The PowerColor Radeon RX 6800 XT Red Devil is the company's flagship for the RX 6800 XT Navi 21 generation. It is built around a large triple-slot, triple-fan cooler, paired with a large factory overclock and dual BIOS. Out of the box, the card runs at a rated boost of 2340 MHz, which is 90 MHz higher than the AMD reference. In actual testing, when measuring clocks in all games at 4K, we saw an increase from 2257 MHz to 2330 MHz, close enough. In terms of relative performance, this makes the RX 6800 XT Red Devil 2% faster than the RX 6800 XT reference at 4K resolution. The lead of the RTX 3080 is shrinking, down to just 3% now. The RTX 3090 is 13% faster and much more expensive, but the newer RX 6900 XT will deal with that next month. Compared to the Radeon RX 6800 non-XT, the Red Devil is 16% faster, and 26% faster than the NVIDIA RTX 3070 and RTX 2080 Ti, at higher resolutions. Performance uplifts compared to older cards are impressive as well, as it is almost twice as fast as the RX 5700 XT and more than three times as fast as the RX 590.

With these performance numbers, the Radeon RX 6800 XT is the perfect choice for 4K gaming at 60 FPS. It achieved that mark in nearly all titles in our test suite. Things are different once you turn on raytracing. Just like on NVIDIA, there's a hefty performance hit when running with the DirectX Raytracing API. We only tested two games so far, but it seems the loss in performance is bigger than on NVIDIA, who improved in that area with Ampere. Remember, this is AMD's first-generation raytracing implementation. Performance is still very respectable, reaching roughly RTX 2080 Ti levels. Now that RT hardware is available for both AMD and NVIDIA and game developers are making console games on AMD's new RDNA 2 architecture, it'll be interesting to see how raytracing performance evolves in the coming months.

In our review, AMD's RX 6800 XT reference cooler impressed us with good temperatures and even better noise levels. It's finally a large triple-slot design with three fans. This definitely sets the bar high for AMD's partners and their own cooler designs. PowerColor's heatsink does a great job keeping the card cool. With the default (OC) BIOS, we measured noise levels that match the AMD reference cooler, but with a few degrees less. With 31 dBA, the card is almost whisper quiet in heavy gaming—4K is no problem, very impressive. Should you want even lower noise, you can switch to the "silent" BIOS, which relaxes the fan curve a bit and slightly reduces the power limit. Now the card is at 30 dBA, even quieter, nice work, PowerColor! Just like on the AMD reference design, idle fan stop is included on the card, which provides the perfect noise-free experience during desktop work, Internet browsing, media playback, and light gaming.

AMD surprised us with the power efficiency of their new Navi 21 RDNA 2 graphics processor, beating even NVIDIA's Ampere lineup. Despite the large factory overclock, PowerColor did not go overboard with power consumption, the typical gaming average matches the AMD 6800 XT almost exactly. Short-duration power spikes are a bit higher, but not alarming in any way, 356 W—any decent 650 W PSU will be sufficient to power a RX 6800 XT gaming rig.

Back in my original review of the reference design, I had to increase the power limit on the AMD RX 6800 XT to see any meaningful performance gains from overclocking. This is not the case on the PowerColor Red Devil because of a generous increase in the board power limit. Maximum manual overclock ended up very similar to the AMD reference, reaching over 2.5 GHz actual average GPU clock, or 5.4% in additional performance.

At this point in the conclusion, I always talk about pricing, but I can't because PowerColor isn't providing any pricing information at all: "Unfortunately, we won't be able to give a price due to market conditions [which] make it impossible to control what eTailers will list for." While I can appreciate the idea behind this move, it makes my life as a reviewer very difficult. A very important part of a product review is to consider its pricing. Let's see.. AMD's reference design comes at an MSRP of $650, the NVIDIA RTX 3080 is $700. Both reference implementations are excellent cards, improving on them is not easy. PowerColor's Red Devil is without doubt better than the RX 6800 XT reference design. But by how much? And how much should you be willing to pay for that? The factory overclock gives you 2% in real-life gains, that's $13. The cooler runs 4°C better temperatures, and noise levels are improved, too. Looking at the actual cooler design, it definitely looks cheaper to make than AMD's variant, which uses a large vapor chamber. PowerColor uses a plastic cooler shroud, while AMD's card is metal all around. For the cooler, I would say cheaper or no price increase, but make it another $10. The VRM is more powerful, with 19 instead of 15 phases, which probably makes no difference for you at all unless you are a hardcore overclocker, another $10 maybe? So that brings us to slightly below $700, and that would be a reasonable price, I'd say. Going above $700, you would have to ask yourself why you aren't buying an RTX 3080. Well, everything is out of stock anyway, so expect to pay A LOT for these cards. AMD board partners are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel—they finally are able to compete with NVIDIA, who are out of stock. This is the perfect opportunity to increase the margins, which would otherwise be paper-thin because AMD is not selling their new GPU chip for cheap. I'll update this review as better information on pricing materializes, and will decide on an award then. Don't get me wrong, the RX 6800 XT Red Devil is a really good graphics card for 4K, just like the AMD reference is a really good graphics card for 4K, and the RTX 3080 is just as good.