Is AMD Back?? - Radeon 6800 & 6800 XT First Impressions
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2021-05-05
·
2,367 words · ~11 min read
0:00
- AMD hasn't been, shall we say competitive
0:04
at the top end of GPU's for a long time now,
0:07
but that's changing. At least we think it is
0:11
we don't have reviews available yet. And these guys here
0:15
have not yet been opened but
0:20
still pretty exciting. Isn't it? Like when was the last time? It was like
0:23
I don't know, fury, you could make the argument for fury.
0:26
Like, come on. (laughing)
0:30
It's been such a long ride, but here we are.
0:34
And now we've got the Radeon RX 6000 Series. We've got the 6800 on top here
0:38
in this comparatively tiny box although it is quite fetching,
0:41
I must say. And the 6800 XT.
0:46
The RX 6800 XT is what AMD is pitting against the RTX 380.
0:50
This guy here. And it looks like
0:54
it's gonna be a little bit bigger physically. Don't know yet,
0:58
but at $649, it's actually going to be about 50 bucks cheaper
1:02
while purportedly having roughly the same performance
1:06
in traditional games. The RX 6800 meanwhile
1:10
is sort of a competitor for the RTX 3070.
1:15
I mean, it looks like it completely trounces it
1:18
based on AMD's data, but at the same time, it's like, what is it?
1:22
$80 more? Yeah, 579. This
1:26
only costs what?
1:29
$70 less than this.
1:34
What is AMD smoking right now?
1:38
That's ridiculous. So let's get into it and let's start off with the little one.
1:42
Look at that. It's never even been opened, not even in our inventory.
1:46
I could walk away with this right now and nobody would know except for you guys.
1:50
All right. Let's see what we got here. Actually really nice packaging so far.
1:55
Uncompromised 4k gaming, AMD fidelity of FX optimized,
1:59
16 gigabytes of memory and PCI express 4.0 ready.
2:03
So we pulled this off. Oh yeah. Look at that. It's got a little fanning here
2:06
for the card and we've also got
2:10
safety precaution and FCC compliance.
2:15
I am so sorry.
2:21
And of course we have the main event in here.
2:25
Oh man. That looks and feels really nice.
2:31
Like this is, this is solid. And yet it's got curves to it.
2:36
So our display outputs we've got a USB type C,
2:40
two display ports which support display compression 1.4
2:45
and HDMI 2.1 which supposedly supports
2:49
the full 48 gigabits per second AMD doesn't specifically say this,
2:52
what is it? Fixed rate link.
2:56
I don't know why they called it that it makes no sense whatsoever, but Hey, HDMI.
3:01
Round back we've got that there power delivery. Those are really tiny
3:05
surface-mount devices there. I really liked the look of this card.
3:09
The two tone. It's just so nice. And they got this little guide here
3:13
to say this is the screw you should take out first I guess. I can't take it apart for you
3:17
unfortunately. But yeah, and these fans look really nice.
3:21
They feel nice too. And yeah, the whole thing is basically made of metal.
3:25
This is sweet. So this is the RTX 3080.
3:30
Yeah, and bear in mind this is the 6800 non XT
3:33
and it's a little shorter,
3:37
roughly the same thickness. This is a little thicker actually.
3:41
And as far as width goes,
3:45
okay, the Radeon is a bit bigger.
3:50
Which one weighs more. I feel like this weighs more.
3:54
Let's get our scale and see.
3:57
So this boy weighs about 1.29 kg
4:05
or two pounds 13.5 ounces
4:08
as for our Radeon 1.32 kg,
4:13
two point 14. Sorry. That's not how pounds work.
4:17
Two pounds, 14.5 ounces. I hate imperial. Thank you.
4:21
2.91 pounds. So yeah, this is a little bit heavier
4:26
and I guess that would be expected because they're not really relying on that
4:31
revolutionary pass through flow-through design
4:34
that NVIDIA has going here. Like you can
4:37
let's put it over this. Yeah. You can see through the fan.
4:40
So yeah, they don't have that going for them. This is just a straight, traditional
4:44
blow through the, what's that? Oh, I bit my tongue.
4:47
So this is just the traditional type of exhausting to the case kind of cooler.
4:51
So this is what it's competing against. The RTX 3070
4:55
and that is quite a size difference.
5:02
And if I were to plop this down onto this
5:06
that's not even a kilogram, which is two pounds, 2.8 ounces.
5:11
But then again, I mean, this is the thing it's not directly competing
5:15
which is kind of unfortunate because
5:19
like how do we compare, like what this is compared to. Nothing.
5:23
It doesn't compare to anything.
5:26
This is gonna be a real nightmare to benchmark. It's closer to a 3080 than a 3070.
5:31
Let's just put it that way. That's a very good segue
5:36
into
5:39
the 6800 XT
5:43
which is a good $70 more. I think
5:47
- [Jono] You had a good, really good segue to the sponsor.
5:52
- Oh, I'm being told that I should have segue to the sponsor
5:56
instead of this other card. Well, that's me for you, I guess.
6:02
Thanks to SteelSeries
6:06
for sponsoring this the SteelSeries Aerox 3 wireless
6:10
is the newest mouse by SteelSeries. That weighs only 66 grams
6:13
making it one of the latest mice available and uses quantum wireless 2.0
6:16
for nearly zero latency for speed and stability it can use 2.4 gigahertz RF
6:21
and Bluetooth connections along with a USB type C
6:24
for fast charging end up with a 40 hours of battery life in 15 minutes
6:28
awkward barrier technology makes it the first IP 54 dust and splash resistant gaming mouse.
6:33
Go to steelseries.com to check out the Aerox 3 wireless today.
6:37
Let's unbox this guy. There is also
6:40
an unbroken seal here,
6:44
but this box is much more substantial.
6:49
I slashed the box.
6:52
Just in case anyone's wondering there's basically nothing on the back of the box.
6:56
Now this is the one that everyone wants to see. This is the one that everyone's kind of
7:01
salivating over, aside with a 6900 XT, which is much nicer.
7:05
Here we go. Welcome to the red team.
7:09
You've joined a select community with an uncompromising passion
7:12
for premium gaming that share desires at the heart of everything we do.
7:17
It's why we've engineered the fastest AMD Radeon RX graphics cards ever
7:22
to deliver a powerful gaming experience,
7:25
have fun #AMDRedTeam.
7:28
And then we had this useless little, thing again.
7:31
It doesn't look much different,
7:39
- [Jono] He thick! - But it feels different. Yeah.
7:43
That is a thick stack of fins right there.
7:47
Is it roughly the same size though? Yeah, it kinda is.
7:52
There's more fan area. They're not more dense but they are definitely taller,
7:56
but I know what this is. This is the 6800 XT and on the top,
8:00
we've got exactly the same selection of ports. We have USB type C,
8:05
two DisplayPort with displacement and compression 1.4
8:08
and the HDMI 2.1 which presumably
8:11
is the full 48 gigabits per second. I was hoping that I would have
8:15
more to say about this, but it's just thicker.
8:18
That's kind of weird. The Radeon text is a different color.
8:24
So this is just red. This looks like it might be glossy
8:29
or maybe it might even be hiding some RGB
8:33
who knows. All right, let's see how much this guy weighs.
8:37
1.366 kg,
8:40
three pounds, 0.2 ounces.
8:45
You're probably gonna want a GPU brace to support this guy.
8:49
Good thing there's actually partner cards that are going to be coming out with a built-in liquid cooling.
8:54
Note that AMD says that it's necessary actually, because both of these cards.
8:59
And in fact even the 6900 XT are going to be
9:03
potentially less power hungry and less thermally bad
9:09
than either of these. Yeah, the 6800 XT is 250 Watts
9:13
with a 650 Watt recommended power supply
9:16
while the 6800 XT
9:20
is 300 Watts with recommended 750 watt power supply.
9:23
And that is exactly the same as the 6900 XT, despite that card's extra power
9:28
which is interesting because the only real difference between this card and the 6900 XT
9:34
is that this card has eight pure compute units.
9:38
So this is 60 compute units.
9:41
This is 72 and the big boy is 80.
9:45
Each one of those has a Ray accelerator that AMD is adding
9:48
for the first time in this generation. And presumably
9:52
it'll just work with any game that supports RTX
9:55
which is just really fancy words for Vulkan Raytracing
9:59
or DirectX Raytracing.
10:03
Interestingly, AMD is marketing both of these cards
10:07
towards people who might have a GTX 1080 ti
10:11
and they wanted to upgrade to something that's gonna handle a little bit higher frame rates
10:15
or even Raytracing. The 6800 non XT
10:19
AMD is kind of aiming at people who have 1440P or 1080P
10:23
high refresh rate monitors, that they want to really drive at higher visual fidelity
10:27
and higher frame rates. The 6800 XT
10:31
is aimed more towards people who have 4k displays or 1440P high refresh rate displays
10:36
who not only want to have that high refresh rate high gaming, new frame rate experience
10:42
but also have the power to do a lot of sightseeing. So things like Rise of the Tomb Raider
10:47
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Minecraft RTX,
10:50
that kind of thing. You know if you're looking at
10:54
what is the best bang for the buck it really depends on what you're doing.
10:57
If you're doing streaming or anything, really with,
11:00
you know work from home, conferencing, that kind of thing.
11:03
Then the 3070 is better all-rounder than this, even though this is more powerful.
11:08
Really depends on what your priorities are. This guy though is actually priced below the 3080,
11:15
meaning that you have less of a
11:18
do I wanna go higher for less but better performance
11:23
and more of a do I want to go lower for less, but
11:26
the same or better performance? I think this is the better value proposition,
11:30
personally but you know, your mileage may vary.
11:34
Some people might prefer to have a little bit extra horsepower
11:37
and they don't care about RTX voice noise canceling
11:40
or anything like that. They just want the frames
11:44
or maybe they're into content creation. All of them cards on lineup
11:48
from the 6800, all the way up to the 6900 XT,
11:51
not only have 16 gigabytes of GDDR6 memory
11:55
but they also have 128 megabytes of Infinity Cache
11:59
which is something that AMD is saying runs
12:02
1.6 terabytes per second, in terms of speed,
12:06
which is about three plus times faster than the main memory in this card.
12:11
It's ridiculous. But at the same time
12:15
for a lot of the things that your GPU is going to be doing
12:18
it's not going to be like that major I'm gonna write the whole
12:22
video memory back again kind of deal you know.
12:25
It's gonna be the same kind of thing that's updating over and over and over again,
12:29
while you have your assets all in the main memory.
12:32
So in that respect AMD might have the right idea here.
12:37
They're saving money on the memory and then just giving you the same amount of memory
12:41
across the board. And then they're just going to give you
12:45
really fast cache memory. That's on the actual GPU diet itself.
12:50
It's an interesting take on things and I'm very excited to figure out
12:54
whether or not that's actually going to help them.
12:57
Obviously I haven't tested these yet. And you guys won't know until
13:02
I think two days from now whether or not it's any good.
13:05
Aside from that the only question that's really left to answer is
13:10
will it be available at launch 'cause NVIDIA has had
13:13
nothing but problems with their RTX 3000 series
13:17
and AMD's launch of Ryzen 5000
13:21
has been similarly disastrous.
13:24
And I mean, depending on who you ask that's because it's a paper launch,
13:28
which I don't think is true or it could be because scalpers,
13:33
which I guess is also true but it's also because there's unprecedented demand
13:37
for new computers and faster parts because we just haven't had anything
13:41
that was this good in a long time. So the appetite is there.
13:46
People have seen that the appetite is there and they're very much willing to go out
13:50
and spend the money to get it now so that they can charge you way more
13:54
later. Is it gonna be the same for the Radeon RX 6000 series?
14:00
According to AMD and I quote
14:03
I can tell you that we've planned for a successful launch.
14:07
We are working very hard to ensure we have product supplied at launch time around the world.
14:11
And we were actively, working with our partners to at least be sure
14:14
that we can get the products out in the hands of gamers.
14:17
We do expect that we're going to have great global availability at launch,
14:21
and we're really excited to get products out to as many people we can.
14:25
Which I mean of course, they're gonna say that.
14:29
You believe them? I don't know. I guess it all depends on
14:34
actually, you know what? It doesn't depend on anything. Nobody's going to wait for our purview.
14:39
You should, but most people won't.
14:42
So I don't know. I guess we'll just have to see.
14:48
- [Brandon] Subscribe! (laughing)
14:51
- Yeah, we'll just have to see, just like you'll have to see another episode of ShortCircuit
14:55
sometime later. Subscribe. Thanks for watching.
14:58
Take care and good luck.