AMD RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 Review: AMD Finally Does Ray Tracing

I was definitely excited when AMD announced all the specs and neat feature of their 6000 - series art cards at the end of October , albeit unbelieving of what kind of ray tracing performance AMD ’s latest GPUs would have . AMD was quiet about the irradiation hound performance , and it could have been because its visiting card would n’t beatNvidia 3000 – serial cards . alas , that ended up being the case fit in to my testing . But do n’t discount RDNA2 quite yet . While the ray follow carrying into action left me underwhelmed , that sinewy base performance AMD boasted about ? Both the RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 retrospect here matched or exceed the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 in nearly all the games I tested . These are still some gravely good GPUs .

Traditionally , the most important element of a new GPU is how many material body it can pump out . Yet with the plus of novel features like Smart Access Memory and Rage Mode , what could have been two straight - advancing computer graphic cards are way more complex . The strengths and failing of the RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 have less to do with frames per second and more to do with what a person already has in their rig . If you recover yourself agonizing over going team green or team blood-red , oh man do I get it .

At its foundation , AMD has outdone itself with its Modern RDNA2 architecture , which powers its fresh generation of graphics cards . In addition to a 50 % per James Watt execution increase over the previous generation , it ’s added more compute units ( atomic number 29 ) and more shaders , and something called Infinity Cache : 128 MB of consecrate space to help optimize computer storage bandwidth and reaction time .

Photo: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo

That 128 MB should keep all of the framebuffer , ezed - buffer store , and most recent textures cached . Basically , important visual data that would normally be stored in the GPU ’s VRAM gets moved over here , discharge up that space in the VRAM for other data to speed up rendering times .

In practice , I ’m not certain if I noticed this while execute gaming benchmarks or loading in from one conniption to the next , but I did observe how quickly the image on my screen would reload when I flip from one solution to the next . commonly , the screen door move bleak for a second or two while the GPU does what it needs to do , but that did n’t happen in some games . interchange screen resolutions on Shadow of the Tomb Raider , Assassins Creed Odyssey , and Control , for example , was instantaneous . None of the bleak screen present with Nvidia ’s RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 cards .

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800

Graphic: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo (In-House Art)

What is it ?

AMD ’s newest discrete computer graphic card with beam of light tracing

Mary Leontyne Price

Graphic: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo

Graphic: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo (In-House Art)

RX 6800 XT : $ 640 , RX 6800 : $ 580

Incredible base performance , cost , Smart Access Memory fps boost , compatible with most ray tracing games

No Like

Minuscule Rage Mode fps encouragement , some BIOS and biz stableness issues

For all of the benchmarks except for the Smart Access Memory comparisons , I used the following system with both the RX 6000 scorecard and both the RTX 3000 lineup : Intel Core i9 - 10900 K CPU ; Asus ROG Maximus Extreme XII motherboard ; 16 GB ( 8 GB x2 ) G.Skill Trident Z Royal DDR4 - 3600 DRAM ; Samsung 970 Evo NVMe M.2 500 GB SSD ; Seasonic Focus GX-1000 PSU ; and a Corsair H150i Pro RGB 360 mm AIO for cool down . For the Smart Access Memory tests I swapped out the above CPU and motherboard for a Ryzen 9 5950X and an Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero motherboard .

But real quick , a note for all the testing that was done on that AMD motherboard : I could only set the RAM frequency to 3200 cycles/second , even though its top frequency is 3600 Hz . The latest BIOS for this motherboard currently has a glitch that preclude the organisation from reboot if the DOCP preset visibility is selected , which automatically overclocks your random-access memory to its maximum relative frequency . AMD is currently aware of this military issue and is forge to correct it , a spokesperson told me .

The previous BIOS rendering is fine , but the latest version is require to use Smart Access Memory , so it was a bit of a Catch-22 with my examination . However , the lower frequency had minuscule effect on performance as you ’ll see in the chart with results from the AMD - configured system further down . I had zero issues with the Intel system .

Now , peep these chart :

We do n’t normally employ 3DMark in our benchmark entourage , but in this case it ’s helpful as a start point before sustain into all the detailed gaming benchmarks . It ’s incredible to see AMD have such a big atomic number 82 over Nvidia , and it ’s well-defined that AMD has improved on its Radeon poster vastly from its late contemporaries . It has n’t really had such strong performance compare to Nvidia before , and the changes it made to its GPU computer architecture have clearly paid off .

As the play bench mark below reflect , the RX 6800 XT outperforms the RTX 3080 and the RX 6800 outperforms the RTX 3070 , but only without any fancy ray tracing essence . The RTX 3080 maintains a generous tip in the Port Royal tests , and the RTX 3070 is not too far behind the RX 6800 XT . The RX 6800 ’s ray trace public presentation is sort of lackluster , more akin to the performance of maybe the RTX 2080 or 2070 — fairly obvious once you startle digging into individual game . The RX 6800 XT ’s shaft of light tracing performance is closer to theRTX 2080 Ti .

AMD ’s new GPUs generally match or exceed Nvidia ’s new GPUs at 1440p and 4K. There are some outliers , like both RX 6000 cards ca n’t seem to out - perform the RTX 3000 bill of fare in Control and Metro Exodus , but other than that performance is unremarkably within 5 Federal Protective Service or a picayune more , and with Smart Access enable , frame pace are off the chart — almost literally .

However , thing set about to get complicated when ray tracing and/or Smart Access is turned on . Theoretically , AMD ’s new cards should be compatible with all current ray trace enabled games , and they are for the most part . However , beam trace will not work with a game like Wolfenstein : Youngblood because the re delineate in that game is proprietary to Nvidia ; the DLSS is integrated with the ray tracing , and since DLSS is Nvidia ’s own frame rate - boosting , image sharping engineering science , AMD ’s batting order ca n’t habituate it . The selection does n’t even show up in the video configurations .

AMD ’s ray tracing works just ok in Control , Metro Exodus , Battlefield V , and any other game that separate the ray tracing set up from the DLSS mount . However , Control consistently freeze with ray tracing enable at 1440p and 4 K with both graphics cards . I did n’t come across any issues at 1080p . Even stranger , this issue was only present when I paired a Radeon card with an AMD central processor . The problem was non - real when I tested the same cards on my Intel system .

As for Smart Access Memory — it ’s a new feature of speech from AMD that allow a Ryzen CPU and a Radeon GPU to “ blab ” direct to each other and access each other ’s memory without have to go through your system ’s drachm first . All that mean that Smart Access Memory should better game shape rates while interlace you into an all AMD organisation . And it unquestionably works , but it also only works with certain games , just as Nvidia DLSS is only available in certain games too .

A biz like Shadow of the Tomb Raider is compatible with both DLSS and Smart Access , but Smart Access does not offer a boost in Metro Exodus . If you ’re wondering what game will do good from that Smart Access , front for the huge AMD Ryzen / Radeon logotype when the game first loads . That will usually betoken if that plot will benefit from the new feature . Though not all the fourth dimension .

Here are some chart so you’re able to see what kind of performance boost to expect :

Like enabling DLSS , Smart Access boosts the form pace by about 10 fps . DLSS also enhance the visuals though , so technically it ’s the just of the two . But again , just over 20 games support DLSS at the moment with more on the way next class . AMD will be introducing its own variation of DLSS called Super Resolution , but that wo n’t be ready until next yr as well . Sure , AMD has things like CAS ( Contrast Aware Sharpening ) , but those do n’t really hike up skeleton rates in the same path that DLSS does , and not every game is compatible with those features . And if you ’re wondering why I have n’t talked much about Rage Mode … well for starters , it ’s only usable on the RX 6800 XT and it does n’t really give much of a performance hike , perhaps one or two frames at the most .

So , the unspoiled way of life to give some game without DLSS a petty execution cost increase without overclocking is with Smart Access — which means you will need to have an all - AMD system . But an all - AMD arrangement means you ’ll be miss out on beam of light tracing performance , which brings me to another round of charts . ( I said there were going to be lots of charts , did n’t I ? )

Nvidia still has the best ray describe functioning , and the RTX 3080 is still the good GPU to get if you desire sensational graphics at 4 K 60fps for around $ 700 . And that makes mother wit since Nvidia is one generation before of AMD with regards to that feature . The RX 6800 XT is great for 1080p and 1440p shaft of light trace , just like the RTX 2080 Ti , but at least it crank out the same arresting visuals as Nvidia ’s bill .

With ray tracing on , the RTX 3080 has a goodly lead over the RX 6800 XT , even with Smart Access Memory enabled . The RTX 3070 and RX 6800 are much close in execution , but the 3070 still has about a 10 - 15 fps lead over the 6800 . If you ’ve already endow in a 4 K monitor and several irradiation trace game , it might make more sense for you to amaze with Nvidia . But if you have only a 1440p monitor and/or not a great deal a ray tracing games , AMD might make the most mother wit instead , especially if you ’ve already invested in anew Ryzen 5000 serial publication desktop processor .

Graphic: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo

Graphic: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo (In-House Art)

That ’s really the incentive though , is n’t it ? In theory , it ’s a good one too . That Smart Access Federal Protective Service boost that ’s only capable when you pair an AMD GPU with an AMD C.P.U. means good functioning , beam of light tracing or not , although it ’s limited to a few games and sometimes only certain resolutions in those games . Nvidia ’s DLSS will give select games a carrying into action boost at all resoluteness and is n’t CPU dependant at all . But given that both the RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 get better radix performance than the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 , it makes AMD ’s unexampled nontextual matter cards the better deal — at least for the RX 6800 XT anyway , which is $ 640 , or $ 60 less than the RTX 3080 . It ’s a hard argument for the $ 580 RX 6800 , which is $ 80 more than the RTX 3070 . It does have in effect floor performance , but I ’m not sure it feels like $ 80 better stem performance .

If you ’re the kind of person who just wants to slap a GPU into your microcomputer and call it a solar day , you ca n’t go wrong with either of AMD ’s 6000 carte du jour . respectable base functioning without doing anything ? Solid passel . But the deep you dive into shaft of light trace performance and BIOS - level performance boosts , these cards depart to not look as sweet . I ’m sure AMD will patch whatever bugs are bogging down the newest BIOS interpretation , improve its Smart Access feature , and fix whatever the heck is pass off with Control . But presently , Nvidia is still doing a better problem on the software side of things . alas , that ’s not enough of a departure for me to say Nvidia or AMD is better overall . Ultimately it comes down to if you ’d be felicitous with one of these new AMD cards . I know I would be .