 500$ more, considering nvidia pays like 4 $ per each extra memory chip. The margins are huge.

That is exactly why I picked reference cards for Vega 64 and well Radeon VII was only available as reference. :rolleyes:
Replaced the cooler with water block and applied undervolt which helped to keep the boost clock higher for much longer times in games giving higher gaming performance.
With water block the temperatures were great for both Vega64 and Radeon VII with maximum 40°C at full load. :D

The results from my benchmarks for both of these cards tuned with undervolt and watercooling is available in Owners section at TPU forum for respective cards. ;)

#180

Mussels

Freshwater Moderator

Vya DomusTo be fair, if they are right and it's a one click feature, it's basically PBO for GPUs. No one seems to have a problem with PBO so you have that.

DXR is hardware agnostic, AMD just has to provide a back end implelentation.

So DXR works in all RTX titles? I assume no one really knows yet, but these games have "RTX: On" not "DXR: On"

#181

ratirt

SLKMarketing rule number 1: Always show yr best

Yesterday's Radeon presentation clearly indicates they have matched Ampere's raster performance. They did not show RT numbers and Super Resolution is something they are working on. If the RT was as good as Ampere, they would have shown numbers. Simple deduction.

Best doesn't mean there is only one way of doing it. Sure but this doesn't change a thing.
There aren't many games supporting DXR 1.0 and 1.1 at the moment. When NV released RTX there were none. So maybe give it some time for the cards to launch and then make an opinion when they are tested? AMD will host another presentation with the deep dive in the RDNA2's architecture. Expect this to be revealed then.

MusselsSo DXR works in all RTX titles? I assume no one really knows yet, but these games have "RTX: On" not "DXR: On"

Well NV was first to implement RT so RTX it is but it doesn't mean it won't change to DXR if AMD joins the club.

#182

Vya Domus

SLKMarketing rule number 1: Always show yr best

Yesterday's Radeon presentation clearly indicates they have matched Ampere's raster performance. They did not show RT numbers and Super Resolution is something they are working on. If the RT was as good as Ampere, they would have shown numbers. Simple deduction.

When they showed those numbers back at the Ryzen event that should have been from a 6900XT, right ? Except it wasn't, they didn't show their best.

MusselsSo DXR works in all RTX titles? I assume no one really knows yet, but these games have "RTX: On" not "DXR: On"

There is no such thing as "enabling RTX", it's a marketing trick Nvidia did to make it seem like it's their technology and they seem to have pulled it successfully. DXR is the feature that enables ray tracing, RTX is just the back end implementation, there is no RTX API or anything like that.

#183

ebivan

SLKWhile I respect your opinion, for $50 more, I get all these features. At this price bracket, $50 is not much. 5900X and 3080 for me.

It is not 50 more. There ARE no 3080 for 700€. There never were 700$ FE cards on the market for private customers!
RTX3080 for 700$ was a big fat lie!

Since Xbox uses DX ML, Super Resolution will be in most new games, dont worry!

#184

ratirt

ebivanIt is not 50 more. There ARE no 3080 for 700€. There never were 700$ FE cards on the market for private customers!
RTX3080 for 700$ was a big fat lie!

Since Xbox uses DX ML, Super Resolution will be in most new games, dont worry!

It's not just the price that is higher. The cards are nowhere to be found. In my area these cards availability is January

#185

SLK

ebivanIt is not 50 more. There ARE no 3080 for 700€. There never were 700$ FE cards on the market for private customers!
RTX3080 for 700$ was a big fat lie!

Since Xbox uses DX ML, Super Resolution will be in most new games, dont worry!

I expect the same for 6800XT, $649 will be another lie.

ratirtIt's not just the price that is higher. The cards are nowhere to be found. In my area these cards availability is January

That sucks. I should be getting mine in mid-November.

#186

ratirt

SLKI expect the same for 6800XT, $649 will be another lie.

That depends on the availability not if somebody lied or not.
NV availability was non existent and that bump the price. Nobody says NV lied about the MSRP price and so as AMD doesn't lie. Put yourself together bro :)

SLKThat sucks. I should be getting mine in mid-November.

If you get it, good for you :) Pre-orders is not my type of thing.

#187

TheoneandonlyMrK

SLKI expect the same for 6800XT, $649 will be another lie.

That sucks. I should be getting mine in mid-November.

Doubtful I bought a Polaris and Vega at AMD's MSRP day one price, and if not I wouldn't just pay a lier anyway.

#188

ebivan

SLKI expect the same for 6800XT, $649 will be another lie.

As I said, it remains to be seen. Right now you are just making assumptions.
Fact is, Nvidia lied to us. And they keep lying to us when they say RTX3000 availability is not a supply issue.
Another fact is, its not the first time they broadly lied to their customers (remember GTX970?)

For AMD, at least they have record of not falsifying their bar graphs. For availability, well we'll see. But looking at their choice to use regular GDDR6 and makig up for the lack of bandwidth by using cache lets me hope that there will be more cards on launch day.

#189

Xuper

What's with DLSS/RT ? I feel they're like Async compute which fanboy made them overhyped. come after 5 years or more , so we can talk about raytracing/super resolution.I remembered :

1) Ryzen 1xxx/2xxx can't get higher clock so intel is better until Ryzen 3xxx came out.
2) Ryzen 3xxx has higher memory latency so Intel is best for gaming until AMD announces Ryzen 5xxx
3) Ryzen 5xxx is matched and people are looking for something ?

#190

Mussels

Freshwater Moderator

XuperWhat's with DLSS/RT ? I feel they're like Async compute which fanboy made them overhyped. come after 5 years or more , so we can talk about raytracing/super resolution.I remembered :

1) Ryzen 1xxx/2xxx can't get higher clock so intel is better until Ryzen 3xxx came out.
2) Ryzen 3xxx has higher memory latency so Intel is best for gaming until AMD announces Ryzen 5xxx
3) Ryzen 5xxx is matched and people are looking for something ?

At least DLSS allows cards to age more gracefully, it'd be like having a 780ti right now that managed 4k60 (while really running the game at like 720p)
I see *that* tech, in either implementation to be a massive deal going forward

#191

Xuper

MusselsAt least DLSS allows cards to age more gracefully, it'd be like having a 780ti right now that managed 4k60 (while really running the game at like 720p)
I see *that* tech, in either implementation to be a massive deal going forward

Problem is you can't get DLSS on every game.even after 5 years , DLSS will implement only in famous game.

Edit : I forgot to mention it : Hitman 2.

#192

ebivan

MusselsAt least DLSS allows cards to age more gracefully, it'd be like having a 780ti right now that managed 4k60 (while really running the game at like 720p)
I see *that* tech, in either implementation to be a massive deal going forward

I doubt that. As you may know, having cards age gravefully is not in the interest of tech companies. They need to sell new hardware, not support old hardware. So right now they'll give you DLSS 2.0 support for current games, next years games will get DLSS 3.0 support, but sooner or later older cards wont support future DLSS versions, so that current cards will be limited to DLSS Versions of their corresponding generation.

#193

SLK

ebivanAs I said, it remains to be seen. Right now you are just making assumptions.
Fact is, Nvidia lied to us. And they keep lying to us when they say RTX3000 availability is not a supply issue.
Another fact is, its not the first time they broadly lied to their customers (remember GTX970?)

For AMD, at least they have record of not falsifying their bar graphs. For availability, well we'll see. But looking at their choice to use regular GDDR6 and makig up for the lack of bandwidth by using cache lets me hope that there will be more cards on launch day.

Nvidia share is 80% in the DGPU market. Of course, the demand is much higher for Nvidia than AMD. It's not a fair comparison. Moreover, Nvidia created so much hype around Ampere launch that demand was unprecedented. Gamer's Nexus Steve explained this in one of his videos to investigate whether its a supply issue or a demand issue. According to him, its a demand issue.

#194

Valantar

SLKMarketing rule number 1: Always show yr best

Yesterday's Radeon presentation clearly indicates they have matched Ampere's raster performance. They did not show RT numbers and Super Resolution is something they are working on. If the RT was as good as Ampere, they would have shown numbers. Simple deduction.

I don't think anyone here is arguing that RDNA 2 will match Ampere in RT performance, but also going by simple deduction: given that the RT performance of RDNA 2 is good enough for both major console manufacturers, it can't be that far behind. Console makers are fully aware of the RT capabilities of Turing (and the issues with these), so I would expect them to demand at least parity with Turing for RT on a console to be even remotely viable.

MusselsSo DXR works in all RTX titles? I assume no one really knows yet, but these games have "RTX: On" not "DXR: On"

That's because RTX has so far been the only existing implementation of DXR so far, so Nvidia has had free rein to market it as they have seen fit. RTX is in effect nothing more than a sticker on top of DXR.

SLKI expect the same for 6800XT, $649 will be another lie.

There's little reason to expect this - while this is no doubt a very large die, unlike the GA102 it's made by the best foundry around and on a tried and tested process node. Yields should be much better than for Nvidia, and while there's still no fab capacity to spare on TSMC 7nm, AMD has likely bought up all the wafer starts they possibly could in the run-up to RDNA 2 and Ryzen 5000 (not to mention the new consoles). Of course a lot of capacity also opened up a while back when Apple moved to 5nm, which AMD likely grabbed a decent chunk of.

Will availability be tight? No doubt - the gaming market has grown massively in the last few years, so interest in and demand for these products is higher than ever, and production capacity hasn't really increased to match (no wonder, seeing how building a fab costs billions of dollars and takes at least 5 years). It stands to reason that supply will be tighter than before. But I don't expect supply for these to be as tight in relation to demand compared to the RTX 3000-series.

MusselsAt least DLSS allows cards to age more gracefully, it'd be like having a 780ti right now that managed 4k60 (while really running the game at like 720p)
I see *that* tech, in either implementation to be a massive deal going forward

That's an excellent point, but it also needs a universal driver-side implementation (one that doesn't require developer intervention) to work like that. AMD is promising their alternative to be more in that direction (though I'd be surprised if it was as good as Nvidia's in terms of image quality), and even cross-platform (so any developer effort would be applicable also to competing GPUs, making adoption more likely). It'd also be really interesting to see if consoles would adopt this.

By the way, looking forward to when the new consoles are out and the RX 6700 series appear: it will be really cool to see someone do a comparative review with the more traditional wide VRAM buses of the consoles vs. the narrow bus+cache solution for RDNA2 dGPUs.

#195

Max(IT)

ebivanDLSS is absolutely overhyped. First of all there is only a handful of games that support it. Then the difference to native rendering is absolutely visible even with 2.0. Its just a blur.

you clearly don't have a card supporting it, because your assumptions are absolutely wrong.
DLSS works very well and definitely it is NOT just blur.

The only true point is the limited support in games.

#196

SLK

XuperProblem is you can't get DLSS on every game.even after 5 years , DLSS will implement only in famous game.

Edit : I forgot to mention it : Hitman 2.

Famous games have the most players. Most players mean Nvidia can sell more cards. Which card do you think a Fortnite player will choose? A card without DLSS or a card with DLSS??

#197

ratirt

SLKFamous games have the most players. Most players mean Nvidia can sell more cards. Which card do you think a Fortnite player will choose? A card without DLSS or a card with DLSS??

You are missing the point. If NV implements DLLS only in some games, that means the DLSS is harder to implement and since it is such a good feature not all games will have it. That is not good from a player perspective. If AMD's super resolution can be done easier, the support for it will be better and it will not matter which game you play you will have that feature. Also the development from game developers will be easier meaning support will be better.

#198

Xuper

SLKFamous games have the most players. Most players mean Nvidia can sell more cards. Which card do you think a Fortnite player will choose? A card without DLSS or a card with DLSS??

and with game that doesn't support DLSS , you think player chooses a card with DLSS or a card with more raw power? What I wanted to say that DLSS support is limited.
AMD left a lot clocks for AIB card.I'm sure RDNA2 AIB can reach 2400mhz or more with water cooling.

#199

Max(IT)

XuperProblem is you can't get DLSS on every game.even after 5 years , DLSS will implement only in famous game.

Edit : I forgot to mention it : Hitman 2.

DLSS 2.0 (the previous version was quite crap) was released in March 2020...

#200

Zach_01

SLKFamous games have the most players. Most players mean Nvidia can sell more cards. Which card do you think a Fortnite player will choose? A card without DLSS or a card with DLSS??

~~Because Fortnite is all about eye-candy... Bad example.~~
my bad... confused with RTRT

I still believe this tho...
I like eye-candy games but right now both RTRT and DLSS2.0 are more than limited. Maybe in a year or 2.

Xuperand with game that doesn't support DLSS , you think player chooses a card with DLSS or a card with more raw power? What I wanted to say that DLSS support is limited.
AMD left a lot clocks for AIB card.I'm sure RDNA2 AIB can reach 2400mhz or more with water cooling.

AIBs dont need water coolers to push 350W on these cards. I had a card in the past with 375W on air(2fan) cooler and it was fine. As long as you can get that heat outside of case.

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