3.00 GHz OC Possible on AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT; RX 6800 XT Capped at 2.80 GHz

[btarunr]

It's becoming clear that AMD's new "Big Navi" Radeon RX 6800 XT is a treat for overclockers, and that it launched with much lower engine clocks than the silicon is capable of, resulting in what is possibly the largest overclocking headroom on an AMD GPU in a long time. This has been highlighted by recent conquests of the 3DMark Fire Strike leaderboard by RX 6800 XT cards, displacing even the RTX 3090 from the top. It's becoming even more clear now just how far the RX 6800 XT can be pushed. Patrick Schur on Twitter reports that the RX 6800 XT engine clocks are capped at 2.80 GHz, which is possibly why we're yet to see anything faster than that. The upcoming RX 6900 XT, on the other hand, is a better-endowed beast.

According to Schur, the RX 6900 XT has a raised engine clocked limit to 3.00 GHz in comparison to the 2.80 GHz of the RX 6800 XT. This 200 MHz increase, coupled with the 8 additional RDNA2 compute units, should mean that the Fire Strike leaderboards will get another shake-up in December, when these cards are released to market. The memory clock on both cards is capped at 1075 MHz (real), or 17.2 Gbps GDDR6-effective, although this should depend heavily on the overclocking headroom of the memory chips. It's important to note here that neither the 3.00 GHz of the RX 6900 XT, nor the 2.80 GHz for the RX 6800 XT, are advertised clock speeds for the cards, and are achievable only by manual overclocking, in some cases employing extreme cooling solutions such as liquid nitrogen.



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[phanbuey]

yes the 19 people that get cards will all be in the top 20...

 

[evernessince]

Reminds me of maxwell. Wonder if AMD will do the same thing as Nvidia did and increase the clocks by a large amount for RDNA3.

 

[metalfiber]

yes the 19 people that get cards will all be in the top 20...

I don't know why AMD and Nvidia doesn't build up a healthy inventory then release the cards. It would take some of the wind out of the scalper's sails anyhow.

Reminds me of maxwell. Wonder if AMD will do the same thing as Nvidia did and increase the clocks by a large amount for RDNA3.

Don't forget Intel with just about every "generational" CPU they produce...with a gimmick thrown in here and there.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

I don't know why AMD and Nvidia doesn't build up a healthy inventory then release the cards. It would take some of the wind out of the scalper's sails anyhow.


Don't forget Intel with just about every "generational" CPU they produce...with a gimmick thrown in here and there.

This is from Intels #NOsupplyBIGdemand inflated pricing playbook from years ago.

 

[AsRock]

I don't know why AMD and Nvidia doesn't build up a healthy inventory then release the cards. It would take some of the wind out of the scalper's sails anyhow.


Don't forget Intel with just about every "generational" CPU they produce...with a gimmick thrown in here and there.

O please, again with the scalper crap. When you release cards at 1/2 price v's performance of what been the norm they will sell hell fast it's just common sense that they will.

I still think nVidia has\had some one on the inside to even give so much performance on their card never mind the lesser pricing.

Yep thats going make them sell out hell fast.

Sorry not buying the scalper things is the whole blame here or even close, although it's not helping.

 

[Crackong]

I don't know why AMD and Nvidia doesn't build up a healthy inventory then release the cards. It would take some of the wind out of the scalper's sails anyhow.

AMD had to allocate the limited 7nm wafers to Ryzen , Radeon and Consoles, no surprise for shortages there.

Nvidia just being reported selling 3000 series card to miner directly, so there are less card floating around the retail market

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

O please, again with the scalper crap. When you release cards at 1/2 price v's performance of what been the norm they will sell hell fast it's just common sense that they will.

I still think nVidia has\had some one on the inside to even give so much performance on their card never mind the lesser pricing.

Yep thats going make them sell out hell fast.

Sorry not buying the scalper things is the whole blame here or even close, although it's not helping.

I think this scalper crap is whats training consumers to jump on the lets-go-broke-buying-the-just-released-card instead of having patience for the next sale to get 5% off...

Nvidia just being reported selling 3000 series card to miner directly

you got proof of this?

 

[Crackong]

you got proof of this?

Heard it from Linus's WAN show.
Searching "nvidia direct sales to ethereum miners" will result multiple posts referring to Nvidia's own Q3 earnings report

 

[Jism]

Heard it from Linus's WAN show.
Searching "nvidia direct sales to ethereum miners" will result multiple posts referring to Nvidia's own Q3 earnings report

Yep, and why should Nvidia bother as they can sell large batches of cards instantly. A sold card either to a miner, scalper or a gamer is simply a sold card.

3Ghz limit is amazing. We're not so long away that your GPU ticks faster then your CPU does.

 

[nguyen]

As GamersNexus pointed out in his 6800XT review, higher clock speeds might actually hurt performance

Could it be that the infinity cache become unstable at high clocks ?

 

[Jism]

It could be, some sort of ECC within the Cache just as GDDR memory has. If you ramp it up too high or too fast, it will start to generate errors, attempts to "correct" the error which actually hurts performance. Your basicly losing ticks in favor of more throughput. It's not sure on how the cache is bounded; if it's GPU speed or some other factor.

Perhaps there's a indept on how that cache actually works and how the speeds are linked.

 

[Kohl Baas]

O please, again with the scalper crap. When you release cards at 1/2 price v's performance of what been the norm they will sell hell fast it's just common sense that they will.

I still think nVidia has\had some one on the inside to even give so much performance on their card never mind the lesser pricing.

Yep thats going make them sell out hell fast.

Sorry not buying the scalper things is the whole blame here or even close, although it's not helping.

Since when did the RTX20s overinflated price became the 'norm'? Just because current pricing is still higher than GTX10 series if you calculate in the gimmick they pulled with the RTC30s. Namely that they stepped duwn the whole lineup by one just to .ake it appeal like it's something bigger than it is.

 

[owen10578]

You really don't need extreme cooling to get to 2.8GHz on these GPUs. Der8auer showed his unmodified Powercolor Red Devil 6800 XT reached 2.75GHz already and he could have pushed more if not for the clock limit and the locked down power limit in the locked down bios. Overall a disappointingly locked down card for an impressive piece of silicon.

 

[yotano211]

Heard it from Linus's WAN show.
Searching "nvidia direct sales to ethereum miners" will result multiple posts referring to Nvidia's own Q3 earnings report

And I think that Linus also said that only 6% of Nvidia earnings came from miners. Stop with the scalpers thing, its old.

 

[londiste]

As GamersNexus pointed out in his 6800XT review, higher clock speeds might actually hurt performance

View attachment 177507

Could it be that the infinity cache become unstable at high clocks ?

GT1 is easier on compute, when GT2 dials that up, various limits or unstable bits start to manifest?
There were some rumors around PS5 APU about these becoming unstable in a bit of a weird way at high clocks, maybe that is similar.

You really don't need extreme cooling to get to 2.8GHz on these GPUs. Der8auer showed his unmodified Powercolor Red Devil 6800 XT reached 2.75GHz already and he could have pushed more if not for the clock limit and the locked down power limit in the locked down bios. Overall a disappointingly locked down card for an impressive piece of silicon.

Red Devil is pretty much extreme cooling already
What he is doing is extreme overclocking. Hardware mods and all. Besides, 2.75GHz was not exactly stable even in the test he was using. IIRC he eventually backed off to 2.7GHz for more stability.

Heard it from Linus's WAN show.
Searching "nvidia direct sales to ethereum miners" will result multiple posts referring to Nvidia's own Q3 earnings report

The only think in Q3 report was that Nvidia sold cards to mining for $175M instead of the expected $150M. An analyst concluded this must be Ampere cards sold to miners. Since Nvidia has not and will not clarify this much further we probably won't know the exact spread on what was sold. For what we know, they could as well be clearing old stock.

 

[R-T-B]

Watching you guys argue over why the shortage is a shortage will never cease to amaze me...

 

[InVasMani]

AMD had to allocate the limited 7nm wafers to Ryzen , Radeon and Consoles, no surprise for shortages there.

Nvidia just being reported selling 3000 series card to miner directly, so there are less card floating around the retail market

Not to mention Apple is a huge customer occupying a large chunk of TSMC capacity as well. On the plus side AMD has quite a lot of leverage for contract negotiating because sizable amount of chips they produce across the board. I can't imagine AMD minds the situation right now with virtually everything new it's producing right now selling out on both fronts that's a great predicament to be in.

 

[R0H1T]

AMD's been in this position for the first time in a long, long & really long time. No way they're letting go of margins on zen3 & then of course RDNA2 cards. If I were in their position I'd do the same, they still have to make that proposed Xilinx takeover work & this is just one of the ways to do that.

 

[medi01]

This is from Intels #NOsupplyBIGdemand inflated pricing playbook from years ago.

What does one achieve like that? It makes no sense.

 

[ZoneDymo]

I HATE oc caps, stop doing that crap, its my product, ill take the risk now dont artificially limit me!

 

[z1n0x]

I HATE oc caps, stop doing that crap, its my product, ill take the risk now dont artificially limit me!

Haven't you heard? "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy."

 

[Caring1]

Haven't you heard? "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy."

It's the new business model, buy the hardware, pay dearly for software

 

[medi01]

Nvidia just being reported selling 3000 series card to miner directly, so there are less card floating around the retail market

Miners of what? At least for bitcoin it was not an option for ages.

 

[Vayra86]

I think this scalper crap is whats training consumers to jump on the lets-go-broke-buying-the-just-released-card instead of having patience for the next sale to get 5% off...


you got proof of this?

Sheep. FOMO. Herd mentality. Fools and money. Lots of terms for it, well researched, documented, and proven time and time again.

You can't cure stupid

It's the new business model, buy the hardware, pay dearly for software

Hardware? A 'terminal' is enough. Some low spec mobile phone, like an Apple or Android device. Note that I'm saying device. They all want you to hook in on that cloud. MS is trying it too, and Azure is taking it pretty far already if you see how its used in enterprise.

You're not even paying for software. You don't even own a license. You get a login, and zero rights, no control, and everything is fluid and subject to change. Cyberpunk already released years ago and we're playing it