AMD RX 6800 Review

1. Introduction2. RDNA 2 Architecture3. AMD RX 68004. Testing Methodology5. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy6. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing7. Borderlands 38. Control9. Death Stranding10. The Division 211. F1 202012. Far Cry New Dawn13. Gears 514. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint15. Metro Exodus16. Middle Earth: Shadow of War17. Red Dead Redemption 218. Shadow of the Tomb Raider19. Total War Saga: Troy20. Watch Dogs: Legion21. Performance Summary (14 Game Average)22. Cost Per Frame Analysis23. Ray Tracing - Control24. Ray Tracing - Shadow of the Tomb Raider25. Productivity Benchmarks26. Clock Speed27. Temperatures28. Acoustics29. Noise-Normalised Temperatures30. Power Consumption31. Performance Per Watt32. Overclocking33. Closing Thoughts34. View All Pages

Today marks the launch of not just one, but two new GPUs from AMD. Both the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT were officially announced on October 28, and here we put the RX 6800 under the microscope. With UK pricing set at £529.99, this GPU sits above the RTX 3070 and AMD is not shy about claiming that it is faster than the RTX 2080 Ti. We put this RDNA 2-based GPU through its paces and find out just how fast it really is.

While its RX 6800 XT is firmly positioned to take the RTX 3080 head-on, things are a little different for the AMD RX 6800. In the UK it is priced about £60 above the RTX 3070, so it's not massively more expensive but we would certainly expect better performance as a result. Considering the RTX 3070 is currently the cost per frame king, AMD also has its work cut-out to offer enticing value up against the Ampere GPU.

In this review, we test the RX 6800 over 14 games, with an eye on thermals, acoustics and power, to find out just how good it really is.

	RX 6800 XT	RX 6800	RX 5700 XT	RX 5700
Architecture	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA	RDNA
Manufacturing Process	7nm	7nm	7nm	7nm
Transistor Count	26.8 billion	26.8 billion	10.3 billion	10.3 billion
Die Size	519 mm²	519 mm²	251 mm²	251mm²
Ray Accelerators	72	60	n/a	n/a
Compute Units	72	60	40	36
Stream Processors	4608	3840	2560	2304
Game GPU Clock	Up to 2015MHz	Up to 1815MHz	Up to 1755MHz	Up to 1625MHz
Boost GPU Clock	Up to 2250MHz	Up to 2105MHz	Up to 1905MHz	Up to 1725MHz
Peak SP Performance	Up to 20.74 TFLOPS	Up to 16.17 TFLOPS	Up to 9.75 TFLOPS	Up to 7.95 TFLOPS
Peak Half Precision Performance	Up to 41.47 TFLOPS	Up to 32.33 TFLOPS	Up to 19.5 TFLOPS	Up to 15.9 TFLOPS
Peak Texture Fill-Rate	Up to 648.0 GT/s	Up to 505.2 GT/s	Up to 304.8 GT/s	Up to 248.4 GT/s
ROPs	128	96	64	64
Peak Pixel Fill-Rate	Up to 288.0 GP/s	Up to 202.1 GP/s	Up to 121.9 GP/s	Up to 110.4 GP/s
AMD Infinity Cache	128MB	128MB	n/a	n/a
Memory	16GB GDDR6	16GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6
Memory Bandwidth	512 GB/s	512 GB/s	448 GB/s	448 GB/s
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Board Power	300W	250W	225W	185W

While we talk more about the RDNA 2 architecture itself on the next page, here we can take a high-level overview of the Navi 21 GPU that forms the basis of the RX 6800.

Still fabricated on TSMC's 7nm process node, as per the RX 5000-series, Navi 21 sports a much larger GPU die, measuring 519 mm². For the RX 6800, it houses 60 Compute Units (CUs), with 64 Stream Processors each, giving a grand total of 3840 shaders.

Rated clock speed has increased significantly for the RX 6000 series. The RX 6800 though, isn't clocked quite as fast as the RX 6800 XT, with a rated game clock of 1815MHz and a boost clock of up to 2105MHz. To put that into perspective, the RX 5700 XT has a rated game clock of 1755MHz.

AMD has also increased the memory capacity, with 16GB of GDDR6 memory found on every RX 6000 SKU (so far). The memory is clocked at 16Gbps, and operates over a 256-bit memory interface for total bandwidth of 512 GB/s. However, as we will see on the next page, AMD has also implemented a 128MB Infinity Cache on the Navi 21 GPU, to significantly increase effective memory bandwidth without excess power draw.

Speaking of power, the RX 6800 has a rated total board power (TBP) of 250W, an increase of 25W versus the RX 5700 XT.

RDNA 2 makes several key changes to the architecture compared to RDNA 1. Here we go over what you need to know.

We've mentioned the increased frequency on the previous page, and AMD claims that as the only company delivering both gaming CPUs and GPUs, it is ‘uniquely positioned' to leverage this position to further both teams.

With RDNA 2, AMD says it incorporated design methodologies from the Zen CPU team while ‘streamlining the micro-architecture to achieve record frequencies'. Part of this comes as a result of optimising frequencies across the whole voltage range for increased scalability.

AMD says this allows RDNA 2 to offer approximately 30% increased frequency at the same CU power compared to RDNA, or cut power by around 50% at the same frequency – or anywhere in between. Michael Mantor, Chief GPU Architect at AMD, says ‘this level of increase and power reduction in the same process technology enabled us to double the CU count of Big Navi with a modest power increase.'

Part of this is a result of the huge changes that AMD claims the RDNA 2 CU has undergone to achieve that touted 30% higher performance at the same power compared to RDNA. The company highlights the difference machine learning can make for gaming, resulting in various mixed precision operations included within the design to accelerate these AI workloads.

Each CU is also now home to one Ray Accelerator, the hardware responsible for handling the intersection of rays with the Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH). AMD says the Ray Accelerator can calculate up to 4 ray/box intersections or ray/triangle intersection every clock, and overall offers roughly 10 times the ray tracing performance than what shaders alone could achieve.

We asked AMD how the Ray Accelerators differed to Nvidia's RT Core, and have copied their response verbatim:

“In comparison to Nvidia's fully dedicated raytracing cores, the RDNA 2 Ray Accelerators are tightly integrated into the RDNA 2 CU, sharing much of the existing hardware that would be typically underutilized during raytracing passes. This enables RDNA 2 to experience the full benefits of hardware-accelerated ray tracing when ray tracing is being used, without having to pay the power and area costs of fully dedicated raytracing dark silicon for passes that do not use the raytracing hardware, or the power and area costs of the underutilized resources during the raytracing passes.

This allows RDNA™ 2 to dedicate more die area to functionality that help both raytracing and non-raytracing gaming performance (such as Infinity Cache) and to clock higher for a given power budget.

The final performance characteristics will depend on the game, the type of raytracing effects used and optimizations. However, we believe our Ray Accelerators along with other RDNA 2 enhancements such as frequency increase, CU count increase and Infinity Cache will help deliver visually stunning gameplay both with and without raytracing at native resolutions.”

AMD's Infinity Cache has also garnered significant attention. AMD implemented this solution to deliver enough bandwidth to the increased CU count, running at higher frequencies, as it claims these two changes would have otherwise required a 2.6x increased to bandwidth without starving the GPU – something it claims would have been hugely impractical due to the physical size and power requirements.

This solution combines AMD's ‘industry leading' cache from its EPYC sever designs, with an ‘outrageously fast on-die Infinity Fabric', according to Samuel Naffzifger, Corporate Fellow and Product Technology Architect. Each of the 16 channels in the Infinity Fabric provides 64B of data per clock, delivering 1024B data per clock at up to 1.94GHz. Naffziger claims this delivers up to 4 times the bandwidth of existing GDDR6 solutions and provides sufficient bandwidth to the engine.

With this on-die cache, AMD says it can deliver frame data at lower energy per bit when compared to a solution delivering the equivalent bandwidth via traditional means. With the Infinity Cache, AMD claims it can deliver over double the bandwidth of a 384-bit GDDR6 interface, with minimal increases to power. All told, the company claims up to 2.4x increased bandwidth per Watt.

Additionally, the Infinity Cache enables AMD to better scale its performance with the increased GPU frequency. Without the Infinity Cache, the relative gains from increasing core clocks diminish significantly at the higher frequencies.

Lastly we touch on Smart Access Memory. This made the news recently as Nvidia has said it is working on implementing the same technology. For AMD, Smart Access Memory (SAM) refers to the CPU's abilities to better access GPU VRAM. Currently, the CPU only has access to 256MB of GPU memory at a time, but with its Ryzen 5000 series CPUs, 500-series motherboards and RX 6000-series GPUs, AMD has removed this limitation – the CPU now has full access to the high-speed GPU memory.

While AMD has attracted some criticism for ‘locking' this feature to its Ryzen 5000 series CPUs, the company issued a statement clarifying the situation, which we have copied here:

“As the only company offering high performance gaming CPUs and GPUs, AMD is in a unique position to deliver incredible PC gaming experiences. With AMD Smart Access Memory , we have designed, optimized and validated both hardware and software technologies with all combinations of Ryzen 5000 Series processors, Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards, AMD 500 Series motherboards and the latest drivers and BIOS at launch. We believe this pairing unlocks maximum platform performance. Smart Access Memory is built on features of the PCIe standard and firmware standards (Resizable BAR), and was developed through extensive validation and platform optimization. We welcome the opportunity to support other hardware vendors in their efforts as part of our ongoing commitment to using common and open standards to improve gaming experiences.”

The AMD RX 6800 ships in a compact black box, with a large image of the graphics card and Radeon logo visible on the front.The back of the box is almost entirely bare, apart from a few paragraphs of text in the top left corner.

Removing the outer sleeve of the box, we are greeted with a ‘lid' which lifts off to reveal the graphics card itself, which comes well protected in a foam surround.

If you have come straight from our RX 6800 XT review, you will note the overall design of this new reference cooler is almost identical. That's not a bad thing though – in my opinion, it is undoubtedly AMD's most attractive reference design yet. It uses a die-cast aluminium shroud, with some prominent silver sections adding contrast against the black metal.

Of course, it is highly significant that AMD has finally ditched the blower-style design that it used for years – this is now a tri-axial configuration, with three 80mm fans. The air from the fans is pushed out of the side of the card.

The main difference between the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT reference coolers, is in the overall thickness of each card. Both measure 267 x 120mm, but where the 6800 XT is a 2.5-slot thickness, the 6800 is a standard dual-slot design.

The front side of the card is home to the Radeon logo, which lights up with red LEDs once powered on. This is the only other difference between the 6800 and 6800 XT that I could spot – both light up with red LEDs, but the logo's lettering itself is silver for the 6800 XT and red for the 6800.

As for the backplate, this is almost entirely silver, and it stretches the length of the card. There's a cut-out behind the GPU core, but other than that it is entirely solid.

Power requirements consist of two 8-pin power connectors. AMD makes a point of referring to these as ‘industry standard' connectors, in a thinly-veiled jibe at Nvidia's new 12-pin connector.

For display connectors, there's 2x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI 2.1, and 1x USB-C.

Driver Notes

• All Nvidia GPUs were benchmarked with the 457.09 driver.
• All AMD GPUs (except RX 6000) were benchmarked with the Adrenalin 20.11.1 driver.
• RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT were benchmarked with the Adrenalin 20.45.12.1 driver supplied to press.

Test System

We test using the a custom built system from PCSpecialist, based on Intel's latest Comet Lake-S platform. You can read more about it over HERE, and configure your own system from PCSpecialist HERE.

CPU	Intel Core i9-10900K Overclocked to 5.1GHz on all cores
Motherboard	ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero Wi-Fi
Memory	Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3600MHz (4 X 8GB) CL 18-22-22-42
Graphics Card	Varies
System Drive	500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2
Games Drive	2TB Samsung 860 QVO 2.5″ SSD
Chassis	Fractal Meshify S2 Blackout Tempered Glass
CPU Cooler	Corsair H115i RGB Platinum Hydro Series
Power Supply	Corsair 1200W HX Series Modular 80 Plus Platinum
Operating System	Windows 10 2004

Comparison Graphics Cards List

• Gigabyte RTX 3090 Eagle OC
• Nvidia RTX 3080 FE 10GB
• Nvidia RTX 3070 FE 8GB
• Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti FE 11GB
• Nvidia RTX 2080 Super FE 8GB
• Nvidia RTX 2080 FE 8GB
• Nvidia RTX 2070 Super FE 8GB
• AMD Radeon VII 16GB
• AMD RX 5700 XT 8GB
• AMD RX Vega 64 8GB

Software and Games List

• 3DMark Fire Strike & Fire Strike Ultra (DX11 Synthetic)
• 3DMark Time Spy (DX12 Synthetic)
• 3DMark Raytracing Feature Test (DXR Synthetic)
• Borderlands 3 (DX12)
• Control (DX12)
• Death Stranding (DX12)
• The Division 2 (DX12)
• F1 2020 (DX12)
• Far Cry New Dawn (DX11)
• Gears 5 (DX12)
• Ghost Recon: Breakpoint (Vulkan)
• Metro: Exodus (DX12)
• Middle Earth: Shadow of War (DX11)
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (Vulkan)
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
• Total War Saga: Troy (DX11)
• Watch Dogs: Legion (DX12)

We run each benchmark/game three times, and present mean averages in our graphs. We use OCAT to measure average frame rates as well as 1% low values across our three runs.

Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark for modern gaming PCs. Its ambitious real-time graphics are rendered with detail and complexity far beyond other DirectX 11 benchmarks and games. Fire Strike includes two graphics tests, a physics test and a combined test that stresses the CPU and GPU. (UL).

3DMark Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark test for Windows 10 gaming PCs. Time Spy is one of the first DirectX 12 apps to be built the right way from the ground up to fully realize the performance gains that the new API offers. With its pure DirectX 12 engine, which supports new API features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, Time Spy is the ideal test for benchmarking the latest graphics cards. (UL).

Starting proceedings with 3DMark. AMD's Navi GPUs have historically done well in these benchmarks, and the RX 6800 out-scores even the RTX 3080 in Fire Strike, delivering almost 44,000 points.

In Time Spy, however, it sits closer to the RTX 2080 Ti but still beats it out by 5%. Let's see how reflective these scores are of real-world gaming performance…

Real-time ray tracing is incredibly demanding. The latest graphics cards have dedicated hardware that’s optimized for ray-tracing. The 3DMark DirectX Raytracing feature test measures the performance of this dedicated hardware. Instead of using traditional rendering techniques, the whole scene is ray-traced and drawn in one pass. The result of the test depends entirely on ray-tracing performance. (UL).

3DMark's DirectX Raytracing feature test is a new addition to our reviews. It's interesting as it measures only the ray tracing abilities of a GPU – unlike Port Royal, which is a hybrid-renderer using RT and rasterisation, this feature test is entirely ray traced.

Here, with its average frame rate of 21.96FPS, the RX 6800 is pretty much on par with the RTX 2080 Super, or 26% slower than the RTX 2080 Ti.

Borderlands 3 is an action role-playing first-person shooter video game developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games. It is a sequel to 2012's Borderlands 2, and the fourth entry in the main Borderlands series. Borderlands 3 was released on 13 September 2019 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One. (Wikipedia).

Engine: Unreal Engine 4. We test using the Badass preset, DX12 API.

Kicking off our game benchmarks with Borderlands 3, in this Unreal Engine title we can see strong performance from the RX 6800. At 1440p it is significantly faster than the RTX 3070, to the tune of almost 20%, while it's just 9% slower than the RTX 3080 here.

At 4K, it still holds a strong lead over the RTX 3070, but it has shrunk slightly to 17%. Still, it's averaging 54FPS so definitely a good start for Team Red.

Control is an action-adventure video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by 505 Games. Control was released on 27 August 2019 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. (Wikipedia).

Engine: Northlight Engine. We test using the High preset, with 4x MSAA, DX12 API.

After a good start in Borderlands 3, Control brings the RX 6800 down a peg or two. At 1440p it averages 78FPS which is basically on par with both the RTX 3070 and RTX 2080 Ti. It is fractionally faster, yes, but not by any meaningful amount.

At 4K, the margins shrink further and we can see the RX 6800 holding a 3% lead over the 2080 Ti and the 3070. It's a difference of a single frame, so we'd call that a definite tie.

Death Stranding is an action game developed by Kojima Productions. It is the first game from director Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions after their split from Konami in 2015. It was released by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4 in November 2019 and by 505 Games for Windows in July 2020. (Wikipedia).

Engine: Decima. We test using the Very High preset, with TAA, DX12 API.

 

Death Stranding ups the ante and RX 6800 looks really good in this title. At 1440p it averages over 150FPS, making it 15% faster than both the RTX 3070 and RTX 2080 Ti. Not bad when you consider that, up until a couple of months ago, the 2080 Ti was selling for over £1000.

4K is no problem for the RX 6800 either, as it averages 91FPS. This is now 18% faster than the RTX 3070, and arguably more impressively is the fact it is just 9% slower than the RTX 3080.

Tom Clancy's The Division 2 is an online action role-playing video game developed by Massive Entertainment and published by Ubisoft. The sequel to Tom Clancy's The Division (2016), it is set in a near-future Washington, D.C. in the aftermath of a smallpox pandemic, and follows an agent of the Strategic Homeland Division as they try to rebuild the city. (Wikipedia).

Engine: Snowdrop. We test using the Ultra preset, but with V-Sync disabled, DX12 API.

Nvidia's Ampere architecture does well in The Division 2, and we can see that as the RX 6800 is just 6% faster than the RTX 3070 at 1440p. Compared to the RTX 2080 Ti, it's an 8% lead for the AMD GPU.

Nvidia closes the gap at 4K however, with the RX 6800 just 5% faster than the RTX 3070 now. That's a difference of just 3FPS, so there's not much in it at all.

F1 2020 is the official video game of the 2020 Formula 1 and Formula 2 Championships developed and published by Codemasters. It is the thirteenth title in the Formula 1 series developed by the studio and was released on 7 July 2020 for pre-orders of the Michael Schumacher Edition and 10 July 2020 for the Seventy Edition on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One. (Wikipedia).

Engine: EGO. We test using the Ultra High preset, DX12 API.

F1 2020 prefers the Ampere architecture to the Turing architecture – at 1440p, we can see the RX 6800 is 8% faster than the RTX 3070, but 14% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, so that's a fair difference between the two Nvidia GPUs.

Still, it's AMD we are interested in here, and at 4K the 6800 still holds its 8% lead over the RTX 3070 as it averages over 100FPS.

Far Cry New Dawn is an action-adventure first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. The game is a spin-off of the Far Cry series and a narrative sequel to Far Cry 5. It was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on February 15, 2019. (Wikipedia).

Engine: Dunia 2. We test using the Ultra preset, with the HD Textures pack, DX11 API.

Far Cry New Dawn's results aren't really that relevant until we hit 4K – even at 1440p, there is clear evidence of a system bottleneck going on. Focusing on 4K then, this is another very strong title for the RX 6800 as it is just 6% slower than the RTX 3080, while it holds a very convincing 21% lead over the RTX 3070.

Gears 5 is a third-person shooter video game developed by The Coalition and published by Xbox Game Studios for Xbox One, Microsoft Windows and Xbox Series X. It is the fifth installment of the Gears of War series and the sequel to Gears of War 4. The ultimate edition was released on September 6, 2019, while the standard edition of the game was released worldwide on September 10, 2019. (Wikipedia).

Engine: Unreal Engine 4. We test using the Ultra preset, with Best Animation Quality (instead of Auto), DX12 API.

Moving on to Gears 5. This is an AMD-sponsored title and the RX 6800 does do well here. At 1440p, it is 13% faster than the RTX 3070, and 16% faster than Nvidia's previous flagship, the RTX 2080 Ti.

Even at 4K it delivers a 60FPS experience, with leads of 12% over both the RTX 3070 and the RTX 2080 Ti.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint is an online tactical shooter video game developed by Ubisoft Paris and published by Ubisoft. The game was released worldwide on 4 October 2019, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, (Wikipedia).

Engine: AnvilNext 2.0. We test using the Ultra preset, with AA disabled, Vulkan API.

 

Despite being (another) AMD title, there really is not a lot between the RX 6800 and the RTX 3070 in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. At 1440p for instance, AMD's GPU is just 5% faster, and the gap is even smaller when compared to the RTX 2080 Ti.

Up at 4K, the difference between all three GPUs in question shrinks to essentially nothing – on paper the RX 6800 is technically faster, but a difference of a single frame really doesn't mean much.

Metro Exodus is a first-person shooter video game developed by 4A Games and published by Deep Silver in 2019. It is the third instalment in the Metro video game series based on Dmitry Glukhovsky's novels, following the events of Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light. (Wikipedia).

Engine: 4A Engine. We test using the Ultra preset, but with Hairworks and Advanced PhysX turned off, DX12 API.

As for Metro Exodus, the RTX 2080 Ti does a little better than the RTX 3070 in this game, and accordingly it is snapping right at the heels of the RX 6800 – at 1440p, AMD's GPU is just 2 frames faster, a difference of a single percent.

At 4K the gap does widen slightly, and we can see the RX 6800 outperforming the RTX 3070 by 7%, while it is 3% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is an action role-playing video game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It is the sequel to 2014’s Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, and was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on October 10, 2017. (Wikipedia).

Engine: LithTech Firebird. We test using the Very High preset, DX11 API.

I was surprised by the results in Middle Earth: Shadow Of War. The RX 6800 gives a decent beating to the RTX 3070 in this DX11 title, as it delivers 15% better performance at 1440p.

Up at 4K, however, the RTX 3070 does catch up. We can see the RX 6800 still outpacing it by 4FPS, but that's a difference of just 7% now.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a 2018 action-adventure game developed and published by Rockstar Games. The game is the third entry in the Red Dead series and is a prequel to the 2010 game Red Dead Redemption. Red Dead Redemption 2 was released for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in October 2018, and for Microsoft Windows and Stadia in November 2019. (Wikipedia).

Engine: Rockstar Advance Game Engine (RAGE). We test by manually selecting Ultra settings (or High where Ultra is not available), TAA, Vulkan API.

 

Next up is Red Dead Redemption 2, and here we can see the RX 6800 delivered almost 80FPS when gaming at 1440p. That's another tidy win over the RTX 3070, with the RDNA 2-based GPU delivering an extra 15% performance.

The gap does narrow at 4K, as the RTX 3070 fares a little better, but we can still see the RX 6800 out-pacing its Nvidia rival by 11%.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by Eidos Montréal in conjunction with Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix. It continues the narrative from the 2013 game Tomb Raider and its sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider, and is the twelfth mainline entry in the Tomb Raider series. The game released worldwide on 14 September 2018 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. (Wikipedia).

Engine: Foundation Engine. We test using the Highest preset, with TAA, DX12 API.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we once more see a decent result for the RX 6800. At 1440p, the AMD GPU is 11% faster than the RTX 3070, and 10% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, though all three GPUs are capable of delivering over 100FPS.

Increasing the resolution to 4K doesn't really change the overall picture, either. The RX 6800 is still 11% faster than the RTX 3070, and now it is 9% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti.

Total War Saga: Troy is a 2020 turn-based strategy video game developed by Creative Assembly Sofia and published by Sega. The game was released for Windows on 13 August 2020 as the second installment in the Total War Saga subseries, succeeding Thrones of Britannia (2018). (Wikipedia).

Engine: TW 3 Engine. We test using the Ultra preset, DX11 API.

Total War Saga: Troy has a clear preference for Nvidia GPUs, and this is demonstrated by the fact that, at 1440p, the RX 6800 is actually slower than the RTX 3070. Not by much, but this only happened one other time across the other 13 games we tested.

At 4K though, the RX 6800 pulls backs and manages to equal the RTX 3070, with both GPUs averaging 45FPS.

Watch Dogs: Legion is a 2020 action-adventure game published by Ubisoft and developed by its Toronto studio. It is the third instalment in the Watch Dogs series, and the sequel to 2016's Watch Dogs 2. Legion was released on October 29, 2020 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Stadia. (Wikipedia).

Engine: Disrupt. We test using the Ultra preset, DX12 API.

Closing out our game testing for this review, we come to Watch Dogs: Legion. This is another very strong title for the RTX 3070, as we can see the RX 6800 is barely any faster at 1440p – the difference of 3% is not very significant at all.

As for 4K, well, this is the only other time we see the RTX 3070 edging ahead of the RX 6800. Even then, the difference is just 1FPS, or 2%, so it's hardly a big deal, but the RX 6800 is the slower GPU here.

Here we present frame rate figures for each graphics card, averaged across all 14 games on test today. These figures can disguise significant variations in performance from game to game, but provide a useful overview of the sort of performance you can expect at each resolution tested.

If you have checked through each of the 14 games benchmarked, you will not be surprised to see that the RX 6800 is on average 9% faster than the RTX 3070, both at 1440p and 4K.

Compared to the RTX 2080 Ti, it is on average 7% faster at 1440p and 8% faster at 4K.

Using the average frame rate data presented on the previous page, here we look at the cost per frame using the UK MSRP launch prices for each GPU.

The cost per frame analysis shows us that the RX 6800 is better value than the RX 6800 XT at 1080p and 1440p, but not at 4K. The RTX 3070 is still the best value GPU overall though, but not by a whole lot – at 1440p, the RX 6800 is just 4% more expensive per frame.

Here we revisit Control, this time testing with the in-game ray tracing effects set to their highest values.

To assess the ray tracing performance of the RX 6800, we start with Control. This uses a number of ray traced effects and can be quite punishing. Here, the RX 6800 really only delivers a decent experience at 1080p, where it averages 52FPS with ray tracing at high settings. It averages 34FPS at 1440p, but the 1% lows dip down to 29FPS.

Overall performance is very close to the vanilla RTX 2080, but we can see AMD incurs a bigger performance loss when ray tracing is enabled. At 1080p, the RX 6800's frame rate is cut by 57% when turning on ray tracing, compared to a 44% drop for the RTX 2080.

Here we revisit Shadow of the Tomb Raider, this time testing with the in-game ray tracing effects set to their highest values.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider utilises ray traced shadows and is overall less demanding on the GPU than Control. That means frame rates for the RX 6800 are much higher once ray tracing is enabled, with the GPU delivering over 60FPS at 1440p. At that same resolution, the RTX 3070 is 6% faster with ray tracing at Ultra settings, which is a pretty good result for the RX 6800 all things considered.

Here we present three productivity benchmarks for those interested – Blender 2.90 Classroom (CUDA/OpenCL), LuxMark 3.1, and SPECviewperf 13.

Here we present the average clock speed for each graphics card while running the 3DMark Time Spy stress test for 30 minutes. We use GPU-Z to record the GPU core frequency during the Time Spy runs. We calculate the average core frequency during the 30 minute run to present here.

Interestingly, despite have a lower rated clock speed than the RX 6800 XT, in practice we saw the RX 6800 achieving higher frequencies. It's not a massive difference, but across our 30 minute stress test the GPU averaged exactly 2200MHz. This is a frequency increase of over 400MHz compared to the RX 5700 XT, so it is highly impressive to see how far AMD has increased clock speed while remaining on the same 7nm process.

For our temperature testing, we measure the peak GPU core temperature under load. A reading under load comes from running the 3DMark Time Spy stress test for 30 minutes.

Thermally, the RX 6800 reference card performs very well. We saw a typical operating temperature of just 68C, while it occasionally spiked up to 69C. There's really nothing to complain about – it's a very capable reference cooler.

We take our noise measurements with the sound meter positioned 1 foot from the graphics card. I measured the noise floor to be 32 dBA, thus anything above this level can be attributed to the graphics cards. The power supply is passive for the entire power output range we tested all graphics cards in, while all CPU and system fans were disabled. A reading under load comes from running the 3DMark Time Spy stress test for 30 minutes.

To achieve its sub-70C operating temperature, the RX 6800 runs its fans at 50%, or 1680rpm, and that results in noise levels hitting 39dBa. This is a huge reduction in a noise compared to AMD's previous reference designs, and it's right on par with Nvidia's RTX 3080 Founders Edition. The 6800 XT is 3dBa quieter, but it also runs a fair bit hotter due to its lower, 1350rpm fan speed.

Following on from our stock thermal and acoustic testing, here we re-test the operating temperature of the GPU, but with noise levels normalised to 40dBa. This allows us to measure the efficiency of the overall cooling solution as varying noise levels as a result of more aggressive fan curves are no longer a factor.

As the RX 6800 produced 39dBa of noise at stock, noise normalising to 40dBa doesn't make a massive difference, as the end result is the fans spinning just 50rpm faster. Still, this reduced edge temperature by 2C, and junction temperature by 4C. It will be fascinating to see how AMD's partners can improve on this performance.

We measure system-wide power draw from the wall while running the 3DMark Time Spy stress test for 30 minutes.

Total system power for the RX 6800 is in-line with the RTX 2080 Super, with the system drawing about 360W at the wall.

We also use Nvidia PCAT to measure power draw of the graphics card only, with readings from both the PCIe slot and the PCIe power cables combined into a single figure. This provides us with significantly more accurate data to work with as it is measuring only the GPU power, and not total system power which is a fundamentally imprecise measurement.

Looking at GPU-only power gives us a clearer picture. Despite its 250W total board power rating, we saw the RX 6800 average 237W during our testing. This is 22W higher than the RX 5700 XT, and 18W higher than the RTX 3070.

By using our GPU-only power data in conjunction with the 14-game average FPS data we presented earlier in this review, we can work out performance per Watt for each graphics card. This is presented as FPS per Watt.

Well well well. RDNA 2 completes a truly astonishing turnaround for AMD. From the sheer inefficiency of Vega 64, the GPU which was AMD's flagship just three years ago, we are now in a situation where the RX 6800 is tied with the RTX 3070 for the most power efficient GPU on the market.

That's right – at 1080p, 1440p and 4K, the RX 6800 offers identical performance per Watt when compared to the RTX 3070, while at 1440p it delivers 18% higher performance per Watt when compared to the RTX 3080. This really is quite remarkable, again considering how far behind AMD was just three years ago, and also when considering it's the same 7nm process as the RX 5700 XT.

Overclocking capabilities for the RX 6800 are impressive. Using AMD Wattman, we comfortable maxed out the GPU frequency slider (to 2600MHz), while also hitting the memory slider limit of 2150MHz, all while increased the power limit to 115%.

This overclock resulted in performance gains of about 9% in the games we re-tested.

Power draw, meanwhile, increased by 15%.

Launching today alongside its bigger brother, the RX 6800 XT, this review has focused on AMD's RX 6800. Priced at £529.99 here in the UK, this GPU sits between the RTX 3070 and the RX 6800 XT.

That is reflected in its overall performance, too. Compared to the RTX 3070, the RX 6800 is on average 9% faster at both 1440p and 4K, while it is 11% slower than the RX 6800 XT at 1440p, and 12% slower at 4K. Versus the RTX 2080 Ti, it's an 7% win for the RX 6800 at 1440p which increases to 8% at 4K. Compared to the RX 5700 XT, this RDNA 2-based GPU delivers an extra 58% performance at 1440p, while it is 68% faster at 4K.

It really is a very capable GPU for both 1440p and 4K gaming. I would rather use it at the former resolution, where we saw it deliver no less than 75FPS, but it many cases the frame rate is well over 100FPS. 4K is still very possible, just not in every game – half of the 14 games we tested in this review showed average frame rates dipping below 60FPS.

When analysing the RX 6800 from a value perspective, it isn't able to quite match the RTX 3070, which remains the cost per frame leader. It is very close, however, coming in just 4% more expensive per frame at 1440p. We also have to remember that it is faster overall, too, by almost 10% on average, so it's not a true apples-to-apples comparison.

There is also the small matter of ray tracing, something that RDNA 2 now supports thanks to one Ray Accelerator that comes embedded within each Compute Unit. A driver issue with Watch Dogs: Legion meant I wasn't able to test as many games as I would have liked, but Nvidia does still have the upper hand here based on our testing in Control and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Overall performance of the RX 6800, with ray tracing enabled, could be crudely described as something akin to a 2080 Super, though performance scaled differently in each of our games.

How much this matters to you is going to be down to your opinions on ray tracing in games, but I think AMD has done well to achieve this level of performance with its first ray tracing enabled GPU. At the end of the day, I still think raw raster performance is a bigger deal to the vast majority of people, but prospective RX 6000 owners will be able to enable ray tracing and get a decent level of performance, and it's not too far off RTX 3070-levels of performance in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

As for AMD's new reference cooler, this is a marked improvement compared to the blower-style coolers of old. The new triple-fan design looks good, it feels very premium in the hand with its die-cast aluminium shroud, and it delivers excellent thermal and acoustic performance. Noise levels came in at a similar level to the RTX 3080 Founders Edition, while the GPU core remained below 70C during our testing.

In terms of power draw, our testing saw the RX 6800 drawing a little less than its 250W total board power rating, as it averaged 237W across our 30 minute stress test. This is almost 20W more power than the RTX 3070, but when factoring in the increased performance on offer from the RX 6800, it is actually a match for the Nvidia GPU when looking at performance per Watt. That means AMD now has a GPU which is tied for the top-spot in terms of performance efficiency. It is a truly remarkable turnaround for AMD – if you'd told me three years ago that AMD would be a joint leader for performance per Watt, I'd have laughed.

Manual overclocking also revealed some decent gains for the RX 6800. We were able to push GPU clock speed over 2400MHz, with memory speeds increased by 7.5% as well. This resulted in performance uplifts of about 9% based on our testing, which isn't bad at all. It will be fascinating to see how AMD partners can push the clock speed further.

Overall, AMD has delivered a terrific GPU in the form of the RX 6800. It was promised to be faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, and those claims hold true, which means it is also faster than the RTX 3070. However, I don't see the RTX 3070 as a direct competitor to the RX 6800. The AMD GPU is £60 more expensive here in the UK (based on the MSRPs, at least), so we would certainly expect it to deliver a bit more performance. Really, the RX 6800 is currently occupying a position where it has no true competitor as it slots neatly between the RTX 3070 and RX 6800 XT in terms of both pricing and performance.

That means the RTX 3070 is still a very valid purchase, but if you want to spend a bit more on the RX 6800, you will in turn get a bit more performance. AMD has simply positioned this GPU where it exists pretty much on its own – but I can't imagine that will be the case for long!

We don't yet have a buy link for the RX 6800, but AMD has informed us the UK MSRP is £529.99.

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Pros

• Faster than RTX 3070 and RTX 2080 Ti.
• Just as power efficient as RTX 3070.
• 16GB VRAM capacity.
• Huge boost in clock speed compared to RDNA/RX 5700 XT.
• Hardware-accelerated ray tracing is finally supported by an AMD GPU.
• Reference design runs quiet and cool.

Cons

• Ray tracing performance isn't as competitive as Nvidia's solutions.
• AMD currently has no answer to DLSS.

KitGuru says: RX 6800 may not grab the headlines quite like the RX 6800 XT, but it delivers excellent performance for those who want something a bit faster than the RTX 3070 without coughing up the cash for RX 6800 XT.

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