AMD Radeon RX 6000 "Big Navi" RDNA2 Graphics Card Launch Liveblog

[BoboOOZ]

I would pretty much think that's the way it is, because it would be horrible value if it would be pair with any other platform other than Zen 3, which would force them to put up lower MSRP than they currently have.

So I think it's safe to assume it is system agnostic and it just works like any other HW:

1. you get HW, install it in the system
2. you install drivers in your OS
3. ????
4. profit

Yepp, it's just a GPU cache similar to other caches, it's just they must've done something to improve the size/latency ratio, similar to zen 3. But it's just like the CPU cache works, irrespective of the rest of the system, so does the GPU cache.

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

Easy-Peasy Chinesy... RX6700 with 54CU or 50CU if not will do a price cut on 6800 lol ha ha ha

The rumor mill/leaks so far lead to 6700 XT being Navi 22 aka 40 CU but with blistering clock speeds. But anyways who knows.

 

[windwhirl]

That 6800 kind of pricey at $579.

We're talking 4K performance and 16 GB of VRAM. Not a bad price all things considered.

I'd say RTRT too, but it's not clear how that fares.

 

[Space Lynx]

Sounds like a nice dilemma to have.

I am leaning towards 5600 XT and 6800 XT, but honestly at the end of the day im going to order whatever i can click on fastest that is in stock on launch day for each.

 

[RedelZaVedno]

Pricing with exception of 6900XT is a complete joke. Much worse than Zen 3, because Zen3 dominates Intel and RDNA2 does not.

-I mean $579 USD for RX 6800... No AI upscaling (DLSS), poorer RT implementation. You basically overpay $79 for 8 gigs of vram. Just awful.
-RX 6800 XT $649 USD, again no "DLSS", no RT benchmark comparison, the only reason for buying AMD is 6 gigs more GDDR6 and 50 bucks less. Not Enough by far.
-The only good GPU is 6900XT for $999.

AMD just shot itself in the foot again. This time without a reason. Rasterization performance is here, all AMD had to do was to substantially undercut Ampere Pricing (aka RX 6800 for $449 and RX 6800 XT for $599) and reviewers would have to say they're the smart buy option. As things stand today I expect NGreedia GPU division to grow market share even further into 90% mark at which point AMD being an underdog in discrete DIY GPU market becomes an understatement. So sad

 

[r9]

double the vram for an extra 79 bucks is a fair deal imo.

Personally I would take 6800 with 8gb for $449. I'll take the 4k chance.

 

[BoboOOZ]

Where is @Vayra86 , I think he has to buy a 6900XT now...

 

[kings]

I think that AMD missed an opportunity with the 6800. It's true that it has 16GB VRAM, but it should lose a lot in RT and it doesn't have any DLSS equivalent, being $79 more expensive.

In my view, AMD had made a better move to put this card with 8GB like the RTX 3070 and sold it below $500.

 

[wheresmycar]

Its all about 1440p 144hz gaming for me and both the 6800 and 6800XT look amazing for the task.

Update 16:15 UTC: When paired with Ryzen, you get a gaming performance boost, 13% perf increase.

This is the bit which has me a little confused. These GPUs work better with Ryzen (assuming zen 3) CPUs? What am I missing here?

 

[Dave65]

Damn some nice pricing for sure and that 16 gig.
Wonder how things are in the nvidia crowd today

 

[TheLostSwede]

Its called decoy pricing.

6900 XT is the decoy, it exists primarily to make the 6800 XT look better.

Does that apply to the RTX 3090 as well then?

 

[Chomiq]

Yep, I saw the same thing. You only get this 'significant' uptick when you have an AMD based system...

... but what, EXACTLY is that? Do I have to have a specific generation of CPU? Chipset? What about how these will fare on the MAJORITY of systems out there (intel based) that DO NOT get these boosts? Feels a bit misleading...(but par for the course from AMD/NV).

I think TPU's post cleared that up :

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...

www.techpowerup.com

• 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.

So Infinity Cache is on GPU die, Smart Access Memory is enabled on a 5000-series CPU, B550 or X570 board and a 6000-series GPU. Which means you shouldn't see a drastic decrease in base result on a non 5000 series CPU with similar performance.

 

[Space Lynx]

Does that apply to the RTX 3090 as well then?

I know you have connections lostswede, get me a reserve spot for 5600x and 6800xt, you know you want to!

 

[EarthDog]

Damn some nice pricing for sure and that 16 gig.
Wonder how things are in the nvidia crowd today

No F's given... competition is AWESOME!

That said, I'm surprised they reached 3090 levels... but I'd like to see results without overclocking (Rage) and Infinifty Cache (AMD only)...

I think TPU's post cleared that up :

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...

www.techpowerup.com

• 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.

So Infinity Cache is on GPU die, Smart Access Memory is enabled on a 5000-series CPU, B550 or X570 board and a 6000-series GPU. Which means you shouldn't see a drastic decrease in base result on a non 5000 series CPU with similar performance.

Ty!

Sorry, there are like 3 threads going on here about this subject... The one birdie posted, the live blog, and then the summary...

So, basically, it is the latest and greatest to get that performance. Cool beans. Awesome for those going balls deep into the ecosystem, bad news for the majority of existing PC owners that won't get the boost at all because they are running Intel.

 

[Cheeseball]

Pricing is a complete joke. Much worse than Zen 3, because Zen3 dominates and RDNA2 doesn't. I mean $579 USD for RX 6800... No AI upscaling, poorer RT implementation. You basically overpay $79 for 8 gigs of vram. Just aweful.
RX 6800 XT $649 USD, again no "DLSS", no RT benchmark comparison, the only reason for buying AMD is 6 gigs more GDDR6 and 50 bucks less. Not Enough by far. The only good GPU is 6900XT for $999. AMD just shot itself in the foot again. This time without a reason. Rasterization performance is here, all AMD had to do was to substantially undercut Ampere Pricing (aka RX 6800 for $449 and RX 6800 XT for $599) and reviewers would have to say they're the smart buy option. As things stand today I expect NGreedia GPU division to grow market share even further into 90% mark at which point AMD being an underdog in discrete DIY GPU market becomes an understatement. So sad

Did you expect AMD to have some sort of AI/Tensor-focused implementation that could take on NVIDIA's DLSS? RDNA and RDNA2 are mostly rasterzation improvements which is mostly good for gaming and 3D workstation use. They've been brute-forcing power and it seems to be going well without overdoing the power consumption. This is a win-win for them regardless.

 

[R0H1T]

Infinity cache is on die L2 or L2 (L2+L3 cache?) not sure where anyone got this idea that it depends on anything else! As for Smart Access Memory, I assume everyone forgot Heterogeneous compute (HSA) or unified memory pool? Well this is probably that one early implementation for it & no it you can't just add any (AMD) CPU to make it work.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Does that apply to the RTX 3090 as well then?

Yup.

Decoy pricing is a fundamental marketing technique. It applies to both the low-end (why buy "small fries" when "medium fries" are just 10-cents more expensive for double the food?), as well as the high-end ($1500 is clearly not reasonable. So obviously $700 is a reasonable price).

------

Everyone does it. "i3" doesn't have enough features, "i7" is too expensive, clearly "i5" is the perfect CPU. Eventually, when Intel wants to sell more i7s, they invent the i9 so that the i9 can serve as the decoy and "nudge" people towards buying the i7.

 

[Chrispy_]

Isn't the 6800 competing with the 3080?

I think the XT is competing with the 3080, The vanilla 6800 is quite a significant CU and clockspeed chop from the 6800XT, I guess it may compete with a 3070Ti if Nvidia decide to officially counter it at $579.

 

[randompeep]

It's funny now you mention smartphone market. Phone makers even Apple are making phones in ye olden days' $700 flagship prices again. Ofc they don't call it flagship but it's 90% flagship anyway.

In a world where the consumers become more & more strange/different from yesterday, the flagships are getting pricier. Also, the cost of production gets higher, so the profit...but I'd say everyone would be satisfied it the GPU market would be about seeing the full stack in the release day.
Too many poor kids are talking about the next-gen GPU, yet their budget for a new PC is 3-4 times smaller than the actual flagship product.
And yeah, as a consumer I except seeing more the first day with later add-ons (XT/Ti's) and gimmicks (power limit unlock for example).
BTW how you say 90% flagship for Apple products ? It's actually a really variable procentage, depending on the time of the year...but as for the Q4 of every year, I see Apple leading the smartphone/tablet market any hour. Both single core and multi core performance...I mean it's their Christmas beast mode 100% 1500$ per purchase season
So both nvidia and amd wanna join the campus somehow.

 

[BoboOOZ]

I think that AMD missed an opportunity with the 6800. It's true that it has 16GB VRAM, but it should lose a lot in RT and it doesn't have DLSS, being $79 more expensive.

In my view, AMD had made a better move to have put this card with 8GB like the RTX 3070 and sold it below $500.

I think it's not an interesting card for them to sell, it shares the same big die with the bigger brothers, so they lose money by artificially cutting down the die, because very few will have so many defective CU as to come naturally with only 60 CU.

I'm sure the 6700XT will be more interesting, so either buy a 3070 or a 6800XT, or wait for the 6700XT.

 

[RedelZaVedno]

Damn some nice pricing for sure and that 16 gig.
Wonder how things are in the nvidia crowd today

$80 for +8 gigs of GDDR6... Micron 1GB GDDR6 @ 14Gbps currently costs $6,86 when ordered in low quantities and much less if ordered in tons. You're paying double the price AMD pays for it. How is that a good deal?

 

[R0H1T]

How is that a good deal?

Really now? So do you buy groceries at the same rate farmers sell it to say Amazon or any other retailer

 

[Vayra86]

OK They fucking nailed it this time.

No further comments. Might switch for this.

 

[r9]

AMD has both intel and nvidia between a rock and a hard place. Think of Big navi as just the beginning equivalent to the first Ryzen. Once they get some money to come from it will get even better for AMD.
Both intel and nvidia have the money to fight it, this will propel the tech game big time!

 

[Space Lynx]

AMD has both intel and nvidia between a rock and a hard place. Think of Big navi as just the beginning equivalent to the first Ryzen. Once they get some money to come from it will get even better for AMD.
Both intel and nvidia have the money to fight it, this will propel the tech game big time!

its glorious time to be a gamer that is certain.