ASUS Radeon RX 6800 XT STRIX OC Liquid Cooled

[Space Lynx]

My OC'd 9900K is actually doing really well against the 10900K: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-amd-3900-xt-vs-intel-10900k/27.html

Updating the test bench is something I'll do as soon as I have a bit of time. I test many more games than most reviewers, a full retest takes around two weeks of non-stop work. Right now there is simply no time to stop for two weeks, each week there's a new launch, I just reviewed 3 cards in 1 day for AMD, for NVIDIA's next launch I have 6 or 7 reviews, then there's the next AMD launch, and then the next NVIDIA launch. I also have Palit 3070, MSI 3090 in the pipe, and around a dozen SSD reviews. Oh and I'm testing Cyberpunk, too.

Not to mention he takes out time to help members of the community here, like me the other day with thermal pad measurements.

 

[Vya Domus]

I bet one of these at 2.7 Ghz is as fast as a stock 6900XT. But what that means is that a water cooled 6900XT is going to be crazy fast.

 

[Outback Bronze]

Not to mention he takes out time to help members of the community here, like me the other day with thermal pad measurements.

And while he's shifting house. God knows how he does it. Great job Wiz!

 

[W1zzard]

And while he's shifting house. God knows how he does it. Great job Wiz!

The move is complete, my lab is running at full speed. Got a few nice improvements, and have photography/lighting mostly figured out, too

 

[jesdals]

In Denmark the value of this card is actually reasonably compared with the other custom AIB, but hopeing for 6900XT version and 3x Displayport

 

[ZoneDymo]

those cables are completely unacceptable

 

[robertmi]

@W1zzard,
in review conclusion you missed :

Pricing is not pretty. ASUS is pricing this card at $900, which really is a lot of money—$250 higher than the AMD reference which retails for $650. If you are a hardcore overclocker and want to play with OCs all day then this card could still be worth it for its massive overclocking headroom. For gamers I'm not so convinced. $350 for 4% out of the box performance really isn't worth it.

 

[claster17]

why don't I buy 6900XT, when I have $1000.......

Assuming you are one of the 10 people to find a 6900XT at MSRP.

 

[W1zzard]

in review conclusion you missed :

fixed, thanks!

 

[frozen_methane]

My OC'd 9900K is actually doing really well against the 10900K: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-amd-3900-xt-vs-intel-10900k/27.html

Updating the test bench is something I'll do as soon as I have a bit of time. I test many more games than most reviewers, a full retest takes around two weeks of non-stop work. Right now there is simply no time to stop for two weeks, each week there's a new launch, I just reviewed 3 cards in 1 day for AMD, for NVIDIA's next launch I have 6 or 7 reviews, then there's the next AMD launch, and then the next NVIDIA launch. I also have Palit 3070, MSI 3090 in the pipe, and around a dozen SSD reviews. Oh and I'm testing Cyberpunk, too.

Hey W1zzard,

First wanted to say Long time lurker, long time fan. Since the ATI soft mod unlocks you created.

10900k shows much improved performance with high speed ram. I recently upgraded from a 5ghz 9900k w/4x8GB of CL14 3200mhz to a 10900k 5.2ghz and 4700mhz CL18 2x16GB on z490 dark.

This was true plug in play, and >4500mhz CL18 ram on 10900 is mind boggling fast. Is there any way you could 1) test this yourself 2) update your 10900k to use faster dual rank ram with lower timings?

Zen has always been limited by IF clocks, which is <2000mhz, but intel really opens up in perf beyond that and doesn’t have this hard stop. There is still a lot of performance being left on the table for intel. luumi had a good post about this on his YT channel, and kingpin created specific OC profiles for this ram on the z490 dark.

https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820374050?Item=N82E16820374050

 

[W1zzard]

4500mhz

don't have such fast memory, and not sure if it makes sense financially to pay that much. if i can find a zen 3 cpu i might go that route anyway, would save me a ton of trouble with "why aren't you testing on amd?"

 

[ShurikN]

• Three memory chips are missing a thermal pad

Yep, it's an ASUS card alright.

 

[Vya Domus]

Yep, it's an ASUS card alright.

I've come to accept that no matter how much you pay you'll still get non existent QA. That's what happens when people accept this sort of stuff.

 

[ARF]

My OC'd 9900K is actually doing really well against the 10900K: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-amd-3900-xt-vs-intel-10900k/27.html

Updating the test bench is something I'll do as soon as I have a bit of time. I test many more games than most reviewers, a full retest takes around two weeks of non-stop work. Right now there is simply no time to stop for two weeks, each week there's a new launch, I just reviewed 3 cards in 1 day for AMD, for NVIDIA's next launch I have 6 or 7 reviews, then there's the next AMD launch, and then the next NVIDIA launch. I also have Palit 3070, MSI 3090 in the pipe, and around a dozen SSD reviews. Oh and I'm testing Cyberpunk, too.

@W1zzard Hi, are you doing everything alone?
I think the best is to get some helpful buddies who will bench with Ryzen 9 5900X/5950X | X570, and do the older cards testing, too.

 

[W1zzard]

@W1zzard Hi, are you doing everything alone?
I think the best is to get some helpful buddies who will bench with Ryzen 9 5900X/5950X and do the older cards testing, too.

Unfortunately it's not so easy, or there would be a lot more people making reviews as detailed as mine

 

[owen10578]

Holy shit that's an insane overclock. 11% over an ALREADY factory overclocked card is impressive in today's GPU overclocking.

 

[Vayra86]

This is the kind of card i was looking for... but if all you get his higher wattage consumed for no performance gain, ehhhh

1.8% more than the others! I mean... insta buy right

 

[RedelZaVedno]

What's the point in reviewing these GPUs if you can't buy them? Whole Europe is 'out of stock'. Just a free marketing I suppose.

 

[ARF]

What's the point in reviewing these GPUs if you can't buy them? Whole Europe is 'out of stock'. Just a free marketing I suppose.

For some weird reason, anti-logically, Navi 21 is not in production - despite that it's 100% faster than the old fastest and should be considered as the single most important Radeon for the company.
It should be the top priority, while Navi 10 should be stopped and taken out of the market.
This is the product that will return the faith of the gamers in AMD and its graphics division.

 

[laszlo]

i don't know if those few frame differences worth almost 40% price over reference but for sure there will be buyers for it

 

[spnidel]

I guess this card is fine if you want a watercooled card but don't want to get into modding it, but anyone with any PC hardware experience should just get the reference design and watercool it
better temps (therefore potentially higher OC), lower noise for less money

 

[RedelZaVedno]

The problem is that most of these new GPUs are non existent and the ones you can buy are selling at high price premiums. Most basic AIB's RTX 3070 are selling for €650 ($770) and 3080 for €850 ($1,000) in EU. German Mindfactory and Caseking have zero stocks, with exception of 3090 costing €1,749 ($2,060) and up. 2015 mining craze, then Turing and now this... DIY GPU market has become a total shit show

 

[ARF]

The problem is that most of these new GPUs are non existent and the ones you can buy are selling at high price premiums. Most basic AIB's RTX 3070 are selling for €650 ($770) and 3080 for €850 ($1,000) in EU. German Mindfactory and Caseking have zero stocks, with exception of 3090 costing €1,749 ($2,060) and up. 2015 mining craze, then Turing and now this... DIY GPU market has become a total shit show

True, the evil force doesn't want you to upgrade to proper Ultra HD experience. Everything that is Ultra HD capable is either non available or prohibitively expensive.

 

[asuya]

i wish to see AMD GPU RDNA 3 use more than 256 bit bus width..

 

[Chrispy_]

This is an impressive card for sure, but it serves to remind us how little headroom there actually is these days. I love how excited W1zzard is to see a 16% overclock because that's so unusually high. Back in the old days you'd change a 66MHz bus speed to 100MHz and get 50% more without even changing the cooling

One thing I'm curious about is the way this is cooled. Sure, I get that it's easier to use a generic pump/block combo but then they had to spend extra costs tooling and designing a blower shroud and investment casting a custom coldplate that lines up with all the board components. Given this is a relatively low-volume part and it has an almost ridiculous 38% price premium, I'd be expecting a full-coverage waterblock to be a cost-competitive option to manufacture. It would certainly look nicer and lets face it, looks are a big part of why people buy these, given that the actual performance increase from your 38% price premium is just 10%!

Why are you still using 9900K platform for benchmarking? despite having significantly inferior performance relative to 10900K and 5950X, also lacking PCIE Gen4 that could impact modern graphics cards performance!

@W1zzard has already answered this but another valuable point is because then the results are comparable to all the other GPUs in the charts. Any reviewer worth their salt will keep the base platform the same to provide us readers with (much appreciated) context data for as long as possible, and they generally only update their platform when the new platform is found to be holding back the review product by any significant margin.