AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

[Blueberries]

It's probably because you're the last person to be talking about perf per dollar.

So once again, performance/cost makes a lot of sense when comparing two products of either equal performance or equal cost. The 3090 is not equivalent in performance or cost to a 3080 nor any other product on the market.

If I had purchased a 3090 when there was another card with the same performance for 60% of the price then yes, that would be nonsensical, unfortunate, and I would be a hypocrite.

 

[milewski1015]

Great review as always. Unfortunately from a consumer standpoint, the 6900XT is pointless. Let's play devil's advocate for a second and take AMD's word for it that the 6900XT is a 3090 killer. Looking at the performance summary page, the 3090 is only 5%/6%/8% faster (1080p/1440p/4K) but for a 33% price increase over the 6900XT. If you're dead set on getting the best AMD GPU you can and don't care about raytracing, then between only the top offerings from each company, the 6900XT seems like a pretty good deal. But unfortunately, the top offerings from each company don't exist in a vacuum. The 6900XT is 1% slower at 1080p and 1%/2% faster at 1440p/4K compared to the 3080, for a 30% price hike. It's 5%/5%/7% faster than the 6800XT, but for an even larger 35% price hike. There's no reason that I can fathom why you'd spend at $300 more over the cost of a 3080 for a 2% performance improvement at best.

It's great to see that AMD can make high end GPUs that perform in the same ballpark as Nvidia's high-end offerings. Nobody expected them to be as competitive as they are this generation, and they deserve the credit for that. The lackluster RT performance I can understand given it's their first go at it while Nvidia has had over a year to further optimize the tech. The biggest issue with this card is the fact that AMD tries to market it head to head with the 3090. Again, sure, at most it's 8% worse for 33% cheaper, but because the 6800XT/3080 are so close to it in performance, there's absolutely no reason to buy one. Now Nvidia will pop in with a 3080Ti that performs better and be able to price it at $999 because AMD set the bar there. Had the 6900XT been $750, a compelling argument could be made to buy one. I think that would be a fair price point. It just barely edges out the 3080 in 1440p and 4K performance, so between that and the greater amount of VRAM, a $50 price hike over the 3080 could be argued if you didn't care about RT.

Of course, all of this is a moot point anyway since it's almost impossible to buy a new silicon product these days.

TL;DR: AMD shot themselves in the foot with 6900XT pricing

 

[Roy2001]

Beats 3080 by only 2%. Should be $799.

 

[W1zzard]

The question remains, even if you crank up the power limit does it allow higher frequencies?

All my OC testing was done at max power limit, no power limit increase = no gains from OC

little typo: it's vulkan, not vulcan

fixed, thanks

 

[Deleted member 193792]

I miss the era of $400 flagship GPUs.

Mining will only make things worse...

 

[tancabean]

Nice card, well done AMD. Nice review too!

The winner this generation will depend on how many developers AMD can convince to not use RT heavily. If Dirt 5 and Godfall are any indication they’re having some success so far.

What’s probably going to happen though is Nvidia will push RT even harder now that it’s available on baseline console hardware and from both PC vendors.

 

[Condelio]

They are all nice cards from both sides. Each day i look more and more at rtx3080 with intention of replacing my trusty old 1070

 

[newtekie1]

So when did you buy it for 999$? as it only got little close only to that price for, just ONE day maybe? Cant you see that It was sold for 1200$, which is 200$ higher than the MSRP after 9 months of release.

Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit is it? That's a price tracker for AMAZON. I said eVGA directly had it for $999, and it wasn't that card, it was eVGA's basic 2080Ti.

They are all nice cards from both sides. Each day i look more and more at rtx3080 with intention of replacing my trusty old 1070

I'm waiting to see if the rumored 3080 Ti comes true. I think that might be my next card for my main computer.

 

[Ferrum Master]

All my OC testing was done at max power limit, no power limit increase = no gains from OC

Basically need to wait the first one doing shunt mod and seeing what really this is capable to show. So far this is a show only for pedestrians arguing with each other.

 

[W1zzard]

Basically need to wait the first one doing shunt mod and seeing what really this is capable to show. So far this is a show only for pedestrians arguing with each other.

AMD doesn't use shunts, the power draw is estimated internally in the GPU afaik

 

[murr]

Good luck finding one for 1k, the bots will buy them out and have them up on eBay for 2k. So the real price will be 2 thousand for awhile.

 

[evernessince]

5-7% faster than the 6800xt for same system, for $350 extra. Yes. It should be priced at $700-$750, then it's a good buy.

It's also $500 cheaper than the RTX 3090 and I don't see you on the 3090 reviews giving them stick for much worse value. Double standard IMO. Neither card are good value.

 

[QUANTUMPHYSICS]

" The Radeon RX 6900 XT is kind of stuck in this strange place where it’s really bad value compared to the 6800 XT, good value compared to the RTX 3090, but people looking to invest in this class of GPU won’t care about value, they just want the best of the best and in our opinion that isn’t the 6900 XT. Who is going to buy the 6900 XT? Die-hard AMD fans and people who desperately want a 6800 XT but can’t find one and aren’t willing to wait. We're looking at you. "


When I started reading, I came here focused on just 3 things:

#1 Price
#2 How well it compared to my 3090 in Microsoft Flight Simulator (since ya'll don't use DCS World)
#3 Your conclusion.

I got 2/3 answers: $500 less than my 3090, but almost performs as well in 4K.

Because of the GPU scalping, it's almost impossible to buy anything around here. Microcenter's shelves are empty.

Hopefully, people will be able to actually get one now despite all the scalping going on.

 

[turbogear]

I am not disappointmented that I went for 6800XT.
With undervolt on mine I am getting around 5%-7% higher performance with around 30W-40W higher power consumption.

I played Borderland 3 for many hours with DX12 Ultra settings, I have boost clock staying in the range of 2500MHz and FPS was all time in range from 120-130.

I suppose 6900XT can also be tuned by undervolting to get higher performance.

@W1zzard
Did you try by undervolting and increasing the Frequency slider?
On my 6800XT I have better overclock by undervolting.
The performance is worst if I set for example 2550MHz@1050mV than for example 2550MHz@1015mV.

The above mentioned Borderland 3 result are with 2550MHz@1015mV with power limit slider at 15%.
My card does not boost very well at default settings in Wattman.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Finally AMD has its "Zen moment" with GPUs. Doesn't win outright, but they went from not challenging nvidia to offering valid alternatives for all but the "put me in the poorhouse" GPU edition. The energy efficiency is a complete 180 from Polaris, and even a good jump from RDNA/Navi10. Taking the crown would have been nice, but this finally looks like an architecture with some answers. It almost seemed like this day would never come.

Edit:
I should add that this GPU is a big bastard. 26.8B transistors at 7nm, which puts it at 2.6x the size of Navi10. I do wonder if the prices on top GPUs will ever be reasonable again. Probably a lot of investment to recover from both companies, so a fully-enabled chip is going to be rare and expensive. The 3080 and 6800XT are the realistic "top" GPUs. The 3090 and 6900XT are for bragging rights. Basically the Titan-tier products that just get to occupy the top end of the bar graphs.

 

[dont whant to set it"']

If only it have beaten the 3090 outright to force nv in a desperate move for "inventing" the "super ti" moniker with price cuts across the board.

Great review.

Underwhelming oc potential the card poses.

 

[Rob94hawk]

Impressive performance at a disappointing price.

The real question is what till the scalpers sell it for?

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

In negatives it lists:

"Overclocking requires power limit increase"

Is there a piece of computer hardware that when overclock Ed DOESN'T require a power limit increase?

If only it have beaten the 3090 outright to force nv in a desperate move for "inventing" the "super ti" moniker with price cuts across the board.

Great review.

Underwhelming oc potential the card poses.

Underwhelming compared to what?

 

[dont whant to set it"']

To the 6800xt. I expected for it do way better than what the review sample achieved.

 

[Aquinus]

Is there a piece of computer hardware that when overclock Ed DOESN'T require a power limit increase?

Undervolting a Vega 64 at the stock power limit will allow the GPU to boost more often resulting in better performance.

 

[Solid State Soul ( SSS )]

Am more impressed that AMD RDNA 2 beat Nvidia's Ampere in power efficiency for more or less the same performance !

 

[Totally]

Mission failed. We'll get 'em next time.

Impressive but means jack when that target has been missed by such a large margin. I'm not seeing the $300 more value over the 3080/6800XT.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Am more impressed that AMD RDNA 2 beat Nvidia's Ampere in power efficiency for more or less the same performance !

Hard to compare on different nodes, Samsung 8nm is basically their 10nm with density improvements, gate pitch reduction, and a high drive strength cell in the library. Higher drive strength cells have more leakage and thus more power consumption, but are faster transistors.

 

[wolf]

The only sane reason to buy this over a 6800XT is availability and impatience. It's nice and all, gotta have a halo product, but the MSRP should be more like $750. No wonder they waited to release.

Nvidia had the luxury of releasing the 3080/3090 to no competition, and yes even then the 3090 doesn't make much sense unless you really were going to use the extra VRAM. But at least it had more cores and more VRAM.

Diehard fans with deep pockets will still buy this card, not a shred of doubt it will fly off shelves until we're all spoiled for choice from both camps with MSRP (or close to it) products.

The 'sane' high end belongs to the 6800XT and 3080 for now, if you could get either at a good price, they're clearly the ones to go for.

Fairly compelling either way too, Pure rast and a (theoretically) lower price + extra VRAM and a perf/watt advantage, 6800XT - Better RT perf, DLSS, gamestream, voice, cuda etc etc, RTX3080. Or yno whichever you could walk into a store and buy first.

 

[Mussels]

Theres no stock, but here in Au the 6900XT is listed at $1400 and the 3090's are going for $2800-$3000
That sheer dollar value down under, makes this a clear winner if you dont want ray tracing (or a 3080, if you do)


This is very close to nvidias 3090 performance, a lot cheaper - as well as cooler and quieter.
Theres no clear winner this gen, what we have is even better... COMPETITION

when stock levels increase, i bet prices will start to drop fast.