Packaging

The Card

AMD has knocked this one out of the park in terms of product design. Made entirely out of metal and alloys all over, the RX 6800 is easily the best reference board design ever made by AMD, and in terms of aesthetics and visual appeal, it's right in the league of NVIDIA Founders Edition cards.


Dimensions of the card are 27 cm x 12 cm.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity includes two standard DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.1, and one USB type-C with DisplayPort passthrough. As detailed on the previous page, RDNA 2 leverages DSC to enable up to 8K 120 Hz from these connectors.


No fancy power inputs here—you get two 8-pin PCIe power connectors right where you want them, which is at the top edge.


AMD "Navi 21" relies on an external USB 3.2 controller for the USB-C port, supplied by Cypress Semiconductor and labeled "CYPD5137-40LQXI." This controller puts out 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2, DisplayPort passthrough, and 27 W power delivery.


The AMD Radeon RX 6000 series doesn't support multi-GPU.

Teardown

Taking the RX 6800 XT apart is simple, much easier than NVIDIA Founders Edition cards. All screws are standard, and there are no flat cables or anything else that complicates the teardown. The only thing worth mentioning is this carbon thermal pad that will break when you take the card apart. Remove it completely before adding your own thermal paste.


A copper vapochamber base plate makes contact with the GPU and memory, while a secondary aluminium base plate pulls heat from the VRM. Both plates make contact with the aluminium fin-stack heatsink that's ventilated by a trio of 90 mm fans. The card supports the idle fan-stop feature.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling.