PowerColor Radeon RX 6800 Red Dragon Review

Name: PowerColor Radeon RX 6800 Red Dragon
Brand: PowerColor

W1zzard

on Feb 2nd, 2021,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: PowerColor

(14 Comments) »

Introduction

Today's review is of the PowerColor Radeon RX 6800 Red Dragon graphics card. The Red Dragon brand by PowerColor strikes a balance between the enthusiast-focused Red Devil brand and the vanilla reference-design, and the new Fighter series. Competition in this segment comes from the likes of the Sapphire Pulse and ASUS TUF Gaming. The Radeon RX 6800 is the most affordable of AMD's "Big Navi" GPU family so far, and at a starting price of $580 for the reference-version, AMD is confident that it beats the GeForce RTX 3070. This should mean maxed out gaming with raytracing at 1440p, while the card is fairly capable of 4K UHD gaming with high settings.

If you're gaming at 1440p or below, the Radeon RX 6800 has an interesting proposition—maxed out gaming, perhaps even at higher refresh rates while offering more future-proofing than an RTX 3070 on account of its 16 GB of faster video memory. Like the RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT, the RX 6800 is based on the new RDNA 2 graphics architecture, which meets the full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature set, including real-time raytracing, variable-rate shading, mesh shaders, and sampler feedback. This is also the same architecture powering both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, which means it's easy for game developers to optimize for this architecture on the PC. Raytracing requires an enormous amount of compute power, which AMD has nearly doubled over the previous generation. A by-product of all this compute power is a dramatic increase in conventional raster 3D performance, which enables AMD to finally compete with NVIDIA in the high-end segment.

The Radeon RX 6800 is based on the same 7 nm "Navi 21" silicon as the RX 6900 XT, but is heavily cut down. 60 out of 80 RDNA 2 compute units physically present on the silicon are enabled, working out to 3,840 stream processors and 60 Ray Accelerators. There are proportionate reductions to other components, such as the TMU count being down to 240, and the ROP count down to 96 (from 128). However, what hasn't changed is the memory sub-system. You get 16 GB of memory using the fastest JEDEC-standard 16 Gbps memory chips across a 256-bit wide memory bus—the same configuration as the RX 6900 XT. This is faster than the 14 Gbps GDDR6 setup on the RTX 3070, and AMD takes things a step further by deploying a fast on-die L3 cache it calls Infinity Cache. This is a 128 MB scratchpad for the GPU that operates at 2 TB/s in concert with the GDDR6 memory.

As we mentioned earlier, the PowerColor Radeon RX 6800 Red Dragon can still be considered a premium custom-design product even though it's not as loaded as the flagship Red Devil. You still get a triple-slot cooling solution that uses a large aluminium fin-stack heatsink, a triple fan setup with idle fan stop, and an all-metal shroud and backplate design that looks good in a case. The card is factory overclocked, with its faster OC BIOS running the card at up to 2170 MHz boost (vs. 2105 MHz reference) and a quieter BIOS running it at up to 2140 MHz. The card is currently out of stock everywhere. We did a bit of research and found that it can be found online for $950, which actually makes it one of the most affordable RX 6800 cards out there.

Radeon RX 6800 Review Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Shader Units	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RX Vega 64	$400	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1080 Ti	$650	3584	88	1481 MHz	1582 MHz	1376 MHz	GP102	12000M	11 GB, GDDR5X, 352-bit
RX 5700 XT	$370	2560	64	1605 MHz	1755 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070	$340	2304	64	1410 MHz	1620 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070 Super	$450	2560	64	1605 MHz	1770 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
Radeon VII	$680	3840	64	1802 MHz	N/A	1000 MHz	Vega 20	13230M	16 GB, HBM2, 4096-bit
RTX 2080	$600	2944	64	1515 MHz	1710 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Super	$690	3072	64	1650 MHz	1815 MHz	1940 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3060 Ti	$800	4864	80	1410 MHz	1665 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Ti	$1000	4352	88	1350 MHz	1545 MHz	1750 MHz	TU102	18600M	11 GB, GDDR6, 352-bit
RTX 3070	$850	5888	96	1500 MHz	1725 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800	$950	3840	96	1815 MHz	2105 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
PowerColor RX 6800 Red Dragon	$950	3840	96	1950 MHz	2170 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800 XT	$1200	4608	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3080	$1100	8704	96	1440 MHz	1710 MHz	1188 MHz	GA102	28000M	10 GB, GDDR6X, 320-bit
RX 6900 XT	$1550	5120	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3090	$2000	10496	112	1395 MHz	1695 MHz	1219 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit

Packaging

The Card

PowerColor opted for a clean look with straight edges. The dominant color is black, with some nice silver highlights around the two outer fans, which are larger than those in the middle. The metal backplate has a cutout that lets some air through.

Dimensions of the card are 31 x 13.5 cm, and it weighs 1449 g.

Installation requires three slots in your system.

Display connectivity includes three standard DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.1.

The card has two 8-pin power inputs. This configuration is rated for up to 375 W of power draw.

The AMD Radeon RX 6000 series doesn't support multi-GPU. Here, you see the BIOS switch, which lets you toggle between the default "OC" BIOS and a "silent" BIOS that runs the fans quieter, at slower speeds with higher temperature.

I really like the design of this switch; it's much bigger and not flimsy at all, unlike most of competing designs.

If you prefer to disable RGB effects, most other vendors require you to install their software—on the RX 6800 Red Dragon, a physical switch is available that makes this much easier.

Teardown

PowerColor's heatsink uses seven heatpipes and a large copper base that provides cooling for the GPU and memory chips. Thermal pads are installed as additional cooling surfaces to soak up heat from the VRM circuitry.

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

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles or forum posts.