1 00:00:00,960 --> 00:00:07,919 look at this guy do you feel old yet because i sure do 2 00:00:05,600 --> 00:00:12,320 that was me the last time AMD had a truly competitive top tier Radeon 3 00:00:10,160 --> 00:00:19,039 graphics card that was over seven years ago and this is me the last time AMD sat on 4 00:00:15,920 --> 00:00:22,880 top as the single GPU king with the 5 00:00:19,039 --> 00:00:26,480 Radeon hd 7970 and that is why the 6 00:00:22,880 --> 00:00:28,480 excitement around the rx 6800 series is 7 00:00:26,480 --> 00:00:33,760 so high and why it would be so devastating if 8 00:00:30,720 --> 00:00:35,920 AMD let us all down again 9 00:00:33,760 --> 00:00:39,360 thankfully spoiler alert they didn't 10 00:00:37,680 --> 00:00:44,000 watch on and watch what apps are stealing your 11 00:00:41,680 --> 00:00:48,480 bandwidth using our sponsor glasswire it's an easy way to diagnose and fix 12 00:00:46,480 --> 00:00:55,800 issues like poor video quality in online meetings get 25 off today using offer 13 00:00:51,200 --> 00:00:55,800 code Linus at the link down below 14 00:01:02,239 --> 00:01:11,119 during episode two of AMD's where gaming begins event AMD introduced us to their 15 00:01:07,040 --> 00:01:16,240 three new big navi gpus the rx 6800 rx 16 00:01:11,119 --> 00:01:18,880 6800 xt and rx 6900 xt nice all of which 17 00:01:16,240 --> 00:01:24,880 feature ray accelerators in each compute unit for ray tracing support as well as 18 00:01:21,360 --> 00:01:26,720 16 gigabytes of gddr6 memory and a new 19 00:01:24,880 --> 00:01:31,119 infinity cache that promises to significantly improve memory performance 20 00:01:29,040 --> 00:01:35,680 without the additional cost associated with gddr6x 21 00:01:33,439 --> 00:01:40,880 not only that but AMD also announced a technology that they're calling smart 22 00:01:37,600 --> 00:01:43,759 access memory which lets compatible cpus 23 00:01:40,880 --> 00:01:50,079 access the GPU's entire memory space at once rather than in small 256 megabyte 24 00:01:47,280 --> 00:01:53,280 chunks as before offering a significant performance boost 25 00:01:51,680 --> 00:01:58,719 it's because of that last feature that we're using a top-end ryzen 5000 series 26 00:01:56,079 --> 00:02:03,520 CPU for our testing which along with offering leading gaming performance is 27 00:02:01,040 --> 00:02:06,799 the only CPU platform that currently supports this feature 28 00:02:05,119 --> 00:02:12,239 before you get too concerned about being left out though both AMD and NVIDIA have 29 00:02:09,759 --> 00:02:16,400 told us that it's pretty much a fancy marketing name for resizable bar support 30 00:02:14,959 --> 00:02:21,760 which is something that microsoft is pushing for and that NVIDIA claims will 31 00:02:18,480 --> 00:02:23,680 be supported on their gpus soon i'd also 32 00:02:21,760 --> 00:02:28,640 be surprised if we don't see Intel ad platform support in the future but the 33 00:02:26,480 --> 00:02:32,560 future's the future let's see how things look today shadow of the tomb raider was 34 00:02:30,879 --> 00:02:37,599 one of the first titles to support ray tracing and with it disabled NVIDIA 35 00:02:34,959 --> 00:02:43,920 stands no chance against AMD unless we enabled dlss and that's a big 36 00:02:40,640 --> 00:02:45,599 deal but there is an asterisk here when 37 00:02:43,920 --> 00:02:51,280 we turn on ray tracing Radeon performance suffers tremendously with 38 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:53,360 the 6800 xt sitting 13 frames per second 39 00:02:51,280 --> 00:02:57,280 below the rtx 3080. we wanted to test the same thing in 40 00:02:55,040 --> 00:03:01,680 wolfenstein youngblood but unfortunately that game hasn't been updated yet with 41 00:02:59,280 --> 00:03:06,159 vulcan ray tracing support for AMD so we'll have to settle for a traditional 42 00:03:03,200 --> 00:03:10,400 rendering where the 6800 xt is once again trailing the rtx 3080 with another 43 00:03:09,200 --> 00:03:14,800 asterisk with smart access memory enabled AMD 44 00:03:12,879 --> 00:03:20,080 retakes the lead in this traditional rendering scenario with a single digit 45 00:03:17,280 --> 00:03:23,680 but measurable performance improvement more good news follows with microsoft 46 00:03:21,760 --> 00:03:28,560 flight simulator where AMD managed the same or better performance than NVIDIA 47 00:03:26,159 --> 00:03:34,159 across the board although here we see a scenario where smart access memory has 48 00:03:30,959 --> 00:03:37,680 no tangible benefit so your mileage 49 00:03:34,159 --> 00:03:40,080 quite literally can vary game to game 50 00:03:37,680 --> 00:03:44,879 cs go gives us one scenario where NVIDIA pulls ahead in traditional rasterized 51 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:49,120 rendering but look at the difference in minimum frame rates 52 00:03:46,640 --> 00:03:54,879 smart access memory makes a huge difference for AMD here and arguably 53 00:03:52,560 --> 00:03:58,959 that's even more important for esports titles like this than the average frame 54 00:03:57,519 --> 00:04:03,920 rate would be finally there's minecraft rtx and it's 55 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:10,799 well it's a mess on AMD even without dlss the 6800 xt only gets 56 00:04:07,760 --> 00:04:15,760 half the average FPS compared to the rtx 57 00:04:10,799 --> 00:04:19,199 3080 and even the rtx 3070 is 50 faster 58 00:04:15,760 --> 00:04:21,840 than the 6800 this really highlights the 59 00:04:19,199 --> 00:04:26,880 weakness of AMD's first generation ray accelerators compared to NVIDIA's more 60 00:04:24,080 --> 00:04:32,960 mature second gen rt cores a note on dlss before we continue 61 00:04:29,360 --> 00:04:35,360 dlss is a contentious thing because it's 62 00:04:32,960 --> 00:04:40,880 an upscaler the scene is rendered at a lower resolution and then intelligently 63 00:04:37,919 --> 00:04:45,440 scaled up using NVIDIA's tensor course some would call measuring performance 64 00:04:42,479 --> 00:04:49,759 with dlss cheating but whether it's cheating or whether it's not it looks 65 00:04:47,520 --> 00:04:53,840 pretty darn good and it's something real gamers are using that AMD doesn't yet 66 00:04:52,240 --> 00:04:58,639 have an answer for if fidelityfx super resolution which is 67 00:04:56,720 --> 00:05:03,919 their analogous feature were ready in time for launch then we might have had 68 00:05:01,440 --> 00:05:09,759 playable frame rates in minecraft with ray tracing enabled but instead we'll 69 00:05:06,400 --> 00:05:11,440 need to wait for the rx 6900 xt get 70 00:05:09,759 --> 00:05:15,120 subscribed by the way so you don't miss our coverage of that card when it 71 00:05:12,800 --> 00:05:20,000 launches in december now productivity used to be an area that Radeon excelled 72 00:05:17,759 --> 00:05:25,600 but it seems that AMD had to make some sacrifices to catch up in gaming 73 00:05:22,560 --> 00:05:28,160 in opencl versus cuda Radeon outperforms 74 00:05:25,600 --> 00:05:31,600 g-force in longer renders while the opposite is true for shorter renders 75 00:05:30,080 --> 00:05:35,199 like bmw Radeon doesn't currently support 76 00:05:33,440 --> 00:05:39,280 ray-accelerated rendering which puts NVIDIA light years ahead with their 77 00:05:37,039 --> 00:05:44,960 optics renderer and it's worth noting that while there is a plug-in for Radeon 78 00:05:41,919 --> 00:05:47,440 prorender that is accelerated the output 79 00:05:44,960 --> 00:05:50,960 is rough and looks nothing like what it should 80 00:05:48,240 --> 00:05:55,120 similarly we couldn't even run luxmark or rather we could but the end result 81 00:05:53,440 --> 00:06:00,080 was so mangled that it wasn't even recognizable let alone usable 82 00:05:57,919 --> 00:06:03,919 this led to a problem for us in terms of productivity testing because most 83 00:06:02,320 --> 00:06:09,360 productivity software that takes advantage of the GPU is optimized for 84 00:06:06,639 --> 00:06:12,639 cuda and opencl implementations are getting old enough now that they're 85 00:06:11,120 --> 00:06:18,560 beginning to break we did find a renderer that supports 86 00:06:14,479 --> 00:06:21,199 both opencl and cuda indigo but 87 00:06:18,560 --> 00:06:25,520 NVIDIA had the lead in it anyway spec view perf gave us some blow trading 88 00:06:23,280 --> 00:06:30,160 though with 3ds max performing better on radeons while katia and creo were much 89 00:06:28,080 --> 00:06:35,520 better on GeForce and the memory intensive energy medical and siemens nx 90 00:06:33,199 --> 00:06:39,440 workloads heavily favored Radeon thanks to the infinity cache 91 00:06:37,280 --> 00:06:42,800 mayan solidworks on the other hand once again fell to NVIDIA's faster compute 92 00:06:41,759 --> 00:06:47,199 engine as AMD predicted when we asked about its 93 00:06:45,199 --> 00:06:51,120 impact on productivity smart access memory made no difference here just like 94 00:06:49,680 --> 00:06:55,360 our new keyboard shirts won't make you a better typist they just make you look 95 00:06:53,039 --> 00:06:59,440 cooler lttestore.com it looks like AMD's expanded vapor 96 00:06:57,280 --> 00:07:04,160 chamber cooler design though is roughly comparable to NVIDIA's with both the rx 97 00:07:01,680 --> 00:07:09,120 6800 gpus closely matching their team green counterparts with the curious 98 00:07:06,319 --> 00:07:14,479 exception of the tail end of the test where specvuperf's medical and siemens 99 00:07:11,840 --> 00:07:19,520 nx benchmarks happen to fall as you might recall that's one of the areas 100 00:07:16,240 --> 00:07:21,599 where AMD absolutely spanked NVIDIA 101 00:07:19,520 --> 00:07:26,880 as far as clock stability goes it looks like AMD is slightly less consistently 102 00:07:24,160 --> 00:07:31,039 running at maximum boost clock but it's pretty similar across the board 103 00:07:29,199 --> 00:07:35,199 you might expect that with clocks going as low as they do at idle power 104 00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:39,039 consumption would be lower than NVIDIA's when you're not doing anything 105 00:07:36,639 --> 00:07:43,599 unfortunately that's not so still power consumption on the whole 106 00:07:40,960 --> 00:07:47,680 appears lower with some exceptions so you can again see that dip for NVIDIA 107 00:07:45,759 --> 00:07:52,319 here suggesting a bottleneck with medical and siemens nx that AMD isn't 108 00:07:50,319 --> 00:07:56,879 experiencing you can't see it on this graph unfortunately but we recorded a 109 00:07:54,319 --> 00:08:03,120 spike as high as 270 watts for the rx 6800 and an eye watering 411 watts for 110 00:08:01,120 --> 00:08:06,879 the 6800 xt thankfully that's not all the time so 111 00:08:04,879 --> 00:08:10,720 it's not really a problem in practice that is as long as you've got a quality 112 00:08:08,720 --> 00:08:14,000 power supply that won't trip its over current protection under a momentary 113 00:08:12,400 --> 00:08:18,960 spike like that the main trouble with the rx 6800 series 114 00:08:16,639 --> 00:08:22,400 aside from the last gen ray tracing performance which is becoming more 115 00:08:20,720 --> 00:08:26,960 important day by day is its lack of truly useful features in 116 00:08:25,039 --> 00:08:30,800 comparison to NVIDIA not only do they not yet have a dlss 117 00:08:29,120 --> 00:08:35,039 equivalent that's ready to help out their weaker ray accelerators they're 118 00:08:32,719 --> 00:08:38,959 not even apologetic about it here's what they told us when we asked about the ray 119 00:08:36,800 --> 00:08:43,279 tracing performance and why they weren't comparing with NVIDIA even for press 120 00:08:40,800 --> 00:08:48,080 briefings super resolution techniques like dlss do not produce the same visual 121 00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:50,399 quality as native rendering especially with motion 122 00:08:49,200 --> 00:08:56,399 i mean yeah that's true but it's gotten pretty 123 00:08:53,440 --> 00:09:01,440 good and that fact alone doesn't change that NVIDIA has it and AMD doesn't and 124 00:08:59,920 --> 00:09:07,200 that was literally the difference between playable ray tracing and sub 60 125 00:09:04,399 --> 00:09:10,399 frame rates in our testing also AMD if you really thought it was that garbage 126 00:09:08,959 --> 00:09:15,200 why are you working on an analogous feature like we weren't expecting AMD to blow us 127 00:09:13,600 --> 00:09:20,160 away with their first gen ray tracing support it's just that this fox and the 128 00:09:17,200 --> 00:09:23,920 grapes response is a little bit tone deaf 129 00:09:21,279 --> 00:09:29,040 of course AMD has a point not everyone cares about upscaling or ray tracing but 130 00:09:26,240 --> 00:09:33,279 then AMD's hardware video encoder is still frankly rubbish with what looks 131 00:09:30,880 --> 00:09:36,560 like significant chroma subsampling and macroblock artifacts compared to NVIDIA 132 00:09:35,200 --> 00:09:40,720 at the same resolution in bitrate and x264 133 00:09:38,399 --> 00:09:45,760 it's basically unwatchable and on the subject of media NVIDIA is also rolling 134 00:09:43,279 --> 00:09:51,440 features like rtx voice background noise cancellation ai camera background 135 00:09:48,560 --> 00:09:56,320 removal and more that are accelerated by their tensor cores 136 00:09:52,959 --> 00:09:58,480 AMD currently has no equivalent machine 137 00:09:56,320 --> 00:10:03,600 learning hardware in the Radeon 6000 series this puts streamers and content 138 00:10:01,120 --> 00:10:08,000 creators and frankly even work from home professionals who like to game in their 139 00:10:05,040 --> 00:10:11,040 off hours at a disadvantage with Radeon compared to if they had bought GeForce 140 00:10:09,760 --> 00:10:14,800 instead speaking personally those features 141 00:10:12,959 --> 00:10:20,240 really are enough to compel me to go GeForce even if i didn't give two hoots 142 00:10:17,680 --> 00:10:24,560 about ray tracing AMD is trying to make up for this somewhat though by focusing 143 00:10:22,079 --> 00:10:28,320 more on game enhancements via variable rate shading mesh shading and fidelity 144 00:10:27,279 --> 00:10:34,160 effects but these are up to the developer to include you can't just turn on the 145 00:10:32,399 --> 00:10:39,120 ambient occlusion feature on any game that you want this combined with enhanced media 146 00:10:37,120 --> 00:10:44,720 decoding support and support for full fat HDMI 2.1 with freesync 147 00:10:41,920 --> 00:10:49,120 well they merely bring AMD up to date rather than allowing them to leap over 148 00:10:46,880 --> 00:10:52,399 NVIDIA who already has mesh shading variable rate shading ambient occlusion 149 00:10:50,800 --> 00:10:55,760 sharpening on top of all the other things that AMD's missing out on here 150 00:10:54,880 --> 00:11:01,680 so i'm not disappointed by the rx 6800 151 00:10:58,800 --> 00:11:05,200 series AMD delivered on everything they promised in their keynote but if you 152 00:11:03,760 --> 00:11:08,480 were hoping that there was going to be some extra dazzle you know one more 153 00:11:07,519 --> 00:11:14,480 thing then you might feel a bit let down 154 00:11:11,440 --> 00:11:16,480 what you see is what you get and at 155 00:11:14,480 --> 00:11:22,480 these prices they're just a little tough to recommend 156 00:11:19,360 --> 00:11:24,880 the rx 6800 xt is just fifty dollars 157 00:11:22,480 --> 00:11:28,880 less than the rtx 3080 and gets you roughly similar performance in 158 00:11:26,480 --> 00:11:35,279 traditional gaming with a big l in almost every other area the rx 6800 well 159 00:11:32,640 --> 00:11:40,320 honestly it's even tougher at 80 dollars more than the competing rtx 3070 well it 160 00:11:38,000 --> 00:11:43,120 competes well until you turn on ray tracing 161 00:11:41,360 --> 00:11:48,480 or start streaming but it's also only 70 dollars more for 162 00:11:45,680 --> 00:11:52,399 the significantly faster xt model which doesn't seem like a lot more by the time 163 00:11:50,480 --> 00:11:56,959 you're already spending 600 on a freaking graphics card 164 00:11:53,920 --> 00:11:59,440 so maybe the 6800 exists mostly as like 165 00:11:56,959 --> 00:12:04,640 a kicker sku and we'll see some crazy promotions on it or something 166 00:12:01,279 --> 00:12:06,800 all in all a plus for effort but anyone 167 00:12:04,640 --> 00:12:12,160 who wanted to see NVIDIA get absolutely embarrassed this generation is just 168 00:12:09,600 --> 00:12:15,839 gonna have to wait for AMD's next crack at top tier gaming performance 169 00:12:14,240 --> 00:12:19,600 though AMD's probably still gonna move a lot of these given that you can't 170 00:12:17,279 --> 00:12:23,120 actually buy an rtx card at the moment now that i think about it 171 00:12:21,200 --> 00:12:27,839 just like i always think about our segways get the best prices and best 172 00:12:25,600 --> 00:12:32,720 selection on pc hardware and technology at any of microcenter's 25 locations 173 00:12:30,399 --> 00:12:37,680 across the united states micro centers got new prices on the 9th generation 8 174 00:12:35,200 --> 00:12:43,360 core cpus from Intel with the 9700k at just 199 and 9900k at 299 and you can 175 00:12:41,600 --> 00:12:46,880 save an additional 20 bucks when you bundle with a compatible eligible 176 00:12:44,880 --> 00:12:51,279 motherboard and you can follow the link in the description for a free 32gb flash 177 00:12:48,880 --> 00:12:54,480 drive and 32gb microsd card valid in store only no purchase necessary really 178 00:12:53,040 --> 00:12:57,920 no purchase necessary how the hell does that work well thanks for watching guys 179 00:12:56,079 --> 00:13:01,760 go check out our coverage of AMD's where gaming begins to get a little more 180 00:12:59,440 --> 00:13:05,680 background on today's launch we decided to focus this video more on just like 181 00:13:03,600 --> 00:13:09,440 the performance and feature analysis let us know if you like that approach