The flagship Navi-based graphics cards have been long awaited since AMD introduced the first generation RDNA series. While the first-gen RDNA gave us a little glimpse of what to expect from a flagship offering, the lineup never really introduced its own flagship variant and instead focused on the more mainstream performance products. But two years later, the wait is finally over!
AMD has officially launched its lineup of Big Navi graphics cards and it is not only the largest Navi GPU we’ve seen to date, but also based on the 2nd generation RDNA 2 architecture which delivers an impressive jump in performance per watt and at the same time offers a series of new functions to placed AMD Radeon ack in the high-end and enthusiast market segment.
The AMD RDNA 2 architecture for the Big Navi Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6900 series graphics cards has a lot to offer. In addition to architectural enhancements, expect hardware-accelerated ray tracing, smart access memory, Infinity Cache and many more on-deck features that make the lineup one of the most competitive enthusiast families AMD has ever positioned against NVIDIA.
Some of the main features of the AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards are:
- AMD Infinity Cache – A high-performance, last-level data cache capable of 4K and 1440p gaming with the highest level of detail enabled. 128MB of on-die cache drastically reduces latency and power consumption, increasing overall gaming performance over traditional architectural designs.
- AMD Smart Access M.emory – An exclusive feature of systems with AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors, AMD B550 and X570 motherboards and Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards. It gives AMD Ryzen processors more access to the fast GDDR6 graphics memory, accelerates CPU processing and delivers up to 13 percent performance improvement on an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card in Forza Horizon 4 at 4K in combination with the new Rage Mode overclocking with a click.
- Built for standard chassis With a length of 267mm and 2×8 standard 8-pin power connectors, and designed to work with existing 650W-750W enthusiast power supplies, gamers can easily upgrade their existing large to small form factor PCs at no additional cost.
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT “Big Navi 21 XT” GPU Powered 16 GB Graphics Card Specifications
The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT comes with the Navi 21 XT GPU, a scaled-down SKU with 72 Compute Units or 4608 SPs. The card will also feature 16 GB of GDDR6 memory through a 256-bit bus interface, total bandwidth of 512 GB / s and clock speeds of 2015 MHz base and 2250 MHz boost according to reference specifications. The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT also includes 72 Ray Accelerators intended for real-time ray tracing workloads. The card will have a 300W based TBP with factory overclocked models pushing it above 350W and will arrive at a later date.
In addition to the standard memory, the Radeon RX 6800 series graphics cards will also include 128MB of Infinity Cache on the GPU chip. The cache helps increase bandwidth for better performance at resolutions higher than 1080p HD. The 128MB Infinity Cache increases the standard 512GB / s bandwidth by 3.25x, yielding an effective bandwidth of up to 1,664TB / s for all Big Navi GPU-based graphics cards.
In terms of performance, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT appears to compete with the GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. The card has 20W lower total board power and delivers better GPU performance in various AAA titles using the best API (Vulkan / DirectX 12). AMD is also bringing back its Rage Mode, an automatic overclocking tool within its Radeon Software suite that delivers even better performance, along with a handy new feature known as Smart Access. Gains up to 13% were shown with the features mentioned as seen below.
So for this review, I’ll be reviewing the SAPPHIRE Nitro + Radeon RX 6800 XT. The SAPPHIRE Nitro + Radeon RX 6800 XT comes with a suggested retail price of around $ 770, so that’s a little over $ 100 US premium over the 649 US reference list price. For this price, you get a cooling solution with three fans and a factory overclock out of the box.
AMD Radeon RX 6000 series “RDNA 2” graphics cards line-up:
| Graphics Card | AMD Radeon RX 6700 | AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT | AMD Radeon RX 6800 | AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT | AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU | Ships 22 (XL?) | Ships 22 (XT?) | Ships 21 XL | Ships 21 XT | Navi 21 XTX |
| Process node | 7nm | 7nm | 7nm | 7nm | 7nm |
| Transistors | TBA | TBA | 26.8 billion | 26.8 billion | 26.8 billion |
| Calculate units | TBA | 40 | 60 | 72 | 80 |
| Flow processors | TBA | 2560 | 3840 | 4608 | 5120 |
| TMUs / ROPs | TBA | TBA | 240/96 | 288/128 | 320/128 |
| Game clock | TBA | TBA | 1815 MHz | 2015 MHz | 2015 MHz |
| Boost clock | TBA | TBA | 2105 MHz | 2250 MHz | 2250 MHz |
| FP32 TFLOPs | TBA | TBA | 16.17 TFLOPs | 20.74 TFLOPs | 23.04 TFLOPs |
| Memory size | 12 GB GDDR6 | 12 GB GDDR6 | 16 GB GDDR6 + 128 MB Infinity Cache | 16 GB GDDR6 + 128 MB Infinity Cache | 16 GB GDDR6 + 128 MB Infinity Cache |
| Memory bus | 192-bit | 192-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory clock | 14 Gbps? | 16 Gbps? | 16 Gbps | 16 Gbps | 16 Gbps |
| Bandwidth | 320 GB / s | 384 GB / s | 512 GB / s | 512 GB / s | 512 GB / s |
| TDP | TBA | TBA | 250W | 300W | 300W |
| price | TBA | TBA | $ 579 US | $ 649 US | $ 999 US |
If you’d like to read our full AMD RDNA 2 GPU architecture deep dive and Radeon RX 6800 XT reference model review, go to this link.