If only there wasn't a pandemic and a crypto-boom, prices might have been normal, but alas it's 2023 and GPUs are finally getting more realistic prices albeit a generation later. If you use code AFFIRMGPU over at Newegg, you can grab 10% off of a new ASRock RX 6800 XT Phantom Gaming OC graphics card and pick one up for $467. One of the last generation's most powerful GPUs from AMD, this card is still very capable of high-end gaming performance and also packs 16GBs of precious VRAM.

Know where your enemies are with the Razer BlackShark V2 Pro wireless gaming headset for just $99, and listen out for the enemy's footsteps, or pinpoint your assailant's location by tracking where their gunfire hailed from. This wireless headset sports a good battery life and large 50mm drivers. 

Another Razer deal in today's lineup sees the Razer Basilisk Ultimate on sale for $74. This wireless mouse received our Editor's Choice award for its performance and accurate sensor, plus impressive battery life. In our review of the Razer Basilisk Ultimate, our main criticism of the Basilisk was the price tag, but, thanks to this deal the Razer Basilisk Ultimate becomes a much more attractive proposition. 

See below for more great Real Deals. 

TL;DR — Today’s Best Deals

• ASRock RX 6800 XT Phantom Gaming OC GPU: now $467 at Newegg (was $579)
• Razer BlackShark V2 Pro Wireless Headset: now $99 at Amazon (was $179)
• Razer Basilisk Ultimate Wireless Mouse: now $74 at Best Buy (was $169)
• 2TB Solidigm P41 Plus PCIe 4.0 SSD: now $74 at Newegg (was $169)
• 2TB Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD: now $129 at Amazon (was $289)

Today’s best deals in detail

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Igor's Lab has taken on the task of simulating an RX 7800 XT to see what performance might look like. This was done using AMD's new Radeon Pro W7800 graphics card, with half the memory otherwise occupied. Igor's simulation results and theoretical calculations put this theoretical 7800 XT roughly between an RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT, or between Nvidia's competing RTX 4070 and 4070 Ti.

The Radeon Pro W7800 is part of AMD's W7000 series workstation GPUs, featuring its latest RDNA 3 GPU architecture. The GPU sports 70 compute units using AMD's Navi 31 die, with 32GB of memory and a total board power rating of 260W. Due to this, the W7800 is arguably the best current candidate for simulating a theoretical RX 7800 XT. That's because it has a 256-bit memory interface, the same as the rumored RX 7800 XT; disabling half of the VRAM should be a reasonably close stand-in for the future GPU.

Igor provided two different test scenarios. The first involved physically simulating a 7800 XT by artificially disabling half of the memory, leaving the GPU with 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM. The second used theoretical calculations taken from the power efficiency results of the RX 7900 XT. The latter was done to attempt to provide a "more accurate" picture of how an actual RX 7800 XT may perform, since the W7800 is tuned for efficiency rather than performance.

It hopefully goes without saying, but both scenarios are at best an estimate of performance. There are multiple issues, including final clock speeds, core counts, whether the "disabled" VRAM truly mimics a 16GB card, drivers, and more. Igor tested at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K. The "simulated" and "calculated" W7800 results were relatively close, with the simulated results looking similar to an RX 6800 XT while the calculated results look more like an RX 6900 XT. Our GPU benchmarks hierarchy incidentally puts the 6900 XT about 7% ahead of the 6800 XT. Here's the overall 1440p chart:

Igor used nine games for his testing, two of which have ray tracing enabled (Cyberpunk 2077 and Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition). If the RX 7800 XT performs similarly to what he measured, you can see why AMD may not be rushing to bring the RX 7800 XT to market. It would be more efficient than the RDNA 2 GPUs, but performance wouldn't be much better. That would give very little reason for anyone to upgrade to the new RDNA 3 GPU, depending on pricing, since the RX 6800 XT currently starts at $519.

We do have to reiterate that Igor's predictions likely are not fully accurate. The RX 7800 XT's specifications remain confidential at this point, so we don't know what it will have in terms of compute units, shaders, cache, and GPU clocks. The W7800 also uses a trimmed down Navi 31 GCD with 70 CUs, while rumors indicate the RX 7800 XT will use a Navi 22 GCD with 60 (possibly 64) CUs. Depending on final clocks, the consumer card may or may not deliver better performance than Igor's simulated results.

Another problem is drivers, as workstation drivers tend to be less optimized for gaming and more optimized for professional applications. It's possible that drivers tuned for gaming could improve performance quite a bit.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, we also don't know what the price of the presumed RX 7800 XT will be. Given the rumored specs, $600 is probably the most AMD could ask, and it could potentially sell for less. Even if it only matches the performance of the existing RX 6800 XT, if it has a similar price and uses less power while providing a few new extras (like AV1 encoding support), it could still be a decent card.

There's little reason to expect a massive generational uplift in performance, unfortunately. The RX 7600 barely beats the previous generation RX 6650 XT, with both cards using 32 CUs with 8GB of 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory. The RX 7900 XT does beat the RX 6950 XT by around 17% in our testing, but it also features 84 CUs with 20GB of memory compared to 80 CUs and 16GB of memory. Trim the CU count down to 60–64, and performance would logically drop by about 25%.

We hope to see RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT hardware ship in the next month or two. Performance may not be significantly higher than the existing parts, but efficiency should be better and the additional architectural changes make them (slightly) more competitive with Nvidia's RTX 40-series. We'll be sure to test the new GPUs whenever they actually ship.

Although the Radeon RX 7900 series has already launched, AMD's Radeon RX 6800 continues to be one of the best graphics cards in the retail market. Sasa Marinkovic, senior director of gaming marketing at AMD, wants to make sure that consumers don't forget that, sharing a chart showing the Radeon RX 6800's dominance over the GeForce RTX 3070.

Both the Radeon RX 6800 and GeForce RTX 3070 are last-generation products dating back to late 2020. Back then, it didn't make much sense to compare the two cards because they belonged to different tiers due to their MSRPs. The Radeon RX 6800 hit the market with a $579 MSRP, whereas the GeForce RTX 3070 launched with a $499 MSRP. Of course, neither graphics card retailed at their respective MSRP during 2020–2022.

Things have thankfully settled down since the end of Ethereum mining. The cheapest Radeon RX 6800 has dropped to $479, while the GeForce RTX 3070 now starts at $456, making them direct rivals.

While Nvidia has now launched the GeForce RTX 4070 to replace the GeForce RTX 3070, AMD hasn't released a successor to the Radeon RX 6800. The GeForce RTX 4070 also enters the market at $599, 20% higher than its predecessor's MSRP while offering GeForce RTX 3080-level performance at lower power requirements. That means pitting the GeForce RTX 4070 against the Radeon RX 6800 sort of misses the point, especially when we expect RTX 4060 Ti to arrive before the end of the month.

A better comparison will be between the upcoming Radeon RX 7700 (XT) and GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, or between RTX 4070 and whatever equivalently priced GPU AMD wants to ship. But let's go ahead with AMD's comparisons for now.

Although the chart claims that the Radeon RX 6800 delivers faster ray tracing (RT) and rasterization performance, Marinkovic later clarified that it was an error. The above performance figures only apply to rasterization performance. Oops.

In Marinkovic's comparison across 32 games, the Radeon RX 6800 was, on average, 13.4% faster than the GeForce RTX 3070. The performance delta varies between -2% and +31%. The GeForce RTX 3070 only outperformed the Radeon RX 6800 in Metro Exodus, Grand Theft Auto V, and Dota 2, though the performance difference was basically a tie. The tweeted image also highlights how the Radeon RX 6800 offers twice as much onboard memory as the GeForce RTX 3070, a selling point that AMD has been very vocal about.

AMD tested the two graphics cards at a native 1440p (2560x1440) resolution. However, the chipmaker didn't clarify which graphics settings it had used for the tests, which is an important piece of data. Nevertheless, AMD's claims generally align with our own results so there doesn't seem to be any funny business going on.

In our test suite across nine games (data from our updated GPU benchmarks hierarchy, using a 13900K), the Radeon RX 6800 delivered 14.3% higher rasterization performance than the GeForce RTX 3070 at 1440p with Ultra settings. However, the scale tips in the GeForce RTX 3070's favor when it comes to ray tracing performance. That's probably the reason why AMD omitted that comparison. The GeForce RTX 3070 offered 17.2% and 14.9% higher ray tracing performance in our 1080p and 1440p tests, respectively, across six demanding ray tracing games.

Neither AMD's numbers nor our own testing results include upscaling technologies like DLSS and FSR 2, which could further muddy the waters. Perhaps more importantly, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su confirmed a week ago that AMD's mainstream Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards will launch before July. She didn't explicitly state which lineup, so there's no guarantee that we'll se an RX 7800 or 7700 by then, but the Radeon RX 7600 is expected to arrive within the next month.

If you're mostly concerned with rasterization performance, yes, the Radeon RX 6800 can beat the RTX 3070. The RTX 4070 can also beat the 3070 in rasterization performance, by around 30%, which means it's also beats the RX 6800 by around 13%. Factor in ray tracing and DLSS and the gap would only grow. But really, no one should be purchasing a last-generation graphics card for $480 right now when potential replacements are right around the corner.

AMD is firing back at Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4070 launch today, with some serious discounts on its mid-range and top-end RX 6000 series graphics cards. RX 6000 series GPUs, which compete favorably with the RTX 4070 in terms of performance have been discounted up to $110 below MSRP.

These new price discounts come hot off the heels after AMD's attack on Nvidia's stingy VRAM, which was released shortly before RTX 4070 reviews went live yesterday. Now, AMD has added additional discounts on top of its RX 6800 series graphics cards to compete with the RTX 4070.

AMD's discounts represent some serious competition for Nvidia's RTX 4070. Both the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT have seen $30 to $50 discounts with various AIB partner cards, to the point where the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT are now selling for $110 below MSRP. This means the RX 6800 XT can now be had for just $539, and the RX 6800 for $469.

As the cherry on top, AMD is also still selling its previous-generation flagship RX 6950XT for just $9 over the 4070's MSRP, with superior rasterized gaming performance.

AMD's price cuts are strategically applied to the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT exclusively. Both GPUs sit right next to the RTX 4070 in terms of performance, offering very similar frame rates at 1440P when ray tracing is not being used based on our review of the 4070. The RX 6800 XT in particular, sits closest to the RTX 4070 offering nearly identical frame rates. The RX 6800 is a bit slower, but not by that much, a hefty overclock could bring its performance in line with a 4070.

In terms of value, the RX 6800 XT at $539 will offer you RTX 4070 performance at 90% of the price. The RX 6800 will offer you 90% of the RTX 4070's performance but at 72.2% of the price - or a 28% discount.

At these price points, AMD's previous-generation RX 6800 series cards may be an excellent alternative to the RTX 4070 for gamers who don't care about having bleeding-edge hardware.

Gigabyte is reportedly prepping another iteration of its Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card, one that uses an enhanced cooling system and a printed circuit board which was perhaps meant for more advanced Radeon RX 6900-series boards, according to VideoCardz. While the idea that there is another Radeon RX 6800 XT card coming seems curious, perhaps a more interesting question is why it would come at this time.

The rumored Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming Pro graphics card is based on the Navi 21 graphics processor with 4608 stream processors enabled and carries 16GB of GDDR6 memory. Yet, it allegedly  uses a printed circuit board with an enhanced voltage regulating module (VRM) as well as a cooling system originally designed for a much more powerful add-in-card with all 5120 SPs enabled, the Gigabyte Gaming OC Radeon RX 6950 XT.  

Because of its almost unlimited voltage regulation module and three eight-pin PCIe power connectors that grab up to 450W, this might end up being one the best graphics cards for overclocking.

The information about the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming Pro graphics card comes from an unofficial source so take it with a grain of salt. Launching another AIB based on RDNA 2 architecture barely makes sense these days for many reasons. Yet, there could be some rationality here. 

One of the reasons why Gigabyte might want to release another Navi 21-based graphics card in late Q1 2023 — about time when one could expect AMD to release its new high-end offering that is going to sit below the Radeon RX 7900-series enthusiast-grade offerings — is indeed the approach of AMD's next-generation. Disposing of Navi 21 GPU silicon, PCBs, and cooling systems makes sense to clear the road for newer offerings. 

The only question is when exactly these newer AMD Radeon products are set to arrive.

AMD's Radeon RX 6000 graphics cards will not offer performance akin to that of the company's Radeon RX 7900 GPUs, but since they are now available at discounted prices, they still provide quite some value. To further increase their value, AMD kicked off its new Raise the Game bundle campaign with select Radeon RX 6000-series products on Tuesday.

If you buy AMD Radeon RX 6600 or a better graphics card, you will get a free Steam copy of Dead Island 2 and The Callisto Protocol game if you purchase a product from an eligible retailer and meet other requirements of the campaign. If you get a Radeon RX 6400 or Radeon RX 6500 XT, you will only get a copy of Dead Island 2. Those who get a PC with a Radeon RX 6000-series GPU from a participating system integrator will also get an appropriate title or title.

AMD's new bundle promotion aims to attract attention to its outgoing product line and enable its partners to sell as many boards as possible in the remaining months before replacing them with newer Radeon RX 7000-series products. AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX products will offer higher performance than the company's existing products. Still, graphics cards like the Radeon RX 6950 XT provide a good value at $785 or $800 (and keep in mind that these prices will go down once the new series comes closer to release), whereas the Radeon RX 6800 looks like a bargain at $480, especially with two games worth $120 included. Both models are still among the best graphics cards around.

The Callisto Protocol is an upcoming Unreal Engine 4-based survival horror game from the creator of the Dead Space series set to release on all modern platforms on December 2, 2022. The title became known recently for being canceled in Japan due to violent content and the developer's unwillingness to change it. Unfortunately, the developer has not published recommended PC specifications for the game, so we do not know whether it needs a Radeon RX 6700 XT or the Radeon RX 6950 XT to look well.

Dead Island 2 is another Unreal Engine 4-powered action zombie apocalypse role-playing game due to be launched on all major platforms on February 3, 2023. Unfortunately, the developer has not announced any recommended PC hardware configurations for the title, so we can only wonder whether Radeon RX 6500 XT will be enough to play it with decent quality settings.

Both games look good on screenshots, so they take advantage of AMD's RDNA 2 architecture behind the company's Radeon RX 6000-series graphics processors.

The new Raise the Game bundle promotion will run from November 8, 2022, till February 4, 2023. All coupon codes must be redeemed no later than March 4, 2023.

On Thursday, AMD issued a blog post claiming that its latest AMD Software: Pro Edition 22.Q3 driver increased performance in OpenGL applications by up to 72%. While the driver technically caters to AMD's professional graphics cards, it also supports high-end Radeon RX 6000-series graphics boards. Furthermore, the new OpenGL driver architecture is already present in AMD's drivers for consumer boards.

AMD has been criticized for mediocre OpenGL drivers for ages as its graphics processors were behind comparable GPUs from Nvidia in OpenGL-based games and professional applications. Over the years, the company attempted to redesign its OpenGL software at least a couple of times. However, Nvidia GPUs were still better in software (games and professional applications), relying on this application programming interface. But this time around, AMD says it completely re-architected its OpenGL driver, which improves the performance of its GPUs by 2% ~ 115% depending on the actual graphics board and workload. AMD says its Radeon W6800 is faster than Nvidia's RTX A5000 graphics boards in several applications.

"The release of AMD Software: Pro Edition 22.Q3 […] brings our most significant performance advancements to date in all OpenGL applications and many of your other favorite creating, designing, modeling, and CAD software applications," a statement by AMD reads. "We took the rearchitected OpenGL and tailored it to increase performance for OpenGL-based Creator and CAD applications, such as Autodesk Maya, which has seen improvement increase up to 72% over the previous driver and up to 41% over the competition. The latest driver has also continued to increase performance in non-OpenGL applications, which has seen up to 72% over the competition."

For obvious reasons, the number of people who use professional visualization (ProViz) applications is lower than those who play games. So, the sweetest part is that AMD has already implemented OpenGL improvements into its existing Adrenalin drivers, so gamers who still play OpenGL games can take advantage of the improvements. Furthermore, those who use ProViz applications with consumer-grade Radeons (e.g., Radeon RX 6950 XT) can try the new drivers to improve performance. These boards are not certified by developers of Proviz software, but if they work faster with new drivers, that's good.

"This new [OpenGL driver] architecture was first introduced to consumers in July 2022 with our AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 22.7.1," says AMD. "The current market feedback on performance improvements has been highly positive for performance and stability."

The new AMD Software: Pro Edition 22.Q3 driver has been certified by developers of popular CAD, CAM, and DCC applications as well as tested and approved by Dell, HP, and Lenovo for stability (owners of appropriate workstations have to download their drivers from PC makers' websites).

Modern graphics processors have so many features and capabilities that even hardcore gamers and tweakers sometimes have difficulties finding the proper settings to achieve desirable performance. That's where one enthusiast claims that his professionally tuned performance profiles come in.

Yuri Bubliy claims that his upcoming Radeon Monster Profile (RMP), a third-party utility he is creating, will boost the performance of AMD's RDNA2 GPUs through voltage/frequency curve modifications. The creator even says the app can boost a Radeon RX 6800 XT up to the level of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti — but in one specific synthetic benchmark that doesn't tell us a lot about the broader picture. 

AMD's Adrenaline software for Radeon graphics processors already offers plenty of performance features, which even overvolt the GPU for overclocking. Furthermore, AMD's pack of FidelityFX features like FSR 2.0 also boost the performance of Radeon graphics cards. Yet the Radeon Monster Profile developed by Yuri Bubliy claims to deliver even more tweaked performance.

Based on the tests done by the developer, the profile purportedly increased the Radeon RX 6800 XT's performance in 3DMark: Time Spy tests by 13% over stock, bringing it up the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti level. It's an excellent way to improve one of the best graphics cards, if it works as claimed. 

Bubliy claims that the Radeon Monster Profile combines unique settings and a new volt-frequency curve for Radeon RX 6000-series graphics chips.

"Particular attention was paid to the memory subsystem, the operating voltage was reduced by 6%, which ultimately reduced the heat of GDDR6 modules," Bubliy said. "The main mechanism for increasing performance is to increase the requested core frequency relative to the operating voltage."

According to the developer, the result is that RMP increases GPU frequency by 300 MHz without affecting factory settings for thermal throttling and fans. Of course, a 300 MHz overclocking requires a decent cooling system, so while the maker does not urge the owner to buy an aftermarket cooler for AMD's reference graphics boards, he stresses that non-reference boards should be good with the profile.

"The profiles are universal and adaptive," Bubliy said. "The RMP does not increase the operating voltage or change the current limit."

Naturally, we would all like to boost the performance of our gear through simple software utilities, but you should keep your expectations in check, particularly when claims are made based on a single benchmark. Seeing is believing, especially when it comes to big claims like these. The utility is due later this fall, and we'll give it a spin to see how it fares. 

As we begin August, we have the dubious pleasure of getting another month of Steam Hardware Survey data to pick through. The last month on record was a great one for AMD’s CPUs, but not so good for its GPUs. Meanwhile, it's starting to look like Linux could overtake MacOS as the second most popular Steam gaming platform within a few months — no doubt thanks in part to the Steam Deck.

Red CPUs Run Rampant

Turning our attention to the CPU landscape first, it looks like AMD has achieved a new record Steam user share. According to the latest data, AMD’s CPU share went up 2.22% in July. That is a mighty bump in a single month.

The latest stats suggest AMD CPUs power 33.73% of Steam user PCs, with Intel CPUs coming in at 66.26%. We are nearing the end of the Zen 3 vs Alder Lake battle, with the conflict between Zen 4 Ryzen and Raptor Lake looking to win PC gamers' hearts and minds in the coming months.

Again, it's worth noting that the Steam Deck might be factoring into this equation, as it uses an AMD processor. There's also the difficulty of Valve not providing clear details on how the data is collected. There are many opinions on what might be happening, but the only truly valid way of gathering statistics would be fully random sampling, or just sampling every PC that logs into Steam. We suspect neither option is currently used.

Red GPUs Green with Envy

When it comes GPU sales data, we prefer to use the DX12 API data as our reference point, as it provides far more granular detail than the overall Video Cards table. It also eliminates truly old hardware that's not DX12-compatible as an added bonus.

We've taken Valve's data and then adjusted it (i.e., dividing by the monthly percentage sum of all GPUs in the table) so that the totals equal 100%. (They actually sum to anywhere from 89.13% to 92.18%, perhaps because the remaining GPUs weren't DX12 capable.) If you're wondering why our figures are slightly different than those listed in the survey, that's the explanation. Here's the breakdown.

The latest Nvidia advances have pushed back against gains AMD had started to enjoy over the preceding few months. Comparing the most modern Nvidia RTX 30 series and AMD RX 6000 series GPUs looks a little more positive for AMD. Here you can see consistent growth month-by-month for the red team, but the increases aren’t inspiring. Indeed, AMD’s progress with the RX 6000-series is a small compared to the RTX 30-series' adoption over the same period.

At present, Nvidia GPUs represent 5.85X as many surveyed PCs as AMD GPUs. Looking just at the current generation Ampere and RDNA 2 solutions, Nvidia holds a 10.9X advantage. AMD's most popular RDNA 2 GPU right now is the RX 6600 XT, sitting at 0.4% of the total surveyed PCs. Nvidia's most popular Ampere GPU by contrast is the RTX 3060 for Laptops at 3.59%, with the desktop RTX 3060 coming in slightly lower at 2.76%.

Overall, current generation AMD and Nvidia GPUs represent 21.55% of all surveyed PCs. The top three most popular GPUs meanwhile represent a combined 20.18%, and they're all older models — GTX 1060, GTX 1650, and GTX 1050 Ti. The most popular AMD GPU is still the RX 580, at 1.58%.

Windows 11 User Share Slips

Lastly, we saw some interesting movement in the Operating System data. Most curiously, Windows 11 has slipped in July, down 0.11% during the month. At the same time, Windows 10 has taken a step forward, by a rather convincing 1.91%.

MacOS fell to 1.74% of user share in the most recent results, which is down 0.71%. Conversely, Linux is up, as the OS of choice for 1.23% of users. If this pivot continues, it wouldn’t be a surprise for Linux to elbow past MacOS, and we reckon the Steam Deck with Steam OS might be adding some weight to the Linux side.

While the Steam Hardware Survey provides interesting data, it has rather nebulous survey policies and methodologies. Valve provides no insight on how users are selected, confidence intervals, or margins of error. It doesn't even claim to use random sampling or full sampling, which would be required for the data to be statistically useful. Still, it's the best publicly available information on what hardware PC gamers are currently running, and for better or worse, we have to take what we can get.

It has felt like forever since the silicon shortages and mining craze sapped all the graphics cards out of the hands of PC builders and gamers looking for an upgrade to their PC. Today you can get a tremendous high-end GPU, the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming OC for just £659 at Overclockers. 

The Gigabyte Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming OC features 4608 stream processors, a core clock of 2045 MHz with the ability to boost up to 2285 MHz, and 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM. 

This is the cheapest you can get this graphics card brand new from a legitimate and reliable seller, and it's one of the most potent GPUs that you get from AMD's lineup of 6000 series cards. Have a look at our GPU hierarchy to see where it sits in comparison with all the other graphics cards that we have tested. 

If team red isn't your brand of choice, then you might want to try a graphics card from team green and pick something comparable like Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080. These are some of the most powerful graphics cards you can finally get your hands on right now and are more than capable of playing the latest games at the highest settings. 

Thanks to supply chain issues improving and a slight collapse in the mining economy, the availability of graphics cards has improved significantly. Combine that with the next generation of GPUs on the horizon and it's meant that we've seen a nice downward trend in the price of cards on the market. 

Upgrade your PC with a powerful graphic card solution as we have some great offers on AMD Ryzen RX 6000- series GPUs. Starting us off with the Sonnet AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT for $699 from B&H. With 16GB of VRAM and 4608 stream processors, this card will offer high frame rates and superb graphical fidelity in your games. 

Next, we have two versions of the RX 6700 XT: the XFX Speedster QICK319 AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT for $519, and the MSI Gaming Radeon RX 6700 XT for $519 both available from Amazon. Have a look and see how these graphics cards rank in our GPU Hierarchy list.

Keep an eye out for more deals below. 

TL;DR — Today’s Best Deals

• Sonnet AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT GPU: was $729, now $699 at B&H
• XFX Speedster QICK319 AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT GPU: was $579, now $519 at Amazon 
• MSI Gaming Radeon RX 6700 XT GPU: was $719, now $519 at Amazon
• EVGA SuperNova 80 Plus Gold 850W PSU: was $169, now $89 at Amazon
• Gigabyte G27Q 27-Inch QHD 144Hz Gaming Monitor: was $329, now $234 with code MDSBS24343 at Newegg

Today’s best deals in detail

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Not every PC gamer is deskbound. Sometimes, you want to play with the best gaming laptops on the go, or even want your laptop to do other work while you're away. (Crazy, right?)

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 ($1,599.99 to start, approximately $2,499.99 as tested) is one of a handful of compact, 14-inch gaming notebooks we've seen in the last few years. Its latest refresh includes AMD's Ryzen 9 6900HS CPU and Radeon RX 6800S GPU. Because the laptop uses all of AMD's parts, Asus can utilize the chipmaker's proprietary features such as SmartAccess Memory and SmartShift Max. But Intel's latest 12th Gen Chips and Nvidia's RTX 30 series are still challengers.

With additions like the AniMe Matrix display, which lets you customize the laptop's lid with lights, and the introduction of a virtual pet in its Armoury Crate software, Asus has started to stretch itself a bit thin with the extras. But luckily, the fundamentals, including long battery life, are all still there.

And thank heavens, there's finally a webcam. 

Editor's Note: After the initial publication of this review, Asus reached out and sent us a new unit to test, as ours was far dimmer than expected. The display and battery life sections have been updated to reflect the newer model, which should better reflect the screens on shipping units, the company suggests. While the score has remained the same, we have now granted this laptop our Editors' Choice award. 

Design of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

I'm typically all about systems being black or silver, but I must say that the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is striking. The laptop has an almost entirely white magnesium alloy chassis. When I first saw this laptop in 2020, I said it was "refined", and my opinion hasn't changed.

The lid is bifurcated in two diagonally. The bottom left half is solid white, with a Republic of Gamers badge that looks purple or blue, depending on the angle you look at it. The top right half is a series of 14,969 holes (I did not count these, I'm taking Asus' word for it). When the laptop is powered on, these reveal the light from 1,449 mini LEDs, creating what Asus calls the "AniMe Matrix" display. You can customize the lighting in the included Armoury Crate software, including the possibility of a virtual pet. While this might be fun for some, I think that the lightshow is distracting and makes the Zephyrus look like a kid's toy.

Lifting the lid reveals some of the more major changes that Asus has made with the Zephyrus. For one, the laptop now has a 16:10 display. The bezels aren't noticeably thicker than previous versions, but Asus has finally added a webcam, which was sorely missing when the first version launched in time with the beginning of the pandemic.

The deck is clean, white magnesium alloy with white backlighting behind the keys. I'm sure some people will wish there was an RGB option, but I think the white-on-white looks classy. There's also a particularly large touchpad for a gaming notebook, which I appreciate. After all, a 14-inch notebook is a good size for occasional productivity usage.

Asus' ErgoLift display is in full effect here. A small, curved section on the back of the lid pushes the keyboard up at a slight angle when you have the notebook open, which is designed for better airflow and more comfortable typing.

Asus has crammed some useful ports on the Zephyrus' flanks. On the left side, there's an  HDMI 2.0 port (not HDMI 2.1, the latest, unfortunately), as well as a USB Type-C port and a headphone jack. You also plug the barrel connector in on this side. The right side is all about expansion, with a pair of two USB Type-A ports, another Type-C port and a microSD card slot.

The Zephyrus weighs 3.79 pounds and measures 12.28 x 8.94 x 0.76 inches. That's a bit smaller than the Alienware x14, which is 4.06 pounds and 12.66 x 10.35 x 0.57 inches. The Razer Blade 14 is smaller at 12.59 x 8.66 x 0.66 inches but heavier at 3.92 pounds.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Specifications

Gaming and Graphics on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is an "AMD Advantage" laptop, which is AMD's term for a notebook that uses its CPU and GPU technology. In this case, that's an AMD Ryzen 6900HS and an AMD Radeon RX 6800S GPU. Together, those components can utilize AMD's SmartAccess Memory, which lets the processor use the graphics card's memory and SmartShift Max, which moves power to the GPU while gaming and to the CPU during productivity tasks.

The Zephyrus, as we tested it, also included 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB m.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 4 SSD.

We compared that against the Alienware x14 with an Intel Core i7-12700H and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 and last year's Razer Blade 14 with a Ryzen 9 5900HX and an RTX 3070. We also tossed in the Gigabyte Aorus 17 XE4, which is much larger, at 17 inches, but is within $50 of the Zephyrus’ price and uses a Core i7-12700H, DDR4 memory and an RTX 3070 Ti.

I used the Zephyrus to play Guardians of the Galaxy, which I've been spending a bunch of time with lately. I played the game at the system's 2560 x 1600 native resolution, partially to take advantage of the 16:10 aspect ratio. At the very high graphics preset, the game tended to run between 120 and 140 fps, which means that  the lowest frame rates were taking advantage of the 120 Hz display.

On the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark, (highest preset), the Zephyrus reached 62 frames per second at 1080p and 36 fps at its native 1600p. It tied the Alienware at FHD, but the Razer Blade 14 from last year with an RTX 3070 won out at both 1080p and 1440p, and the RTX 3070 Ti in the 17-inch Aorus couldn't be caught.

When we ran Grand Theft Auto V's benchmark at very high settings, the Zephyrus hit 71 fps 1080p (one frame ahead of the Alienware) and 41 fps at 1600p. The Razer Blade 14 beat it in both regards, at 93 fps at 1080p and 59 fps at 1440p.

Far Cry New Dawn's benchmark (ultra settings) is a bit more CPU heavy. Here, the Zephyrus effectively tied with the Razer Blade 14 with 86 fps at 1080p and 75 fps at 1600p. The Alienware, however, reached 94 fps.

The Red Dead Redemption 2 benchmark (medium settings) is still tough on a lot of notebooks. At 1080p, the Zephyrus ran it at 49 fps, though at 1600p, the game was unplayable at an average of 29 fps. The Alienware hit 48 fps, while Last year's Blade reached 61 fps and 43 fps at 4K.

But the all-AMD Zephyrus punched above its weight class on Borderlands 3 ("badass" preset), averaging 75 fps at 1080p and 46 fps at 1600p. The Razer Blade 14 hit 72 fps at 1080p and 52 fps at 1440p, which was the next closest, while the Alienware hung back at 54 fps at FHD resolution.  

We also ran a stress test on the Zephyrus, looping the Metro Exodus benchmark 15 times on its RTX preset, which lasts approximately half an hour. The average frame rate across those runs was 41.38 frames per second. There was a bit of a decline over the first few runs, which started at 47 fps before dipping to 44 and then 42 fps before settling on 41 fps.

During the stress test, the CPU reached an average clock speed of 2.37 GHz and measured 74.6 degrees Celsius. The GPU achieved an average speed of 1,402.35 MHz and an average temperature of 73.85 degrees Celsius.

Productivity Performance on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is the first laptop we've seen with one of AMD's Ryzen 6000 series CPUs, based on the company's new Zen 3+ architecture. Our review unit came with a Ryzen 9 6900HS, a 35W CPU with 8 cores and 16 threads, a 3.3 GHz base clock and a boost clock up to 4.9 GHz. That TDP enables it to fit in a thinner, lighter chassis than AMD's higher-power HX series chips.

On the Geekbench 5 benchmark, which relies heavily on the CPU, the Zephyrus earned a single-core score of 1,623 with a multi-core score of 10,004. The Alienware x14, with an Intel Core i7-12700H, had a lower single-core score (1,471) but surpassed the Zephyrus in multi-core (13,353). Gigabyte's Aorus 17 XE4, with the same Intel CPU as the Alienware, but in a larger chassis, had higher scores in both settings at 1,781 and 11,979, respectively. 

The Razer Blade 14, with last year's ​Ryzen 9 5900HX, unsurprisingly earned the lowest scores of 1,473 and 7,471.

On our file transfer test, we have laptops copy roughly 25GB of files. The Zephyrus G14 came in second at 1,260.45 MBps, just behind the Aorus at 1,475.15 MBps. The Alienware was close behind at 1,140.07 MBps, while the Razer reached 908.65 MBps.

It took the Zephyrus six minutes to transcode a 4K video to 1080p in Handbrake. That beat the Razer Blade 14 (7:20), but both Intel-based laptops were faster.

Display on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has a 14-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, which we tested with a 2560 x 1600 resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate. The company calls this its Nebula display, seemingly trying to name its screens the way Apple calls its screens "Retina" and Microsoft uses "PixelSense." The screen is solidly vivid, although I wish it were brighter.

I missed when the latest Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness trailer aired during the Super Bowl (I was getting some snacks ready), so I checked it out on the Zephyrus later. When Benedict Cumberbatch's Stephen Strange manipulates a red map of the multiverse in a dark room, it really popped off the screen. Strange's blue outfit looked movie-ready.

The Quarantine Zone in Guardians of the Galaxy, which is covered in pink flora, looked  nice enough on the display, even if it didn't have the wow factor from when I first played it with my PC hooked up to a TV.

The Zephyrus' display reproduces 74% of the DCI-P3 gamut and 104.5 percent of the sRGB gamut, just a smidge behind the Blade 14 and Alienware x14 and on par with the Gigabyte Aorus 17 XE4. Frankly, they're all so evenly matched that most people probably couldn't tell the difference.

On our light meter, the Zephyrus measured an average of 473 nits, exceeding the Alienware x14 (377 nits) and the Razer Blade 14 (332 nits). The Gigabyte Aorus 17, at 275 nits, was the dimmest. While people may not notice the small difference in color, they will notice the big difference in brightness. 

Keyboard and Touchpad on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

Asus has a fairly comfortable keyboard on the Zephyrus. Because it has 1.7 mm of travel, I never bottomed out. I did, however, occasionally wish there was a bit more feedback. Still, I sailed through the 10fastfingers.com typing test at 107 words per minute, with just one wrong word.

Perhaps the big issue is that some heat exhausts through the keyboard, which made my hands a little sweaty, even when I just typed while downloading a game. The four extra buttons for volume adjustment, silencing the microphone and launching the Armoury Crate software got hot to the touch.

The new touchpad on the Zephyrus is 5 x 2.99 inches, which Asus claims is 50% larger than the previous model. A lot of gaming laptop companies don't prioritize the touchpad, because you're likely to use an external mouse. But at the 14-inch size, you may want to use it for productivity, too, so I'm happy to see improvements here. It's more than sizable enough to comfortably perform gestures in Windows 11, and it felt solid enough when I clicked around.

Audio on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

The four speakers on the Zephyrus G14 speakers have Dolby Atmos support, and they sound pretty good for such a small gaming notebook. There are some front-facing tweets, while the rest of the speakers fire downward.

When I listened to The Wombats' "If you Ever Leave, I'm Coming With You," I was surprised there was a bit of a punch from the Zephyrus as drums hit, and there was the slightest hint of bass. I'd like even more, but most laptops this size drown them all together.

Asus’ laptop gets plenty loud, and it filled my apartment with sound when I gamed and listened to music.  Guardians of the Galaxy also sounded great, with clear dialogue and a loud rock soundtrack.

The only audio software on the laptop is the RealTek Audio Console, which doesn't have much in the way of options beyond changing the volume. But the speakers are solid enough that I don't think you need to mess with them.

Upgradeability of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

There are 11 Phillips head screws along the bottom of the Asus ROG Zephyrus (I used a PH0 bit in my screwdriver). Three of them are covered with small white rubber caps, which I dug out with tweezers. If they get damaged, Asus may know you opened it if you have to send it in for repair.

Not all of the screws are the same length. The ones along the rear are longer than those in the front, so you'll want to make sure to keep the screws organized. The bottom right screw is captive, so that one shouldn't come out. In fact, it creates an easy gap to fit a spudger tool or guitar pick to get the base off.

Once you get in, the first thing you'll notice is the vapor chamber cooler. It's beefy, and it features a print showing where the Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics cards are, as well as MOSFETS and other motherboard features. It's a neat, albeit unnecessary, easter egg.

The SSD slot is easy enough to reach; you just have to remove a film from the drive. If you can, you may want to salvage the heatsink. The RAM slot is also accessible, but notably only one stick is available for replacement. The rest is soldered to the board, likely in an attempt to keep the notebook thin. The battery is also easy enough to reach, though there's no sign of the wireless card without digging deeper.

Battery Life on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 showed surprising longevity for a gaming notebook on our battery test. If you're looking for something that will last all day on a charge before you bring it home to plug in and play some video games, it should fit the bill.

The Zephyrus lasted 10 hours and 14 minutes on our test, which involves notebooks browsing the web, streaming video and running OpenGL tests in the browser, all while connected to Wi-Fi with the screen set to 150 nits of brightness. The Alienware x14 ran for 5:33, while the Blade 14 lasted 6:02, which are paltry times in comparison.

One potential reason for the longevity is a Mux switch to easily change between integrated and discrete graphics, though those are increasingly popular in gaming notebooks and haven't shown a change in all of them.

Heat on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

While we ran the Zephyrus through our Metro Exodus benchmark, we took the opportunity to measure skin temperatures to see how hot it gets while the system is under strain.

The center of the keyboard measured 41 degrees Celsius (105.8 degrees Fahrenheit), which is a little toasty, though not unusable. The trackpad reached 29.5 degrees Celsius (85.1 degrees Celsius), which is much cooler.

On the bottom of the notebook, the hottest point was the vent, which reached 46.2 degrees Celsius (115.16 degrees Fahrenheit) though the midpoint was a bit cooler, and the front, towards the wrist rest, was far cooler.

Webcam on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

Oh joy of joys - Asus put a webcam on the Zephyrus. This was sorely lacking on prior models , and that decision hasn't aged well. Now it's there, and, well, it's better than nothing.

As far as 720p laptop cameras go, it's fine. I found that the tones were a bit warm, so my green t-shirt wasn't exactly color accurate, but it was close enough. It nailed the color of my eyes, though. It's a bit better on details like hair than other cameras, but not by much. You're still probably better off with one of the best external webcams, but this one will do in a pinch, and I'm glad it's there.

The webcam also includes IR sensors to let you log in to your PC using Windows Hello. It worked well in my testing. But in doing this, Asus also removed the fingerprint reader, which logged you in as soon as you turned the notebook on, which was just incredibly cool. Overall, though, this is probably a more useful option.

Software and Warranty on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

Asus' software preload on the Zephyrus G14 is a mixed bag. The big entry is Armoury Crate, a hub application with component statistics, fan speeds, a variety of performance profiles and the ability to change the lighting on the Anime Matrix display.

Those lighting options include an animation mode, including letting you upload your own GIFs; a system mode mode with notifications for your mail or battery level, or  to include the date and time; an audio mode to show a visualizer for music or videos you watch; and the option to show off a virtual pet.

If you select the virtual pet, dubbed Omni, it launches another application, called Virtual Pet, that also shows it on your display. You can drag it wherever you want, and click it to get its attention. You can also play games with it, like a space shooter or a slot machine. It can stay in one place, or you can let it walk around your screen, which I found distracting as all hell. 

The one useful thing it can do is show you system statistics in separate windows, but Armoury Crate is already available for that. I have no idea why Asus put so much work into this, but I suppose maybe it will bring someone joy. Asus claims more content is being developed for Omni.

Lastly, Asus has "MyAsus," which lets you register the laptop and upgrade your warranty, as well as doubling some features you find in Windows and in Armoury Crate. There are also ads for some Asus partners, like McAfee antivirus.

Otherwise, there's some Windows 11 preloads you may or may not care for, including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon Prime Video.

Asus sells the Zephyrus G14 with a one-year warranty.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Configurations

We tested the top-level configuration of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 with an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS, a Radeon RX 6800S GPU, 32GB of DDR5 memory, a 1TB m.2 NVMe PCIE 4.0 SSD and a 2560 x 1600, 120 Hz display. Oh, and the AniMe Matrix display, for whatever that is worth. (Lower-end configurations come without the external lightshow). Our system came with Windows 11 Pro, but release systems will run the Home edition.

Asus told Tom's Hardware that the Zephyrus G14 would go up to $2,499.99. Based on the specs on Asus' website, we believe we have the top-end system, but Asus wouldn't confirm on the record, stating more information would be coming closer to the system's launch.

It did, however, tell us about three systems launching at Best Buy. For $1,599.99, you can get a Ryzen 9 CPU, RX 6700S, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a QHD, 120 Hz display. For $1,999.99, that boosts up to an R9 and an RX 6800S.

Bottom Line

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is still one of the best looking gaming laptops on the market, hands down. It hits that halfway point between gaming and productivity, while still maintaining enough performance for a solid triple-A video game. The fact that Asus added a webcam, a feature it was sorely lacking, is another big plus.

The Nebula display is nice and bright, even more so than the Alienware x14, which wowed us in that department. That laptop is currently limited to 1080p. There are also a couple of touchpoints that get warm — particularly the dedicated volume keys above the keyboard.

Performance is good, but Alder Lake has it beat in CPU tests, while laptops powered by the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 3070 occasionally showed up the Radeon RX 6800S-based Zephyrus in games. AMD's SmartShift and SmartAccess technologies push the system, but don’t put it over the top in all tests.

Of course, part of that is that the Ryzen 6900HS is a lower-power part. If you're looking for long battery life on your gaming notebook in non-gaming tasks, plus something that looks like it can do every job on the go, the Zephyrus is a great choice. There are just more powerful options to be found.

We're well over a year removed from the launch of AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT, and the graphics cards are still selling for well over MSRP. You can chalk this situation up to the ongoing global chip shortage, which is forcing gamers to pay up to twice the MSRP from third-party sellers to get their hands on the cards. Even though existing RX 6800 XT/6900 XT SKUs are hard to obtain, MSI is pushing forward with refreshed versions that could land on our best graphics cards list.

First up is the refreshed Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming Z Trio 16G, where MSI swapped out the X for a Z. It sees its game clock rise from 2045MHz to 2065 MHz, a mere 20 MHz uplift. Likewise, the maximum boost clock climbs to 2310 MHz, up from 2285 MHz. These slight clock increases mean that MSI hasn't altered the TDP of the card, which still stands at 300 watts.

Next, we have the Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming Z Trio 16G. This card receives an even greater performance boost, with the game clock increasing from 2105 MHz to 2235 MHz. MSI also cranked the boost clock from 2340 MHz to a heady 2425 MHz, making this one of the fastest cards in the Radeon RX 6900 XT kingdom. Like its RX 6800 XT Gaming Z counterpart, the RX 6900 XT Gaming Z holds the line with a 300-watt TDP.

While the previous Gaming X graphics cards featured a graphene-reinforced backplate, the new Gaming Z offerings use a stronger aluminum counterpart. You'll still find a Tri Frozr 2 cooling system with triple Torx 4.0 fans, precision-machined core pipes, and the ability to stop the fans when the GPU isn't under load, which goes a long way towards lowering acoustics. And for the RGB fanatics out there, Mystic Light support is naturally available.

All other specs remain the same, including 4,608 stream processors (5120 for the Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming Z), 16GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit memory bus, three 8-pin power connectors, three DisplayPort 1.3 ports and one HDMI 2.1 port.

At this time, there is no information on pricing or availability for the new Gaming Z cards. However, no matter what MSRP these cards carry, we'd imagine that the actual street prices will continue to be highly inflated for the foreseeable future.

Gigabyte is reportedly hiking pricing of its RDNA 2-based graphics cards by up to 6% according to a report from BoardChannels (via VideoCardz). Other makers of graphics boards will likely follow Gigabyte's lead and increase prices, which is bad news for gamers.

Gigabyte allegedly notified its partners that it is following AMD's price increase and passing amplified GPU production costs on to the end-user. Depending on the GPU model, the hike is between 3% and 6% on all Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards models except the top-of-the-range Radeon RX 6900 XT. This translates into a $16 to $31 hike for the Radeon RX 6600/6600 XT/6700 XT, a $47 surge for the Radeon RX 6800, and a $78 jump for the Radeon RX 6800 XT. 

It should be noted that Gigabyte's prices are FOB (free on board) prices and do not include shipping costs or taxes. Once those costs are added, actual retail prices of Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards could increase by more than $78.

The average selling prices of graphics cards have set records in the past few quarters as everyone in the supply chain — starting from GPU designers and their contract makers of chips and all the way up to retail stores — have been trying to capitalize on strong demand for PCs in general and graphics cards in particular. Last week we reported that AMD was hiking prices of its GPUs by about 10%, citing increased production costs set by foundries, which could translate into a $50 to $100 increase in retail pricing. Unsurprisingly, AMD's add-in-board (AIB) manufacturing partners are following suit, making today's best gaming graphics cards even more expensive. 

It is hard to say whether AMD and/or its AIB partners plan to limit price surges of their graphics cards somehow. However, given the continuing chip shortage, this is highly unlikely, so gamers will continue to suffer from price hikes in the foreseeable future.

Finding a good deal on one of the best graphics cards can be difficult, doubly so for AMD's Navi 21 GPUs that tend to be in short supply. Nevertheless, we've found what is perhaps the lowest price we've seen on a Radeon RX 6800 desktop. The Allied Gaming Patriot Desktop is currently on sale for $1,799. That still might seem rather expensive, but buying a standalone RX 6800 will currently set you back about $1,330. $470 more for a complete PC looks pretty decent!

This isn't to say that the Allied Gaming system is an ideal build. Most of the components are reasonable, like the Ryzen 5 3600X processor, 16GB DDR4-3200 memory, and 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD. It also comes with a reasonably attractive case and an 800W 80 Plus Gold certified PSU. The only real problem is the motherboard.

Allied has chosen a Gigabyte A520M Aorus Elite motherboard to tie everything together. That's a rather odd choice of a budget micro-ATX board for what otherwise looks like a reasonable build. We suspect the board will drop some performance relative to better B550 and X570 chipset offerings, and you also lose PCIe Gen4 support for the graphics card and storage. Still, the remaining components are all perfectly acceptable.

Individually, it would cost at least $650 for all of the components, not counting the graphics card. Factor in another $200 for the Windows 10 OS and PC assembly and support, and you're basically looking at $950 left over to buy the graphics card. Admittedly, that's a lot more than the nominal $579 launch price, but let's be clear: We've never seen the Radeon RX 6800 on sale for $579, outside of the rare (and immediately-sold-out) AMD.com listings.

We wish the company would have used a slightly better motherboard, but the next cheapest RX 6800 PC we've seen costs $2,699. It's better in almost every way, sure, but is it $900 better? Not a chance. You could make the CPU, motherboard, RAM, and storage upgrades yourself if you really wanted for about the same price — and you'd still have the original parts left over.

You can find even more savings at our best Black Friday monitor deals, best Black Friday SSD deals, best Black Friday CPU deals, best Black Friday 3D printer deals, best Black Friday Raspberry Pi deals and the Best Black Friday PC hardware deals overall. We're also tracking the best RTX 3080 deals and best RTX 3070 deals.

AMD on Tuesday launched its new campaign to make its gaming-oriented CPUs and GPUs more attractive to the target audience. From now through the first half of next year, AMD will provide a free subscription to Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass for PC with a purchase of qualified hardware. 

Gamers who purchase a Radeon RX 6000-series graphics card or Ryzen 5000X/3000X/XT processor from a participating retailer will get a free one-month subscription to Microsoft Xbox Game Pass for PC as part of AMD's Equipped for Battle game bundle. Typically, Microsoft charges $1 for the first month and then $9.99 per month.  

While the bundle's value is not exactly high for graphics cards that cost from $650 to $1700, it allows gamers to try out over 100 new games and enjoy their graphics board without purchasing a bunch of titles.

AMD Equipped for Battle Game Bundle

AMD said that the campaign starts on October 26, 2021, and ends on June 30, 2022, at 11:59:59 PM ET, or when the supply of Coupon Codes is exhausted, whichever occurs first.

In addition, AMD offers the Raise the Game bundle that includes complimentary copies of Far Cry 6 and Resident Evil Village with a purchase of a Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics board, but this campaign ends on December 31.

Apple announced the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros on Monday, marking the debut of the company's new M1 Pro and M1 Max SoCs. While we've already seen a bit of the M1 Max's computing power, one Redditor has found a new benchmark of the M1 Max stretching its feet in a graphics benchmark.

The M1 Max wields a 32-core GPU with 16 execution units each. Each execution unit houses eight ALUs, bringing the total number of ALUs in the M1 Max to 4,096. According to Apple, the GPU delivers performance up to 10.4 TFLOPs. In theory, the M1 Max's GPU should perform somewhere in the area of the GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile, which offers 10.91 TFLOPs.

During its presentation, Apple claimed that the M1 Max's GPU (60W) rivals Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile (160W). Apple's SoC reportedly offers equivalent performance at 100W less power. The company also provided a comparison to the 100W variant of the GeForce RTX 3080 where the M1 Max showed a 40% lower power consumption. For the time being, we should take Apple's numbers with a bit of salt since the company didn't provide any context, only having used "select industry-standard benchmarks."

GFXBench originated as a smartphone benchmark, therefore, the tests aren't suitable for modern graphics cards. Unlike 3DMark, we recommend you approach GFXBench results with lots of caution. Furthermore, the M1 Max submission was on Mac OS X with the Metal API, whereas the GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile and Radeon RX 6800M submissions were carried out on Windows and the OpenGL API. We've used the offscreen results for comparison.

Apple M1 Max Benchmarks

Apple touted that the M1 Max's graphics performance was up to four times faster than the original M1. The results showed that Apple's claims were mostly on point, although not in every workload.

The M1 Max looked pretty good beside the GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile or Radeon RX 6800M. Apple's chip outperformed Nvidia and AMD's GPUs in some workloads and stayed within a small margin in others. The M1 Max's power efficiency was the most impressive feat, considering that the GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile and Radeon RX 6800M conform to TDP ratings of 160W and 145W, respectively.

Logically, we'll have to watch for more benchmarks to see whether Apple's M1 Max is what the company claims. It's fine if it doesn't beat the latest and greatest GPUs from Nvidia or AMD since Apple didn't conceive the M1 Max for gaming. Instead, the 5nm SoC is tailored for professionals to deliver potent CPU and graphics performance on-the-go in the new MacBook Pros.

The first four entries in AMD’s Big Navi line of graphics cards are finally out, meaning that there’s now a group of worthy contenders to Nvidia’s RTX throne. We spoke highly about both the now-released RX 6700 XT, RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT in our reviews for these cards, praising their price-to-power ratio and their attempt to snag the best GPU crown for Team Red. Our RX 6900 XT and RX 6600 XT review, though, were a bit more mixed. 

These cards are new powerhouses for AMD, packing ray tracing and hitting average frame rates of up to 93 fps at 4K across a 9-game average in our testing. But they also have another potential strength to wield against Nvidia- in an era where pretty much every new piece of fancy tech sells out almost instantly: They’re another option.

That doesn’t mean stock is easy to come by, because like the RTX cards before them, the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT quickly sold out when they launched early November 18th, and the same happened when custom versions of the cards hit store shelves on November 25th and the RX 6900 XT launched on December 8th.

As with the Ryzen 5000 launch, AMD’s aiming to keep stock high and steady, but we’re not expecting these cards to be readily available for a while. But if you’re struggling to get your hands on a next-gen graphics card, here’s how to broaden your net a bit and maybe find a few active AMD listings for your trouble.

One trick that might sign up your chances of snagging a new high-end card: Break out your Raspberry Pi and use it to build your own bot to snag a card. Using a Pi and the open-source Python-based Inventory Hunter app and the shared code and instructions on Github you give it a shot. If it doesn't work, at least you've killed some time between now and that foggy future where Big Navi cards are actually readily available.
 

Radeon RX 6600 XT: Where to Buy

US Radeon RX 6600 XT retailers at a glance: AMD | Best Buy | Newegg | Amazon | B&H | Micro Center

US Radeon RX 6700 XT resellers at a glance: eBay 

The RX 6600 XT is the least powerful Big Navi card you can get, targeting 1080p performance for an MSRP of $379. It's got 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, 32 CUs and 9.7 teraflops of power. That's a little lower than we'd like for the cost, as we stated in our review.

But even the MSRP is low compared to what aftermarket sales are likely to be. As with other major tech releases as of late, stock is low across the board.

AMD: The RX 6600 XT doesn't even show up on AMD's online store.

Best Buy: Best Buy’s got three sold out RX 6600 XT models on its site, ranging form $379 to $479 in price.

Newegg: Like most tech releases, Newegg's got the widest selection. But all of its cards are also sold out, so you're going to have to resort to the Newegg Shuffle to buy from here.

Amazon: The RX 6600 XT doesn't even show up in searches on Amazon right now, which instead take you to products with similar names.

B&H: There's one RX 6600 XT model on B&H's site, but it's sold out for now.

Micro Center:  Micro Center has four models with limited in-store availability. Prices range from $379 to $549, and stock differs from store to store. 

eBay: We could actually only find one eBay auction for the RX 6600 XT as of writing, and it costs more than double the MSRP. Yikes.

Radeon RX 6700 XT: Where to Buy

US Radeon RX 6700 XT retailers at a glance: AMD | Best Buy | Newegg | Amazon | B&H | Micro Center

US Radeon RX 6700 XT resellers at a glance: eBay 

The Radeon RX 6700 XT is, like we stated in our review, sort of the diet version of Big Navi. It's got 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM, 40 CUs and 12.4 teraflops of power, which lets it hit clock speeds of 2,424 MHz. All of that will cost you $479, which we thought was a touch too high for a card that's geared towards 1080p/1440p performance.

But it's still nothing compared to what you're likely to find right now. As with other major tech releases as of late, the only way you're probably going to be able to buy a Radeon RX 6700 XT at the moment is either going aftermarket or buying an expensive AIB model.

AMD: AMD has a store that lets you buy graphics cards directly through its website, but stock is sold out right now.

Best Buy: Best Buy’s amped up its 6700 XT model selection lately, including one $899 model that's actually available to buy online and one $999 model that's available at select stores.

Newegg: Newegg is where you'll find the widest selection of RX 6700 XT listings, from Asus to Gigabyte to MSI and more, but all the official listings are out of stock at the moment. Watch out for high prices from third-party sellers, though.

Amazon: Searching for an RX 6700 XT on Amazon just brings you to aftermarket sales, so maybe wait a bit before putting it in your search rotation.

B&H: Like Best Buy, B&H actually has 6700 XT models in stock. This includes a $949 model from XFX and a $999 model from MSI.

Micro Center:  Micro Center has several RX 6700 XT models listed on its site, all of which are only available for purchase in store and have limited stock depending on location.

eBay: eBay is an especially dangerous place to search for RX 6700 XT models right now, since anything under around $800 actually won't net you a product if you look at the fine print. Be on the lookout for scammers.

Radeon RX 6900 XT: Where to Buy

US Radeon RX 6800 retailers at a glance: AMD | Best Buy | Newegg | Amazon | B&H

US Radeon RX 6800 resellers at a glance: eBay 

The Radeon RX 6900 XT is AMD’s most recent Big Navi GPU, as well as its most powerful. It has a $999 starting price of and comes with 80 compute units and 23 teraflops of power, plus 16GB of VRAM. Clock speeds start at 1,825 MHz and can hit up to 2,250 MHz when boosted, and the average 4K fps on the RX 6900 XT across our 9 game suite was 85 out-of-the-box and 90.7 when overclocked. 

This card's other big feature is ray tracing, and while all of these numbers and capabilities come together to make an impressive suite, our review concluded that it's not too much more impressive than AMD's other Big Navi given the steep price increase. Hence, you're going to want to be extra conscientious when shopping.

AMD: Unlike Nvidia, AMD allows you to buy graphics cards directly through its website. Unfortunately, stock is sold out right now.

Best Buy: Best Buy has beefed up its RX 6900 XT selection, and currently has a $2,059 model from Gigabyte up for sale on its site.

Newegg: Newegg is normally where you'd find the largest selection of RX 6900 XT models, but the site doesn't seem to have any in stock right now, with listings simply pointing to other graphics cards and third-party sales. 

Amazon: Searching for an RX 6900 XT on Amazon mostly brings up third-party sellers, so don't expect to get an official card here quite yet.

B&H: Searching for the RX 6900 XT brings up listings from MSI, XFX and Asus. The XFX cards are actually in stock, starting at $1,799.

eBay: eBay markups for the RX 6900 XT are especially ridiculous, with most reasonable-seeming listings turning out to just be pictures. When you start to look for people selling the actual card, their listings start at $2,000.

Radeon RX 6800: Where to Buy 

US Radeon RX 6800 retailers at a glance: AMD | Best Buy | Newegg | Amazon | B&H

US Radeon RX 6800 resellers at a glance: eBay | stockX 

The Radeon RX 6800 is AMD’s base-level Big Navi GPU, coming in at a starting price of $579 and packing 60 compute units with 16.2 teraflops of power and 16GB of VRAM. Clock speeds start at 1,815 MHz and can hit up to 2,105 MHz when boosted, and the average 4K fps on the RX 6800 across our 9 game suite was 80. Throw in ray tracing, and that’s a pretty impressive suite, coming in just below the RTX 3080 and the RX 6800 XT while only costing $80 more than an RTX 3070. That also means this card is in high demand though, so you’ll want to keep a diligent watch on the following stores.

AMD: While AMD does sell graphics cards directly through its website, stock on all Big Navi cards is sold out right now.

Best Buy: Best Buy’s RX 6800 selection is slim, with the store only stocking the MSI and XFX models, plus a few from Gigabyte. Most are sold out right now, although one model from Gigabyte and one model from XFX have limited in-store availability depending on location.

Newegg: Newegg currently has the largest selection of RX 6800 models, with cards from Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, Asrock, PowerColor and Sapphire. All of these cards are sold out right now, but you can add them to a wishlist to get email notifications for when they restock.

Amazon: Amazon is currently sold out of Radeon RX 6800 cards as well, and searching for them right now simply brings up pages from third-party sellers.

B&H: B&H now has Asus, XFX and MSI RX 6800 cards listed, but none are available.

eBay: As usual, aftermarket sellers have more availability, but the markup here is steep. RX 6800 cards are starting at $700 on eBay and going all the way into the thousands. Value is a key reason to buy this card, making these listings much less appealing.

stockX: This is another gray market site, and it currently has one RX 6800 listing up for a starting price of $1,220. That’s a more than 100% markup.

Radeon RX 6800 XT: Where to Buy 

US Radeon RX 6800 XT retailers at a glance: AMD | Best Buy | Newegg | Amazon | B&H

US Radeon RX 6800 XT resellers at a glance: eBay | stockX 

The Radeon RX 6800 XT is AMD’s big new competitor for the RTX 3080, with our review placing it at a 92 fps average on 4K ultra settings across 9 games. That’s just 4 fps below the 3080’s average, despite the RX 6800 XT costing just $50 less. Assuming you can find it, that’s a great deal, so keep an eye out for this 20.7 teraflops, 72 CU card with clock speeds of 2,015/2,250 MHz and 16GB of VRAM at the stores below.

AMD: Like the RX 6800 and the 6900 XT, you can also buy 6800 XT stock direct from AMD, assuming you can find it. Unfortunately, AMD’s store is sold out right now.

Best Buy: Best Buy only has six RX 6800 XT units listed right now, with thee from XFX, two from Gigabyte and one from MSI. They're all sold out, except for one XFX model with limited in-store availability depending on location. 

Newegg: Newegg has the widest selection of RX 6800 XT listings, with cards from Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, Asrock, XFX, PowerColor and Sapphire. Each of these listings is sold out right now, but you can add them to a wishlist to get email notifications for when they restock.

Amazon: Amazon is currently sold out of Radeon RX 6800 XT cards as well, with searches for them simply redirecting to third-party sellers.

B&H: B&H currently has five RX 6800 XT cards listed on its site. You can't buy any of them as of yet.

eBay: If you don’t mind a markup, you can turn to the gray market to get a Radeon RX 6800 XT, but prices on eBay currently start at over $1000, seriously mitigating the value this card offers.

stockX: B&H currently has four RX 6800 XT cards listed on its site, with two from XFX, one from MSI and one from Asus. You can't buy any of them as of e cost of buying new.

Hardware leaker and Twitter user @Komachi_Ensaka has spotted a very strange AMD Radeon graphics card based on the Navi 21 GPU that's equipped with just  8GB of memory, down from 16GB of memory typically installed on Navi 21-based Radeon RX 6800/6900-series boards. The product was spotted in the UserBenchmark database. Could this be a new contender for the best graphics cards, or perhaps an OEM-only card?

The card in question carries Navi 21's device ID (1002 73BF) and subsystem ID (1002 0E3A), which matches up with an AMD Radeon RX 6800 GPU. Assuming it's not just a faulty reading, or a faked entry, it's also only equipped with 8GB of GDDR6 memory.

Rumors about AMD's intention to build a cheaper Radeon RX 6800 SKU with 8GB of memory have been floating for quite a while, but AMD has never confirmed them, perhaps because the cost of memory is not something that concerns it (and its partners among makers of graphics cards) the most. There's also the fact that AMD made a point of how it provided substantially more memory than Nvidia's competing RTX 30-series parts, and might now be forced to step back to 8GB given the various component shortages.

If AMD is indeed testing and/or mulling a release of a Navi 21-based graphics card with 8GB of memory, there are two ways how AMD could build it:

• Use a cut-down version of the Navi 21 GPU with half of the memory interfaces enabled and equip the card with four 16Gb GDDR6 memory chips. This would allow the company to make use of its Navi 21 processors with faulty memory controllers/PHYs and/or reduce the bill of materials (BOM) cost of its card. Performance of such a product will likely be rather low in high resolutions and in cases that require more than 8GB of memory.
• Use a Navi 21 GPU with all of its memory controllers/interfaces enabled, but install 8Gb GDDR6 chips. This would reduce BOM of the card, but will again lower its performance in games/scenes where 8GB of memory is needed, but memory bandwidth would remain the same.

AMD could sell either of such boards to OEMs or on select markets as a Radeon RX 6800 LE or a Radeon RX 6700 LE, depending on the level of performance. Based on the UserBenchmark results, the card in question performs worse than the RX 6800 and better than the RX 6700 XT, which makes an RX 6800 LE more likely. There's a $100 price gap between those two cards as well, not that suggested etail pricing (SEP) means much these days.

As with all such leaks and rumors, sprinkle liberally with salt. It could be a prototype, a fake, or a future product. Without sufficient supply, just about any GPU with a reasonable price would be welcomed by gamers. We asked AMD for comment, but in general the response on unannounced cards is "no comment."

The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is officially AMD's new halo product, surpassing the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 by offering the fully-enabled Navi 21 GPU with 80 Compute Units. The latest generation GPUs sit atop our GPU Benchmarks hierarchy and rate as some of the best graphics cards currently available (if we use the term "available" loosely). The 6900 XT is also the most expensive AMD graphics card we've seen in quite some time — the last time AMD sold a GPU priced at $1,000 or more was the Radeon Pro Duo (2016), a very limited quantity dual-GPU card. With RX 6800 XT taking on RTX 3080, the goal is clear: AMD wants to offer competitive performance to the GeForce RTX 3090 while undercutting Nvidia's price by $500.

All of that is sort of a moot point, of course. Even eight months after the official launch, the RX 6900 XT remains virtually impossible to find in stock, just like all of the other RX 6000 and RTX 30 series graphics cards. Our GPU pricing index looks at eBay prices for the various cards, and while the RX 6900 XT technically only costs 55% more than the MSRP, it's still a lot more than we'd recommend paying. We're refreshing this review with the latest details but keeping the original performance results. You can see the full view of how performance stacks up in more recent reviews like the RTX 3080 Ti, but until prices reach something approaching normalcy, buying a latest generation graphics card remains a serious pain in the nether regions.

Undercutting the 3090 price is all well and good, but there are a couple of problems when comparing the GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 to the Radeon RX 6800 XT and 6900 XT. First, RTX 3090 more than doubled the VRAM of the 3080. It also has a wider memory bus and 20 percent more shader cores. Finally, it increased the power target by 10 percent and often delivered superior performance in professional workloads. In contrast, the RX 6900 XT has 10 percent more shader cores than the 6800 XT. And that's it.

Let's get straight to the point. On paper, the RX 6900 XT doesn't look like a good deal. We're not saying the RTX 3090 is a better deal for gaming purposes, but at least it offers some tangible benefits over the RTX 3080. Again, all of this is somewhat academic right now, as supplies of the latest generation graphics cards have proven woefully inadequate. If you can find an RX 6900 XT in stock for $999, have at it! But it continues to sell out just as quickly as its lesser siblings — faster, in fact, since supplies of the RX 6900 XT tend to be even more limited considering it requires a fully-enabled Navi 21 chip. Yields of that quality of chip won't be higher than the partially disabled chips in the 6800 XT, which are still nowhere near sufficient to meet demand.

There's really not much to say about the specs that we haven't already covered. The RX 6900 XT has the full 80 CUs and 5120 shader cores that the Navi 21 GPU offers, and the remaining specs, including memory speed and TDP, are the same as the RX 6800 XT. Which isn't to say that there aren't differences in the silicon.

Binning and sorting chips from silicon wafers is nothing new, but the best chips often come from closer to the center of the wafer, where there are fewer defects. Since the 6900 XT requires a fully functioning Navi 21 chip, it almost guarantees other characteristics like power and voltage requirements will be better as well. How much does that matter in practice? If you're hoping to overclock and reach maximum performance, the silicon lottery can get you an extra few percent. Considering the 6900 XT already costs 50 percent more than the 6800 XT, however, that's a big jump in price for a likely minor improvement in overall performance.

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT: Unboxed and Unwrapped 

The Radeon RX 6900 XT looks identical to the RX 6800 XT, except for the product label. The packaging isn't quite the same, however. Inside the main box, the RX 6900 XT comes wrapped in a mouse pad. It's a nice little extra if you need a mouse pad or AMD swag. It's a relatively large pad as well — not big enough to cover your entire desk, but much larger than a basic pad.

The RX 6900 XT is a dense graphics card, weighing slightly more than the RTX 3080 while sporting similar dimensions. It's a bit thicker, occupying 2.7 slots, but it's also about 2cm shorter. You could potentially fit it into a smaller build, but we recommend exercising some caution as ejecting 300W (or more) or heat into a small case will hurt performance. Actually, if you're doing a smaller case, just save yourself some money and buy the 6800 XT — we'd bet once thermals level out, the two cards will perform nearly the same.

Like the RX 6800 cards, the 6900 XT includes a single HDMI 2.1, two DisplayPort 1.4, and one USB-C video output. If that doesn't meet your needs, keep an eye out for third party cards. We've heard there will be RX 6900 XT cards from AMD's AIB partners (contrary to some earlier rumors), which makes sense as anyone making an RX 6800 XT could use the same design for RX 6900 XT. We're not sure when those cards will be available for purchase, however.

There are two 8-pin PEG connectors for power, rated for 150W each. Combined with the 75W from the PCIe slot, power should be more than sufficient for normal operation. We did see slight power spikes when starting up certain workloads (FurMark, specifically), but these shouldn't pose a serious problem to any quality power supply that can deliver 850W. We do recommend using a single rail PSU if possible.

Radeon RX 6900 XT Overclocking 

MSI Afterburner still doesn't support RX 6000 series GPUs at present, leaving us with AMD's built-in overclocking tools. We could just use Rage Mode, but all that seems to do is raise the power limit, so we set about doing some manual tuning.

Memory seemed easy enough to max out, and cranking the power slider to maximum as well doesn't generally pose any problems. That leaves the GPU clock, voltage, and fan speeds, the latter of which we tuned to favor cooler temperatures over quieter operation. We set the RAM to 2150 MHz, dropped the GPU voltage to 1125 mV (down from 1175 mV), and set about testing.

We started by looping the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark in a window at 1440p extreme, then bumped up the GPU clock to 2600 MHz to check for stability. We found that the power limit becomes a factor long before the maximum boost clock comes into play. With a 115 percent power limit in place, that gives the GPU up to 345W of power, and that's pretty close to where it landed. Clock speeds then fluctuate according to the demands of whatever game or workload is running, with average clocks in the 2400-2550 MHz range.

While Heaven proved stable in our initial tests, we did encounter some issues in a few other games, which eventually led to the slightly revised overclocks you can see above. We dropped the RAM 10 MHz to 2140, bumped the voltage back to 1150 mV, and that seemed to fix the problems. Additional time spent tuning might eke out a few more MHz, but for most users, simply enabling Rage Mode would do most of the dirty work — or set the RAM speed to 2100 and max out the power slider for a slightly higher result.

It's worth noting that while AMD lists the official boost clock of the RX 6900 XT as 2250 MHz, in AMD's own drivers, the boost clock shows up as 2519 MHz. You won't normally see clocks quite that high, but you could with Rage Mode. In that sense, AMD has taken a page out of Nvidia's book by advertising a lower boost clock than what you'll get in many games. We appreciate this, and the combination of increased power limits and a minor bump to the maximum boost clock gave us a decent result.

Overclocked results are present in our benchmark charts, but not in the DirectX Raytracing (DXR) suite. The net improvement was around 5 percent, and 7 percent at 4K, which isn't that much of a boost to performance. There's a decent chance third party cards may come with better factory overclocks than what we achieved.

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As with the recent Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 review, we have multiple test suites we'll be running. Our new suite consists of 13 games and is a superset of the old suite, so we figured this round we'd just go with that. We also have ten DXR tests (DirectX Raytracing) to assess ray tracing performance.

Several of the latest additions to our tests suite (specifically, Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Dirt 5) clearly favor AMD's latest GPUs. On the other hand, nearly all of the DXR suite favors Nvidia's RTX cards, so it sort of balances out. We only tested the 6900 XT on our main Core i9-9900K PC, but if you check the GTX 3060 Ti review, you can see that the other CPUs are only slightly faster at 1080p and 1440p, likely due in part to our choice of RAM on the various platforms.

We've run all of the tests at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K ultra. We're not using DLSS on the Nvidia cards, which, as noted in the 3060 Ti review, can boost performance by 50 percent or more in games that support DLSS 2.0. We also ran Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks with DLSS and saw increases of 60 percent or more in some cases. Needless to say, AMD could really benefit from getting more games to use FidelityFX Super Resolution, which has now launched but is only used in a modest collection of shipping games so far — and many of those games don't really need it, particularly on a GPU like the 6900 XT.

Radeon RX 6900 XT — Extended Test Suite 

Our new suite of gaming benchmarks includes all of the games from previous years, plus four newer games from 2020. We're grouping all three resolutions for each game into a single gallery, with 4K results listed first. This is a $1,000 GPU, so we have to assume potential buyers are at least thinking about using it with a 4K display. Barring that, 1440p 144Hz displays remain the gaming sweet spot, and we recommend against spending this much money on any GPU intended for 1080p gaming (even though we're including those results).

Swipe through the galleries to check out the 1440p and 4K results, as well as the fps percentile line charts. We'll provide limited commentary on the individual games, letting the charts speak for themselves.

We've trimmed things down to just the latest generation Ampere and RDNA2 GPUs, though you can refer to our other reviews and GPU hierarchy for additional results. Given the specs, the RX 6900 XT performs just as we expected. It's generally around 5 percent (give or take 2 percent) faster than the RX 6800 XT. The drivers used for testing the RX 6900 XT are slightly newer as well and seem to have helped boost performance even more than the expected amount in a few games (Horizon Zero Dawn, specifically).

Overall, across the entire test suite, the RX 6900 XT is slightly faster than the RTX 3080, and it can beat the 3090 in a few cases. There are games where it falls behind, however, especially if a game supports ray tracing. How important is that? You'll have to decide. We generally like the RT effects in single player games but would leave them off in multiplayer where the fps drop is tough to take.

From a value perspective, of course, the 6900 XT doesn't make any sense. Would you pay hundreds of dollars extra for five percent more performance with otherwise equivalent features and design? We wouldn't recommend that. Unless you really want that custom mouse pad. Or maybe if you use professional software where the boost in performance makes it worth your while (see below).

We'll go through the individual gaming results in alphabetical order, which means Assassin's Creed Valhalla is up first. As a recent release promoted by AMD, it's perhaps not too surprising to see the RX 6900 XT at the top of the charts. Still, that's a significant lead for AMD at 1440p and 1080p. We're not sure what exactly is going on within the game code that would make it favor AMD's architecture this much, but as a DX11 game, it's entirely possible Nvidia will have updated drivers that improve performance with RTX cards. For now, AMD wins this one easily.

Borderlands 3 is another AMD promotional game, and the 6900 XT basically ties the RTX 3090 at 4K ultra. Dropping down to 1440p and 1080p, it even comes out ahead of the top Nvidia chip. We see a similar trend down through the other GPUs, with the 6800 XT leading the 3080, and the 6800 beating the RTX 3070. If BL3 is a game you care about, AMD takes this one as well.

A huge caveat here: Dirt 5 is an AMD promotional game, and we're using a beta / early access DXR patch. Given what we'll see below, either it's possible for game developers to do ray tracing in a way that dramatically favors AMD, or — more likely — the DXR implementation is very suboptimal on Nvidia right now. There are only three games currently being promoted by AMD that feature ray tracing effects, and two of those won't run on Nvidia GPUs right now, so again, these results aren't perhaps the best.

Even though this is yet another AMD promoted game, The Division 2 has been around a while and doesn't actually favor Team Red with the latest GPUs. Both the RTX 3080 and 3090 come out ahead of the 6900 XT at 4K ultra, though the gap narrows as resolution shrinks thanks to CPU bottlenecks.  All of the top GPUs can do 60+ fps at 4K ultra as well, and over 120 fps at 1440p ultra.

Far Cry 5 puts the 6900 XT and 6800 XT between the 3090 and 3080 at 4K, while CPU limits become a factor at 1440p and 1080p. Even though this is yet another game originally promoted by AMD, Nvidia delivers higher fps at CPU-limited resolutions right now. Given this is one of the oldest games in our test suite, we wouldn't put too much emphasis on FC5 — we'll be looking at replacing it with Far Cry 6 when it comes out.

Final Fantasy XIV is our first Nvidia promoted game, or at least a game that specifically makes use of some Nvidia GameWorks libraries. Nvidia's 3090 and 3080 take the top two spots across all three resolutions, though the biggest lead is still only 12 percent at 4K. With 4K fps in the triple digits and 1440p easily breaking 144 fps on the RX 6800 and above, this is another game that's not very representative of the latest releases.

Forza Horizon 4 wasn't promoted by AMD, but it definitely favors AMD GPUs. At 4K ultra, the 3090 technically has a higher average fps, but the minimum fps on the AMD side has enough weight to give AMD the lead. Dropping to 1440p, both the 6900 XT and 6800 XT lead the top Nvidia cards, again with significantly higher minimum fps, and at 1080p, even the RX 6800 tops the RTX 3090. This definitely isn't one of the better showings for the green team.

Horizon Zero Dawn is a port from PS4, so potentially the console roots help AMD a bit, plus it's a DX12 engine (the same game engine as Death Stranding). Performance is mostly a tie at 4K, but the 6900 XT pulls away at 1440p and 1080p. This is also the one game where the latest AMD drivers seem to have given RDNA2 a shot in the arm. We didn't get a chance to retest the 6800 XT, but right now, the 6900 XT is nearly 20 percent faster at 4K, and that's far more than the extra shader cores should provide.

Nvidia redeems itself a bit in Metro Exodus, with the 3080 basically matching the 6900 XT (though with slightly lower minimum fps) and the 3090 taking the top spot. This is also one of the first games to support ray tracing, and we'll look at it again with DXR enabled below. As with most of the other games, even though the 6900 XT and 3090 are higher on the charts, the 6800 XT and RTX 3080 are the better values (provided you can find them at MSRP — or in stock at all).

We didn't max out every setting in Red Dead Redemption 2, leaving the advanced options mostly at their minimum values. Still, as our first Vulkan API game, it's nice to see multiple cards now clearing 60 fps. The 3090 leads the 6900 XT again, though not by enough to warrant a 50 percent increase in price if gaming performance is your primary concern.

Another Nvidia game, the RTX 3090 leads at 4K in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. However, the 6900 XT delivers better minimum fps at 1440p and 1080p, with CPU bottlenecks becoming pronounced at the latter. This is another DXR enabled game that we'll look at again below.

Strange Brigade is our other Vulkan API game, and it strongly favors Nvidia's GPUs, even though it was originally an AMD promotional game. Not that it matters too much, as it's not a particularly popular game, and all of the GPUs hit very high fps at 4K. If you have a 4K 144 Hz display, perhaps Nvidia's GPUs are the better choice. At 1440p and 1080p, where we see frame rates approach and then cross the 300 fps threshold, however, there are better tests of a GPU's capabilities these days.

Our final game is the second with ray tracing. AMD's launch drivers for the 6800 series didn't render DXR effects properly in Watch Dogs Legion, but public drivers and 6900 XT launch drivers have fixed at least many of the rendering errors. As a result, performance has dropped by around 30 percent for the AMD GPUs, giving Nvidia it's biggest lead yet. The 3090 is 70 percent faster than the 6900 XT at 4K, 55 percent faster at 1440p, and 45 percent faster at 1080p — and that's without enabling DLSS! Even the RTX 3080 crushes AMD's top GPU by 30-45 percent in this game when using ray tracing. Turn on DLSS Quality mode, and the Nvidia GPUs can extend their lead by another 20-30 percent. 

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Given what we've seen so far, it's a safe bet that Nvidia will maintain its lead in ray tracing benchmarks. The RX 6900 XT may close the gap a bit, but 10 percent more shader cores can only go so far. For these DXR tests, we'll mostly be looking at the RTX 30-series and the RX 6000-series GPUs, though we do have RTX 2080 Ti results as well. For reference, the RTX 2080 Super is just a bit slower than the RTX 3060 Ti, while the remaining 20-series GPUs scale down from there.

Our format is the same as above, just with eight additional games (tests) — and we'll forego any further commentary on Dirt 5 and Watch Dogs Legion since we already covered those. Considering Nvidia was the only ray tracing solution in town up until the RX 6800 XT launch, most of these games are Nvidia promoted titles. Any ray tracing effects are also inherently targeted at Nvidia's hardware. 

10 Game Average

Ray tracing continues to be extremely demanding, especially at higher resolutions without something like DLSS to help reduce the complexity. The RTX 3090 only averages 41 fps across the test suite, while the 3080 averages 36 fps. The 3080 ends up being 20-30 percent faster than the RX 6900 XT, and the 3090 is 35-50 percent faster than AMD's top GPU. If you're hoping to go all-in on ray tracing games in the next couple of years, you can actually make a pretty good argument for just going whole hog and buying the 3090. We also took an early look at Cyberpunk 2077 performance, which even in not-quite-final code looks great. The RT effects do add something to the game world, but you pretty much need DLSS to get 60 fps with most RTX cards. 

3DMark Port Royal

3DMark Port Royal ends up on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of the performance gap between Nvidia and AMD GPUs. The RTX 3090 is consistently around 35 percent faster than the 6900 XT, while the 3080 is about 18 percent faster. 3DMark isn't a game, though it's a very common benchmark, so we wanted to at least use it as a point of reference. 

Boundary

Boundary is a benchmark of an upcoming game, and it uses Unreal Engine with a bunch of ray tracing effects. The result is very taxing on even the fastest GPUs, especially without DLSS. At 1080p, the 3080 is 47 percent faster than the 6900 XT, and that lead grows to 51 percent at 4K. The 3090 is 67 to 75 percent faster than the 6900 XT. With DLSS Quality mode, performance can improve another 40 percent or more. If this is what the future of ray traced games holds, AMD will absolutely need Super Resolution if it hopes to compete. 

COD: Black Ops Cold War

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War only uses ray tracing effects for shadows and ambient occlusion, and honestly, it doesn't make that big of a difference visually. Even so, it's extremely taxing, and AMD's RX 6000 cards all struggle to keep up with their RTX counterparts. The 3090 is 'only' 46 percent faster at 1080p, but that lead balloons to 88 percent at 4K, where the 3090 maintains a still decent 58 fps while the 6900 XT just barely averages 30 fps. 

Control

Control remains one of our favorite examples of what ray tracing can add to a game, thanks to the office environment with lots of vertical glass surfaces that are partially reflective. Ray tracing is also used for diffuse lighting and ambient occlusion, and the result is once again a significant win for Nvidia's GPUs. The 3080 is 53-59 percent faster than the 6900 XT, depending on the resolution. AMD's top GPU can basically match the RTX 3060 Ti.

Crysis Remastered

Crysis Remastered's hybrid DirectX 11/DXR solution is a bit unusual, both in what was done and how it ends up performing. The 6900 XT ends up with a victory of sorts at 1080p, thanks to better minimum fps results, but then it falls behind the 3080 at 1440p and 4K. There's no DLSS support to boost Nvidia’s lead further, but the overall rendering quality in Crysis Remastered isn't particularly impressive compared to some of the other games.

Dirt 5

We already discussed Dirt 5 with DXR above, so we'll skip the commentary here. 

Fortnite

Turning on RT effects in Fortnite basically demands DLSS or some equivalent. The 3090 manages to break 60 fps at 1080p, but it's the only card to do so. AMD's 6900 XT is relatively close behind the 3080 this time, but it starts at 46 fps at 1080p and drops to sub-30 fps at 1440p before ending in the low-teens at 4K. Fortnite may look cartoony, but with RT enabled, it's one of the most demanding games around — based on its performance, at least. 

Metro

Metro Exodus was the first game to do global illumination via ray tracing, but the latest GPUs tend to run okay even with maxed-out settings. The 6900 XT hits 78 fps at 1080p and 57 fps at 1440p, then drops to 31 fps at 4K. The RTX 3080 is still 25-30 percent faster, but that's less than in some of the other games. Alternatively, AMD's 6900 XT and 6800 XT are just a bit faster than the RTX 3070 in this game. 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is another one of the early RT-enabled games, using the tech for shadows only. It's actually not even that big of a visual change in many areas, but it's also not as big of a hit to framerates. Even at native resolution (without DLSS 1.0 on the Nvidia cards), most of the GPUs break 100 fps at 1080p, and the 6900 XT still puts up a solid 85 fps at 1440p. 4K trails off a bit at just 46 fps, but that's still playable, particularly if you have a FreeSync monitor. 

Watch Dogs Legion

Again, we covered Watch Dogs Legion above, so we'll skip the commentary here, other than to note that the 6900 XT comes in just behind the previous-gen RTX 2080 Ti and basically ties the RTX 3070. That's not a great result for a card that has twice as much memory and costs twice as much as well. 

Radeon RX 6900 XT: Blender and SPECviewperf 13 

We weren't able to run the full suite of Proviz benchmarks like we did on the RTX 3090, but we did run the same Blender test along with SPECviewperf 13. The results are interesting, to say the least. Many of the Blender tests have the 6900 XT ranked last, but it does a bit better in the classroom and koro scenes. (It also repeatedly failed on the victor test scene in Blender Benchmark.)

SPECviewperf 13 also shows a mix of high performance and low performance, but AMD's RDNA2 card looks competitive overall. It matches the Titan RTX in catia-06 and places first in the energy-02 and medical-02 tests. It also has strong results compared to the RTX 30-series in snx-03 and sw-04. On the other hand, it doesn't do as well in maya-05, creo-02, or 3dsmax-06. If you use any of these professional applications, AMD's GPUs might be worth a look.

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The RX 6900 XT has the same 300W TBP (Total Board Power) rating as the RX 6800 XT. Using our Powenetics equipment, we've logged power, GPU clocks, temperatures, and fan speeds while looping Metro Exodus at 1440p ultra five times (without ray tracing or DLSS). We also test with FurMark running at 1600x900 in a window using the stress test mode.

Separate from the power testing, we also check noise levels at a distance of 15cm from the graphics card (in an open case). At idle, our PC’s noise floor is 46.0 dB — that's with the GPU fans not spinning, in Zero dB mode. After running Metro for 15 minutes, the RX 6900 XT noise levels were 47.7 dB. That's actually slightly quieter than the RX 6800 XT, which, as we'll see in a moment, appears to be due to differences in the default fan curve.

Clock speeds, temperatures, fan speeds, and power are all interrelated. Drop the clocks, and you reduce the power and temperature. Raise the fan speed, and you reduce the temperature and maybe even power use, potentially allowing for higher clocks. We used AMD's built-in Radeon Settings utility to adjust the fan speeds and other settings on the overclocked card, for example, producing the results seen here.

Like several of Nvidia's latest GPUs, the RX 6900 XT uses just a bit more power than the official TDP rating. Overclocked, it's right up with the RTX 3090 and actually surpasses it in FurMark (by a whole 4W). It's not a big deal, and we suspect a lot of users buying the 6900 XT will end up using Rage Mode since it's basically a free overclock that just raises the power limits.

As we saw with the RX 6800 and 6800 XT, AMD has now started to be a bit more conservative in its official boost clock figures. All of the RX 6000 GPUs have exceeded their boost clocks in our Metro Exodus testing, and we definitely noticed other games going above 2250 MHz. Overclocked, the card even managed a cool 2.5 GHz, which is pretty freaking awesome. We can't wait to see what the extreme overclockers fare with liquid nitrogen.

Temperatures for the RX 6900 XT are okay, though it does end up at the top of our range in stock operation. What's interesting is that the fan speed is actually lower than the RX 6800 XT (see below), so AMD has apparently applied a different fan profile here that favors low noise levels over temperatures. Our overclocking tosses that out the window, of course, and the 6900 XT goes from being one of the quietest but warmest GPUs to having the highest fan speed and lowest temperatures.

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After the more recent Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 and GeForce RTX 3060 Ti cards, jumping up to a $1000 graphics card feels ludicrous. Sure, it's fast and can sometimes even beat Nvidia's top-shelf RTX 3090. Overall, however, the RX 6900 XT fails to impress relative to the RX 6800 XT. It's such an incremental bump in performance that it hardly seems worth the trouble. That's assuming that there are enough cards to meet the demand, which of course there aren't.

By the numbers, the RX 6900 XT is only 4 to 7 percent faster than the RX 6800 XT, but it officially costs over 50 percent more. Okay, sure, you can't find the 6800 XT in stock for $649 right now, but at some point (hopefully before RDNA3 arrives), that will no longer be the case. If you want the best high-end AMD graphics card, our pick still goes to the RX 6800 XT. But if you're open to other options, AMD has a tougher time of things.

Toss out ray tracing performance, and the RX 6900 XT looks very competitive, chalking up several wins against the RTX 3090. But if you're willing to spend over a grand on a new graphics card for gaming purposes, we simply can't overlook the ray tracing performance, not to mention the large number of games with DLSS support. Yes, FidelityFX Super Resolution is now here, and it works with every GPU, but it doesn't look quite as good as DLSS 2.0 and it's not in nearly as many games, particularly games that really need it. However, even without DLSS, the RTX 3080 already leads the 6900 XT by an average of 25 percent at 1440p in ray tracing games.

It's also interesting to note that, for all the complaints about the lack of RTX 30-series GPUs, all of the Nvidia cards (except the most recent RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti) actually show up in the Steam Hardware Survey. We still don't know what sort of fuzzy statistics Steam might be using, as Valve has never been particularly transparent about the data behind the HW survey. If it's not fully random and instead sent out queries to anyone with a new 'unknown' GPU during the past month or two, that could explain things. Still, not a single RX 6000-series GPU shows up, while the RTX 3070 has basically caught up to the RX 580 (AMD's highest ranked GPU on the list).

As a professional card, the RX 6900 XT again has some potential. There are certain applications where AMD is more generous than Nvidia when it comes to optimized drivers. If you happen to use one of those apps, this could be the best overall value, but again the 6800 XT has the exact same features and specs, only with a few fewer shader cores.

That's the real difficulty with the top of the pecking order. You often get radically diminishing returns going from the second- or third-tier GPU to the fastest card. The RTX 3090 has the same problem, and we don't recommend it as a general gaming solution for the same reasons. But really, anyone wanting a new GPU is likely going to be waiting for prices to come down, whatever their GPU of choice. When even the RTX 3060 and RX 6700 XT sell for over $700, it's best to hang on to whatever you already have.

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AMD this week issued a teaser post in Twitter that pre-announces formal launch of the company's Radeon Pro graphics card based on the RDNA2 architecture on June 8. While the company did not officially disclose specifications of the Radeon Pro W6800, an unknown leaker disclosed a Geekbench 5 entry early on Friday June 4. As this is a leak the information should be taken with a grain of salt.

AMD's upcoming workstation-grade Radeon Pro W6800 reportedly carries AMD's Navi 21 graphics processor in its full configuration with 5120 stream processors as well as 32GB of GDDR6 memory connected to the GPU using a 256-bit bus, according to previous leaks and a Geekbench 5 database entry. So far, AMD has not offered an RDNA2-powered graphics card with 32GB of memory onboard, so this workstation-grade product will be the first one in the family to feature 32GB of GDDR6 SDRAM. 

The maximum GPU frequency was reportedly set to 2,554 MHz, though whether this was final or not is unknown. AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics board has an official Game Clock frequency of 2,250 MHz, but its actual maximum clockspeed is much higher. Typically ProViz cards are clocked lower than their gaming counterparts, but RDNA2 cards have proven very capable of high clocks.

AMD itself confirmed that the Radeon Pro W6800 graphics card supports up to six 4Kp60 monitors (or three 5Kp60 or one 8Kp60 monitors) using six mini-DisplayPort 1.4 connectors as well as AMD's Eyefinity technology, which will be another unique feature of the product. 

The board uses a blower-type cooler, which is common for workstation and datacenter cards as it ensures longevity. Speaking of datacenters, it should be noted that AMD's Big Navi GPU supports GPU virtualization (including SR-IOV), so the upcoming board could be used in datacenters to power multiple remote workstations. 

As far as OpenCL performance of the Radeon Pro W6800 is concerned, the card scores 137,230 points in Geekbench 5, which is in line with that of the Radeon RX 6800. Geekbench 5 isn't a very good benchmark since its results vary greatly, because the tests are too short for a GPU to set itself to a stable frequency.  

AMD will officially unveil its Radeon Pro W6800 32GB GDDR6 graphics card on June 8, so before that date any information about the product should be taken with a grain of salt.

Earlier this year, AMD launched its blockbuster Ryzen 5000 processors for laptops. Now, the company’s new Radeon RX 6000M graphics are here, too. They come together in the Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition, as AMD works with laptop vendors to show that a laptop with all of its technologies can be premium and deliver as good an experience as any gaming laptops using Intel and Nvidia components.

It wasn't that long ago that it seemed like every AMD laptop was saddled with a poor screen, lackluster plastic chassis and little else to speak of. But the Strix G15 is one of the best gaming laptops under $1,500, offering strong gaming and productivity performance, loud speakers and a soft-touch and metal housing. It's not without its flaws, and AMD has no option for 4K gaming at the moment, but AMD laptops are catching up.

Design of the Asus ROG Strix G15

AMD doesn't make its own gaming laptops, but this design is as close as you'll get. Asus is doing everything it can in the design to ensure that the G15 Advantage Edition screams AMD.

The aluminum lid has the standard two-toned Strix pattern, with a diagonal line cutting an all-black cover with a pattern of dots. Asus' ROG logo lights up when the computer is on, but there is, surprisingly, another logo on the lid: AMD's. It's in the lower-left corner, though it doesn't light up and isn't as prominent.

The hinge is black and AMD red. That bright cherry part is engraved with " /// R." Ryzen, Radeon, ROG, perhaps? That's a replaceable cap, and if you prefer something a bit less showy, two other caps, one in gray and one in a clear smokey color, are also included, and both say "ROG" on them. They're easily removable and snap in with magnets. Asus is promising to put the hinge cap pattern on Shapeways for you to make and 3D print your own. We saw Asus do something similar on the ROG Strix Scar 17 G733.

AMD's influence even gets to the bottom of the laptop. One of the rubber feet is bright red and reads "back on top." Hm. I wonder what that could mean? The whole thing is a treasure trove of references and Easter eggs for both Team Red and the ROG brand.

Lifting the lid reveals a light show. The keyboard is full RGB, and there's also a light bar on the bottom of the system that shimmers to life when you open the machine. The WASD keys are clear, showing off maximum lighting and the unexciting design of membrane switches. The deck has a soft-touch paint that is comfortable against your wrists while typing and gaming.

On the left side, there are two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack, but there are no ports at all on the right side. Everything else is on the back: a third USB Type-A port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, HDMI output, Ethernet jack and the power connector. Plenty of gaming laptops use the back, but most also have ports on both sides of the machine.

The Strix is 13.94 x 10.2 x 1.07 inches and weighs in at 6.61 pounds. While that's heavier than the Alienware m15 R4 (5.25 pounds), that laptop is wider but thinner  at 14.19 x 10.86 x 0.78 inches. It's the same case for the 5.25-pound, 15.09 x 10.51 x 0.92-inch MSI GP66 Leopard. Unsurprisingly, the Razer Blade Pro 17, at 15.55 x 10.24 x 0,78 inches offered the widest footprint, but was still lighter at 6.06 pounds.

Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition Specifications

Gaming and Graphics on the Asus ROG Strix G15: SmartShift Is Back

The ROG Strix G15 is the first laptop we've tested with one of AMD's RDNA 2 GPUs. This one, the Radeon RX 6800M with 12GB of VRAM, is the company's current top-end mobile graphics.

The laptop also marks the return of AMD SmartShift, which we haven't seen since we reviewed the Dell G5 15 SE a year ago. SmartShift lets AMD Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics share power and put it where it is needed most, which should lead to increases in performance for both gaming and productivity. In this case, it uses the CPU's six-phase power design and the GPU's 10-phase design. The other big AMD technology at play here with the RX 6000 GPUs is Smart Access Memory (SAM), which increases the amount of GPU memory available at a time (Nvidia refers to this as Resizable BAR).

Here, we're comparing the Asus ROG Strix G15 against laptops with Nvidia's mid-range card (the GeForce RTX 3060 in the Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5) and top-end models (The RTX 3070 in the Razer Blade Pro 17 and the RTX 3080 with 8GB of VRAM in the MSI GP66 Leopard).

I used the all-AMD laptop to play Horizon Zero Dawn on "ultimate quality" settings. In an early-game stealth sequence, the game ran between 57 and 64 frames per second on the 1080p display.

On Shadow of the Tomb Raider on its highest settings at 1080p, the Strix G15 ran the test at 88 frames per second, beating out the RTX 3060 in the Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5 (73 fps) and just ahead of the RTX 3070 in the Razer Blade Pro 17 (86 fps). The MSI GP66, with an RTX 3080, sailed ahead at 106 fps.

When it came to Grand Theft Auto V on very high settings (1080p), the Strix played the game at 98 fps, surpassing the Alienware (82 fps) but falling behind both the Blade Pro (102 fps) and the GP66 (125 fps).

On Far Cry New Dawn (1080p, ultra), the Strix, at 81 fps, was more in line with the Alienware (79 fps) than the Blade Pro, which ran at 89 fps. The GP66 hit 103 fps.

The Strix tied the Blade Pro on Red Dead Redemption 2  (70 fps at medium settings, 1080p), leaving the 3060-equipped Alienware behind (53 fps), but still behind the GP66 (82 fps).

The same pattern emerged with the Borderlands 3 benchmark, with the Strix and Blade tying at 79 fps on "Badass" settings at 1080p.

We stress test gaming laptops by running them through 15 cycles of the Metro Exodus benchmark. Typically, we use RTX settings at 1080p. Ray tracing did work here, however, DLSS didn't, as that's not supported. The Strix ran the game[1]  at average of 51.37 frames per second across the runs, going as high as 54 fps on the first run to as low as 49 fps on the thirteenth and fourteenth.

During that stress test, the CPU ran at an average speed of 2.8 GHz and an average temperature of 83.05 degrees Celsius (181.49 degrees Fahrenheit). The GPU measured an average 1,940.42 MHz and 80.65 degrees Celsius (177.17 degrees Fahrenheit).

Productivity Performance the Asus ROG Strix G15

Of course, a slim 15.6-inch notebook should be able to do more than gaming. The Strix boasts AMD's top-of-the-line AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU. While we found the SSD speeds weren't amazing, it otherwise stood up to the task as a productivity machine.

On Geekbench 5, the Strix G15 achieved a single-core of 1,519 and a multi-core score of 7.746. It was the highest single-core score in the field by a small amount, and its multi-core score was inched out ever so slightly by the MSI GP66 Leopard (1,274/7,848, Intel Core i7-10870H and 32GB RAM).

The Strix's SSD didn't impress. It copied 25GB of files at a rate of 340.68 MBps, falling behind the rest of the field.

But Asus' laptop was the fastest in our Handbrake test, which transcodes a 4K video to 1080p. The ROG Strix completed that task in 6:57, beating the Alienware m15 and MSI GP66 Leopard by a few seconds. The Razer Blade Pro 17 fell behind at 10:10.

Display on the Asus ROG Strix G15

The Asus ROG Strix G15 comes with a 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080, 300 Hz, IPS display. It's passably bright and vivid enough, though other competitors still offer some better screens.

I used the laptop to watch a trailer for The Eternals, and did find myself reaching to make it as bright as I could (and still wished I could crank it up more); It's a challenging trailer with a handful of silhouettes and dark scenes. Some fires on dark backgrounds popped, as did Sersei running her hand through a field of green grass. A scene with Kingo dancing song people in pink and blue costumes looked the best, but also wasn't as impressive as on other screens I've tried.

I felt similarly when I played Horizon Zero Dawn. I wish I could make the screen a bit brighter, but the game's lush landscapes still looked incredible.

Asus' panel covers 77% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, just behind the MSI GP66 Leopard (79%). However, both the Alienware m15 (87%) and Blade Pro 17 (84%) outperformed here.

The Strix measured 280 nits of brightness, making it ever-so-slightly brighter than the Blade Pro and GP66 Leopard (both at 277 nits). The Alienware was the most vibrant at 328 nits.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the Asus ROG Strix G15

The Asus ROG Strix G15 has an island style keyboard with some dedicated hotkeys above it and an extra row of keys on the right side.

For typing, the keys felt a bit short with low travel. I found myself slipping over the keys, including the WASD keys, which are clear and made of a different material than the rest of the keyboard. Still, I hit 113 words per minute, albeit with a few more errors than usual on the 10fastfingers typing test.

For gaming, the WASD keys feel great, as they're easy to find without looking down in the middle of the action.

While both gaming and typing, I really appreciated the soft-touch texture on the deck. It's really comfortable against the wrists.

The dedicated hot keys for volume, muting your mic, adjusting fans and accessing Aura Sync are useful and well placed. You don't have to take your hand off the mouse to change the volume. On an extra right row, Asus added the rest of the media keys, as well as a print screen key. On many keyboards, the volume and media keys are nearby, so when you're not gaming and want to switch songs and adjust the volume, you need to go to different parts of the keyboard.

Asus' Precision touchpad offers plenty of space for navigation and gestures. I think some people may find it has a bit too much friction, but it worked quite well for me.

Audio on the Asus ROG Strix G15

With a pair of Dolby Atmos speakers, the Strix G15 rocked my living room. I used it to listen to Green Day's "Pollyanna," and was surprised by the amount of detail coming out of speakers in a laptop this size. The guitars and even bass were clear, and I could hear each drumstick snapping a snare. I did, however, have to enable Atmos in the Dolby Access software to get this kind of power. It's a click I definitely recommend.

Dolby Access also has a series of equalizers for music, movies, games and voice calls.

The speakers sounded equally good as I played Horizon Zero Dawn. The vocals during dialogue were just as crisp as the grass crunching under Aloy's feet. It balanced the chanting background music well, too.

Upgradeability on the Asus ROG Strix G15

To open up the Strix G15, you have to remove seven long screws along the back and middle of the device and three short screws on the front. There's a fourth short screw that simply pops up, so be sure not to loosen that too much. You can get them all out with a Phillips size 0 screwdriver. You'll also need a prying tool to get along the edges. Be careful when removing the bottom, as it's attached to the motherboard by cables that control the RGB light bar.

The thermal solution has more Easter eggs. It reads "CUTTING EDGE COOL" in an '80s slasher movie font, perhaps referring to the Thermal Grizzly liquid metal compound on both the CPU and GPU.  The plate also has diagrams of all of the parts, including the CPU and GPU (both labeled), as well as the VRMs and other components..

Inside, you have access to dual RAM slots, and there's an extra PCIe M.2 slot for secondary storage. The Wi-Fi card is nowhere to be found, but at least it's pretty up to date.

Battery Life on the Asus ROG Strix G15

Gaming laptops don't typically last as long as productivity notebooks, but every once in a while something bucks that trend. The ROG Strix G15 ran for 10 hours and 14 minutes on our battery test, which continuously browses the web, streams videos and runs OpenGL tests, all while connected to Wi-Fi and with the brightness set to 150 nits.

That thrashed both the Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5 (3:29) and MSI GP66 Leopard (2:25). Even the Razer Blade Pro 17, the next longest-lasting, only ran for 5:58. This is a stunning showing from AMD, which was long behind the competition in terms of power efficiency.

Heat on the Asus ROG Strix G15

Part of AMD's promise for its Advantage laptops are that touch points will be relatively cool under load. We took surface temperature measurements while running our Metro Exodus gauntlet to see how it fared.

The wristrest and touchpad stayed nice and cool. The touchpad measured 30.2 degrees Celsius (86.36 degrees Fahrenheit). The center of the keyboard, between the G and H keys, hit 44.1 degrees Celsius (111.38 degrees Fahrenheit), though in our image the crucial WASD keys came out a bit cooler. I had no issue with touchpoints playing Horizon Zero Dawn. In fact, the system was even remarkably quiet under load.

On the bottom, the hottest point was by the right exhaust port, reaching a very hot 63 degrees Celsius (145.4 degrees Fahrenheit). Use this one on a desk while under load.

Webcam on the Asus ROG Strix G15

The ROG Strix doesn't have a webcam. That continues to be a shame as more people use their PCs for video calls than ever. This is part of an unfortunate tradition where Asus has said that those who want webcams will opt for some of the best external webcams.

Asus is reversing course in the future, adding webcams to some upcoming gaming laptops. Just not this one.

Software and Warranty on the Asus ROG Strix G15

Most of the preloaded programs on the Strix G15 are straightforward.

It's no surprise to see AMD Radeon Software pre-loaded, considering the RX 6800M on board. That lets you check performance metrics, switch between a variety of settings and enable and disable features like Radeon Anti-Lag, Radeon Chill, and Radeon Boost.

On Asus' end, there's Armoury Crate, which shows similar performance statistics, lets you adjust some lighting patterns and even ties into some of the Radeon settings. But there's a separate Aura Creator app, which lets you adjust the four-zone keyboard and various parts of the RGB light strip in a far more granular fashion.

There's still some junk you'll want to uninstall, like a trial of McAfee Personal Security. Additionally, there's the extra software that you find pre-installed on most Windows 10 laptops, like Spotify, Roblox, Facebook Messenger and Hidden City: Hidden Object Adventure.

Asus has added not one but two bookmarks to the Edge browser, touting its own and its partners software. Feel free to clear those out.

Asus sells the ROG Strix G15 Advantage edition with a one-year warranty.

Bottom Line

The Asus ROG Strix G15, as the first in a line of "AMD Advantage"-branded notebooks, is a statement that yes, you can get a premium AMD gaming notebook. Maybe you can't have it all, but you can get pretty close.

The ROG Strix G15's combination of the AMD Ryzen 5900HX and Radeon RX 6800M, as well as other technologies that take advantage of them, make a potent, thin gaming machine. Powerful Dolby Atmos speakers and long battery life when you aren't gaming are nice bonuses.

While AMD is promising that Advantage laptops will have premium displays, I wish the one on the Strix were a tad brighter. The SSD is passable, but middling at best. And no webcam is a huge miss as people continue to work and play from home on their own devices.

If you want all AMD, this is the way to go for now, though there will be more releases from HP, MSI and Lenovo soon. The Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5 may also scratch the slim, premium gaming issue, which combines a Ryzen Processor with Nvidia graphics cards. But for a similar price, you'll get a less powerful CPU and GPU, making the Strix G15 a better value. And if you want a larger laptop, will consider an Intel processor, and don't mind paying a premium, the Razer Blade Pro 17 has a 1440p display.

But more so than the Dell G5 15 SE last year, the Asus ROG Strix G15 points to a potential future where all-AMD laptops are desirable, competitive machines — as long as you're not looking for 4K gaming.

AMD introduced its new Radeon RX 6000M-series laptop graphics at Computex, during a keynote by AMD's CEO, Dr. Lisa Su. The new mobile graphics lineup is made up of the top-end AMD Radeon RX 6800M, a mid-range RX 6700M and the entry level RX 6600M. For now at least, the GPUs are being paired in systems from laptop vendors with AMD's Ryzen processors for what the company calls "AMD Advantage."

These are the first laptop GPUs from AMD that use its RDNA 2 architecture, with Infinity Cache for higher memory bandwidth, low power consumption (AMD claims near 0 watts at idle) and high frequencies even when the system is running at low power. The company is claiming up to 1.5 times performance over last-gen RDNA graphics and up to 43% lower power consumption. 

The most powerful of the new bunch is the AMD Radeon RX 6800M, which will be available starting June 1 in the Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition. It has 40 compute units and ray accelerators, along with a 2,300 MHz game clock, 12GB of GDDR6 memory and a 96MB cache. It will also be compatible with AMD SmartShift and Smart Access Memory. 

AMD compared the ROG Strix G15 with the RX 6800M and a Ryzen 9 5900HX to a 2019 MSI Raider GE63 with a 9th Gen Intel Core i7 processor and an RTX 2070, claiming up to 1.4 times more frames per second at 1440p max settings in Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Cyberpunk 2077, 1.5 times the performance in Dirt 5 and 1.7x more frames while playing Resident Evil: Village.

In closer comparisons, to an RTX 3070 (8GB) and RTX 3080 (8GB), AMD claimed its flagship GPU was typically the top performer - within a frame or so - in several of those games, as well as Borderlands 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, though it's unclear which settings and resolutions were used for these tests.

Unlike Nvidia, AMD isn't aiming for 4K gaming. The most powerful of the cards, the RX 6800M, aims for a power target of 145W and above and is designed for 1440p. 

The middle-tier AMD Radeon RX 6700M is designed for 1440p or 1080p gaming, depending on the title. It has 36 compute units with a 2,300 MHz game clock, 10GB of GDDR6 RAM and an 80MB infinity cache, as well as the same support for SmartShift and SAM. AMD says these will ship in laptops "soon.’ It also said that the GPU will allow for 100 fps gaming at 1440p and high settings in "popular games," though didn't specify which games it was referring to. 

The RX 6600M sits at the bottom of the stack for gaming at 1080p. AMD compared it to an RTX 3060 (6GB) on 1080p max settings, and found that it led in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Borderlands 3 and Dirt 5. It was five frames behind in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in AMD’s tests, and there was a one-frame difference playing Cyberpunk 2077. Like the RX 6800M, the 6600M will start shipping on June 1. 

AMD Advantage Laptops 

AMD is now referring to laptops with both AMD processors and graphics as offering the "AMD Advantage." The company says these designs should offer great performance because of power sharing between the CPU and GPU. 

AMD says its technologies can achieve up to 11% better performance in Borderlands 3, 10% in Wolfenstein Young Blood, 7% in Cyberpunk 2077 and 6% in Godfall. 

Additionally, the company says AMD Advantage laptops will only have "premium" displays — either IPS or OLED, but no VA or TN panels. They should hit or surpass 300 nits of brightness, hit 144 Hz or higher and use AMD FreeSync. 

Each laptop should come with a PCIe NVMe Gen 3 SSD, keep the WASD keys below 40 degrees Celsius while gaming and allow for ten hours of video on battery. (AMD tested this with local video, not streaming.) 

The first of these laptops is the Asus ROG Strix G15, with up to a Ryzen 9 5900HX and Radeon RX 6800M, a 15-inch display (either FHD at 300 Hz or WQHD at 165 Hz) with FreeSync Premium, liquid metal for cooling both the CPU and GPU along with a vapor chamber. It will launch in mid-June. 

The HP Omen 16 will also come with a 165 Hz display with up ao a Ryzen 9 5900Hx and AMD Radeon RX 6600M for 1080p gaming. It will launch sune on JD.com, then become available worldwide. 

In June, we should see more releases from HP, Asus, MSI and Lenovo. 

AMD launched its RDNA2-based Radeon RX 6000-graphics cards in early November, so it's about time for the company to use the latest Big Navi GPU for its Radeon Pro graphics cards aimed at CAD/CAM and DCC professionals. Indeed, the first benchmark score of AMD's yet-to-be-announced Radeon Pro W6800 with 32GB of memory got published recently. 

The AMD Radeon Pro W6800 32GB (1002 73A3, 1002 0E1E) scored an 'outstanding' result in UserBenchmark, hitting 146% of the average effective GPU speed. When compared to other graphics cards, 146% is between Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2080 Super (138%) and GeForce RTX 3070 (152%). Meanwhile, AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT scores between 152% and 171%. 

It's hard to make guesses about specifications for AMD's upcoming Radeon Pro W6800 32GB graphics card based on one benchmark score, so we'll refrain from doing so. Meanwhile, it looks like the Radeon Pro W6800 32GB will offer compute performance comparable to that of the Radeon RX 6800 XT. Still, since it will have more memory onboard, it will certainly provide higher performance in high resolutions when compared to the gaming adapter. 

Professional graphics cards tend to adopt the latest architectures a bit later than consumer boards as developers need to certify their drivers with developers of professional applications, something that takes time. The leak of a Radeon Pro W6800 benchmark result indicates that AMD is getting closer to release its RDNA2-based cards for CAD, CAM, and DCC users. 

Since the UserBenchmark is a general benchmark designed for casual users, it does not really put heavy loads on GPUs, so an 'outstanding' result for the Radeon Pro W6800 32GB is not surprising. Unfortunately, UserBenchmark gives absolutely no idea about performance of the graphics card in professional applications.

Today, we have a high-end grudge match between the GeForce RTX 3080 and Radeon RX 6800 XT, two of the best graphics cards currently available. Graphics cards on a store shelf are as rare as hen's teeth these days, and that makes knowing what you're buying that much more important. If you're going to camp out for a GPU, it better be a good one, and these both rank near the very top of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. Let's pit the two against each other to determine which one's the better choice.

Last year, the graphics card market picked up in multiple big ways. For the first time in many years, both Nvidia and AMD released new GPU architectures with graphics card lineups that offered massive generational improvements. Nvidia's RTX 3080 and the Ampere architecture arrived first, bringing new levels of performance, faster ray tracing and tensor operations, and more bandwidth thanks to GDDR6X. AMD's RX 6800 XT and the RDNA2 architecture arrived a few months later, with AMD joining the ray tracing club for the first time, and with a relatively massive 128MB Infinity Cache to help improve effective bandwidth.

The GPUs in question have been on the market for roughly half a year now. In past generations, the hype around a GPU release would have subsided by now, but with the current market situation and GPU shortages, most people haven't had a chance to get their hands on either card yet. Both cards are impressive, and anyone lucky enough to have snagged one during this unprecedented graphics card drought should be ecstatic to have a GPU at all. Still, there are pros and cons to each, and if you're in the market for an expensive GPU it's a good idea to weigh the differences to make sure you're satisfied with your purchase when you make one.

As with our other GPU face offs, we'll look at performance, price, features and tech, drivers and software, and power and efficiency in order to determine a winner. Those categories are listed in order of decreasing importance, in our view at least, so we'll start with the critical aspects and move on down the list from there.

Gaming Performance: RTX 3080 vs RX 6800 XT 

GPUs are used for many purposes these days, but gaming is still the number one reason consumers spend big bucks on these devices, and people buying high-end cards expect top-notch performance. We put the RTX 3080 and the RX 6800 XT to the test with a 13-game gauntlet in three resolutions to see which GPU deserves the crown. The results weren't as definitive as we would like, but we've got additional benchmarks that will help sway our final verdict.

If you're gaming at 1080p, both cards are more than fast enough—perhaps even overkill. Overall, the RX 6800 XT has a slight edge on the RTX 3080, with an average 169.4 FPS across all 13 games compared to the 158.3 FPS. AMD comes out slightly ahead in many games, with significant leads in several AMD promoted games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Borderlands 3, and Dirt 5.

Increasing the resolution to 1440p shrank the delta between the two cards several percent, though the 6800 XT held onto the overall lead. Take that with a grain of salt, though, as the both cards still cranked out over 100 fps in nearly every game (Watch Dogs Legion, Metro Exodus on the 6800 XT, and Assassin's Creed Valhalla on the 3080 being the exceptions).

Gaming at 4K, even with today's best GPUs, remains a challenging feat, but both cards are capable of driving high-end games at this resolution with acceptable frame rates — mostly, as long as you're okay with closer to 60 fps in many games. The 13-game average now puts the RTX 3080 slightly ahead of the RX 6800 XT, flipping the 1440p results, and in most cases the performance delta between the two cards remained negligible.

The RX 6800 XT looks like it wins by a hair overall, especially if your favorite game happens to be AC Valhalla for Borderlands 3. But what if we go beyond rasterization and run games with ray tracing and/or DLSS technologies? We've omitted the 4K testing this time — it's really only viable with DLSS anyway — and switched to testing ten games with DirectX Raytracing (DXR) and six games with DLSS 2.0. We're not going to break down every chart, but the overall standings change dramatically once DXR and DLSS come into play — and a game doesn't need to use DXR to benefit from DLSS.

Running native 1080p or 1440p, Nvidia's lead in DXR games averaged 30% to 35%, and it was over 50% in three of the games we tested. AMD still came out with small leads in Dirt 5 and Godfall, both AMD promoted games, but we want to go on record (again) by noting that the DXR shadows in those games really don't strike us as particularly important (and the same goes for Shadow of the Tomb Raider).

Enable DLSS Quality mode, which is difficult to tell apart from native rendering in our experience, and it's not even remotely close. Yes, Nvidia's GPUs render fewer actual pixels and rely on machine learning to scale the result, but if you can't readily see the difference — and that's looking at still frames — does it matter? In the six DLSS + DXR games we tested, the smallest lead for the RTX 3080 was 72% (Watch Dogs Legion at 1080p), but in most games the 3080 was more than double the performance of the RX 6800 XT.

Winner: Nvidia

You can't really go wrong with either of these cards. They both deliver ample performance for gaming at any resolution. If we have to pick a winner, we'll take Nvidia's DLSS tech (more than the DXR superiority) as a smart way of providing often significant improvements to performance. AMD needs a viable alternative to DLSS 2.0, hopefully something that clearly matches it in quality (FidelityFX CAS doesn't, once you apply upscaling). Given Unreal Engine's and Unity Engine's support for DLSS, we expect plenty of upcoming games will benefit.

Price: RTX 3080 vs RX 6800 XT

Nvidia kicked off this GPU generation with the RTX 3080 hitting the market in September 2020 for a suggested price of $699. AMD came in a bit later with a November 2020 release for the RX 6800 XT, landing with a lower MSRP of $649. Sadly, neither of those prices reflect the current state of the market — not even close. With extremely limited availability, we're seeing massively inflated prices from scalpers and effectively nothing available at MSRP.

The GPUs at this tier have never been what you would call affordable options. The GeForce RTX 3080 is what Nvidia considers its flagship graphics card (the 3090 is apparently chopped liver to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang), with a price to match the previous generation RTX 2080 Super and GTX 1080 Ti. AMD hasn't had a competitive offering in this price bracket for a while (no, the Radeon VII and R9 Fury X weren't really competitive), so this is the first time ever that AMD has had a single-GPU solution worth paying $650 or more in our opinion. It's too bad that neither company is currently able to keep up with demand, as those prices sound downright inviting these days.

A quick look at our GPU Pricing Index shows that RTX 3080 and RX 6800 XT cards are selling for extreme premiums on eBay, which is currently the easiest place to pick up a graphics card if you're willing to pay double or triple the official price. And good luck finding one in a store at MSRP. Since their launch in late 2020, the RX 6800 XT and RTX 3080 have been nearly impossible to find, and the madness isn't expected to slow down any time soon. Demand for GPUs is at an all-time-high right now and production is constrained by multiple factors.

On eBay, then, it's $2,200 (give or take) for the RTX 3080 versus $1,525 for the RX 6800 XT. Interestingly, however, the regular Newegg Shuffle frequently puts up cards using both GPUs. There, the RTX 3080 bundles typically cost in the neighborhood of $1,300 while the RX 6800 XT bundles have a similar price (assuming the bundled components are similar prices, anyway). There have also been far more RTX 3080 bundles listed over the past month than RX 6800 XT, so theoretically it's 'easier' to score the 3080. Realistically, though? We haven't been selected for a single 3080 or RX 6000-series bundle, and we've tried on nearly every one. Back to scalpers, then, or wait until 2022...

Our most recent numbers indicate that a Radeon RX 6800 XT is a much better deal than a GeForce RTX 3080 on eBay, probably because the 3080 is 50% faster for Ethereum mining. The average eBay price for a Radeon RX 6800 XT was around $1,500 at the time of writing. That's almost a 2.5X premium over the MSRP. However, if you prefer team green, expect to pay significantly more than that. eBay pricing on the RTX 3080 is hovering around $2,250, 3.2x the MSRP of a Founders Edition card.

Winner: AMD, but actually, no one

With the average eBay price for a Radeon RX 6800 XT currently sitting at $750 less than the typical GeForce RTX 3080 card, the Radeon appears to be the better value. The reality is, at these prices, the only winner is the scalper taking profits. If you get lucky with a Shuffle, pricing looks roughly tied — but then you're down to pathetic odds. If you need a new GPU, try to find one for as low a price as possible and you can use our RTX 3080 stock tracker to help. We can't support paying two to three times the MSRP for either of these cards.

Features and Technology: RTX 3080 vs RX 6800 XT

With every generation of graphics card comes new technologies meant to improve your gaming experience. In most cases, AMD and Nvidia have direct counterparts for each other's technology, but there are a handful of exceptions that really set these cards apart in various ways.

Nvidia's RTX GeForce cards support Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), a technique to increase the image resolution with minimal impact on image quality. DLSS leverages Nvidia's AI technology to take low resolution rendered images and infer the placement of pixels to increase the output resolution. Currently, AMD doesn't offer a direct counterpart to DLSS technology, although FidelityFX Super Resolution technology could even the playing field when it lands later this year. Until then, Nvidia has a clear performance advantage with DLSS games.

AMD and Nvidia both support ray tracing, which offers image quality improvements that are sometimes quite pretty, but they don't offer much in the way of gameplay improvements. Ray tracing does impact the framerate that your GPU can deliver, and as noted above, Nvidia's GPUs tend to easily beat AMD in ray tracing games. That's likely thanks to the fact that Nvidia is on round two of RT hardware, while AMD is still on round one.

Both AMD and Nvidia offer refresh rate synchronization technology, which dynamically syncs your monitor's refresh rate with your GPU’s frame rate output. Nvidia's G-Sync requires an Nvidia GeForce GPU paired with a G-Sync certified (or G-Sync Compatible) display. FeeSync is AMD's answer to G-Sync. Both technologies match your display's speed with output from your GPU, but AMD's solution is usually more affordable. Nvidia requires certification and licensing from display manufacturers, whereas AMD's solution is royalty-free and free to use, giving display makers a broader opportunity to support Freesync. On the other hand, G-Sync typically works better, likely due to Nvidia's strict requirements. Furthermore, Nvidia cards can run with G-Sync on most of the top FreeSync displays, whereas AMD GPUs are not compatible with G-Sync technology. For a more detailed analysis see our FreeSync versus G-Sync face-off.

Another display technology Nvidia offers is Reflex — both as a software and hardware solution. In games that fully implement Reflex (Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, CRSED: F.O.A.D., Destiny 2, Enlisted, Fortnite, Mordhau, Overwatch, Rainbow Six Siege, Valorant, and Warface), it offers a significant latency reduction that can help competitive gamers. That's why that list is full of multiplayer games. Again, AMD doesn't have a direct counterpart. Elsewhere, Nvidia's Ultra-Low Latency tech and AMD's Anti-Lag go for a similar end goal (lower latency), but neither is as good as Reflex.

AMD may be lacking in some software features, but it has the clear win in memory capacity. Whereas Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 comes equipped with a not too shabby 10GB of GDDR6X memory, the Radeon RX 6800 XT packs a whopping 16GB of GDDR6 memory. So far, however, there are almost no games where VRAM capacity makes a clear difference.

Winner: Nvidia

While both companies offer similar feature sets, Nvidia does a better job implementing their versions. G-Sync is generally superior to FreeSync; DLSS doesn't have a counterpart, yet; and Reflex performs better than Anti-Lag in our experience. The extra memory on the Radeon is not a reason to give up Nvidia's impressive features.

Drivers and Software: RTX 3080 vs RX 6800 XT

AMD and Nvidia release regular driver updates for their GPUs. In AMD's case, the company drops annual overhauls of its Radeon drivers (currently Radeon Adrenaline 2020 — the April 2021 update added some new stuff but kept the 2020 branding), which usually include new features and a UI update. Additionally, AMD puts out regular monthly updates that address bugs and improve performance in some games, as well as extra updates for new game releases.

Nvidia maintains a similar release schedule for its GeForce drivers. It doesn't always have a monthly driver update, but you can count on having Game Ready Drivers on launch day for most major game releases.

Radeon drivers are generally not WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) certified, which perhaps enables AMD to push out updates more frequently. The trade off is bugs can slip through the cracks when updates roll out so quickly. Nvidia's drivers are usually WHQL certified (outside of hotfix releases), which reduces the release frequency, but decreases the likelihood of a big bug slipping through. In either case, however, testing doesn't always catch things, and bugs do occasionally happen.

AMD and Nvidia have different approaches to their driver user interfaces. Nvidia splits its GeForce driver options into two applications. Nvidia Control Panel handles the GPU settings, such as resolution, texture filtering, vertical sync, low latency mode, power management, and more. The control panel also handles display configuration settings, such as color, rotation, and multi-display setups. Nvidia GeForce Experience handles game settings, driver updates, and includes game streaming and recording features. To access the GeForce Experience features you must log in with an Nvidia user account.

Additionally, Nvidia offers Nvidia Broadcast, an AI-enhanced broadcasting solution that uses the GeForce RTX Tensor cores to do things like clean up the noise from your microphone and remove the background behind you without a green screen. It's not perfect, but it's actually quite impressive compared to the background removal algorithms in other apps like Zoom or Google Meet.

AMD takes a somewhat more streamlined approach in that the Radeon driver software is a one-stop-shop for all your Radeon GPU settings and features. The Radeon Adrenaline 2020 software suite includes automatic driver updates, game performance profiles, and built-in broadcasting software to stream and record your gameplay. AMD even offers an Instant GIF button to create animated images of your most memorable gaming moments. The Radeon software also offers performance metrics logging and a tuning section with automatic overclocking profiles and settings for manual adjustment.

Winner: Tie

Both Nvidia and AMD have different advantages with their drivers and accompanying software, but ultimately they offer generally equivalent experiences. AMD's performance monitoring can be useful, but so are the AI-enabled features that Nvidia Broadcast brings to the table. As far as driver updates, both companies release updates regularly and you can usually expect a new driver from each side when notable games hit the market.

Power Consumption / Efficiency: RTX 3080 vs RX 6800 XT

When you're playing around with graphics cards at the level of the RTX 3080 and the RX 6800 XT, you're going to need a fair bit of power, and efficiency is still an important consideration when selecting a GPU. The amount of juice your GPU needs affects your power supply requirements. GPUs are also the largest factor when considering the carbon footprint of your gaming system.

In past generations, AMD's GPUs would often draw far more power than Nvidia's counterparts, but that's not the case with the current lineup. In our testing, Nvidia's RTX 3080 draws more power than AMD RX 6800 XT. Nvidia's card even pulls more power than AMD's more performant RX 6900 XT. A lot of that is thanks to AMD's use of TSMC 7nm N7 lithography compared to Nvidia's use of Samsung "8nm" 8N tech, with TSMC generally costing more — and it's in higher demand, which means it can be more difficult to get sufficient supply.

The gap in power use between the RTX 3080 and the RX 6800 XT isn't particularly wide, however, especially if you look at third party cards. Nvidia's 3080 Founders Edition pulls roughly 10% more power from the wall than AMD's reference 6800 XT. For factory overclocked cards, however, the gap can all but disappear — depending on the card models, naturally.

For games that don't support ray tracing features, the performance difference between the two cards doesn't justify the additional power consumption of the GeForce. Nvidia's ray tracing and DLSS performance advantage make up for the deficit, though.

Winner: AMD

AMD's RX 6800 XT draws slightly less power than the RTX 3080 with very close performance numbers. Unless you plan to take full advantage of Nvidia's proprietary features, the 10% power savings is probably worth going with AMD.

Bottom Line: RX 6800 XT vs RTX 3080

The Radeon RX 6800 XT and the GeForce RTX 3080 are relatively well matched cards, but at this tier, it's almost too close to call. For a lot of people, performance will be the number one consideration, but the winner and margin of victory can vary greatly depending on the game and settings being used. DLSS makes the RTX 3080 a formidable competitor as well, and anyone that cares about ray tracing will be better served by the RTX 3080 — right now it's the card we'd most like to recommend based on official prices.

That's the problem, though. Street prices are generally terrible, as is availability. The RTX 3080 appears to be in wider circulation, but for normal gamers, paying $1,000 or more just for a graphics card is asking far too much. Anyone willing to pay scalper prices, however, will find the Radeon RX 6800 XT costs about $700 less than the RTX 3080, and it produces higher frame rates in many games. Unless you're mining on the side, in which case the hashing performance of the 3080 might make it worth the added cost.

When these cards sell for MSRP — if they ever do before being replaced by future cards — the tables could turn. Don't expect that to happen in 2021, though. The GPU shortage will likely drag on until next year, and scalpers will continue to manipulate the market prices.

And there's the rub. Our rankings and overall preferences mean nothing if you can't get your hands on either of the cards at acceptable prices. If you manage to acquire either a Radeon RX 6800 XT or a GeForce GTX 3080, count your lucky stars and be happy with your purchase. That's especially true if you managed to pick it up at anywhere close to MSRP (i.e., under $1,000).

Overall Winner: Tie, until (unless) availability improves a lot

A Redditor has shared some interesting photographs of an OEM Radeon RX 6800 XT. The Big Navi graphics card reportedly hails from Dell's camp and was pulled from an Alienware gaming system.

When you first lay your eyes on Dell's Radeon RX 6800 XT, the Radeon VII might be the first thing that comes to mind. While not exactly identical, the design does remind us of the former Vega 20 graphics card. Admittedly, Dell's rendition of the Radeon RX 6800 XT isn't as extravagant as Lenovo's design, which features an even more rectangular shroud with flashy RGB illumination.

The Radeon RX 6800 XT from Dell conforms to a dual-slot design with a sturdy triple-fan cooling system. The PCB comes in an old-school green color but does feature a black backplate. Green PCBs should be cheaper than black PCBs, which could explain Dell's decision. Besides, this OEM Radeon RX 6800 XT may reside inside a case with no side panel window, so the green PCB shouldn't be a big deal. Other than the Radeon logo, the graphics card lacks any other signs of marketing.

The Redditor didn't share the specifications for this particular OEM model so we're uncertain if it sticks to AMD's reference specifications. The Navi 21-based graphics card still leverages two 8-pin PCIe power connectors so it should retain the 300W TDP rating. According to the Redditor, the graphics card's cooling solution performs well, and memory temperatures are supposedly very good.

When it comes to the display output design, Dell's version does defer from the reference specification. The graphics card offers one HDMI 2.1 port and three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, meaning Dell scrapped the USB Type-C port in favor of an extra DisplayPort 1.4 output. It's a great choice since not many consumers will have a use for the USB Type-C port. An additional DisplayPort 1.4 output, however, will allow you to connect an extra display to the graphics card.

The Radeon RX 6800 XT from the Reddit thread is an OEM model so it's unlikely you'll find it on the market unless someone extracts the graphics card to flip it on eBay. The average price on eBay for a Radeon RX 6800 XT is around $1,516, which is 133.6% higher than its $649 MSRP. It's definitely a tempting thought.

Last year, AMD finally released a family of graphics processors that can compete against Nvidia's high-end offerings in terms of performance. Unfortunately, AMD could not meet demand for new GPUs. But apparently there is light at the end of the tunnel as AMD is ramping up production.

"We introduced our Radeon 6700 XT desktop CPU with leadership 1440p gaming performance in March, and are on track for the first notebooks featuring our leading edge mobile RDNA 2 architecture to launch later this quarter," said Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, during the company's latest earnings call. "We expect Radeon 6000 series GPU sales to grow significantly over the coming quarters as we ramp production." 

Increasing GPU supply is not a particularly easy task. AMD's manufacturing partner TSMC operates at a nearly 100% load. Furthermore, production cycle of a modern process is around three months long, so a chip AMD orders today may not be shipped until sometime this summer.

"We see good customer ordering patterns and strong backlog," said Su. "Then, we have also seen that the supply chain has been tight overall for the semiconductor industry. And we’ve been working very closely with our supply chain partners. So, we also have good visibility to additional supply as we go throughout the year."

AMD's graphics revenue in the first quarter of fiscal 2021 increased by "a strong double-digit percentage year-over-year and sequentially" due to the success of its Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs. 

Sadly for AMD, all graphics cards today are sold at prices that are dramatically higher than their MSRPs, so increasing its sales might be a difficult task since even graphics boards meant to be inexpensive are priced unreasonably high due to demand amidst component shortages.

Apple is on track to transit most of its new PCs to system-on-chips (SoCs) with its own graphics processing units (GPUs) in the coming months, but before this happens, it appears that the company will use AMD's latest RDNA2-based high-end graphics cards with Macs. Recently Apple added support for the Radeon RX 6800/6900 graphics cards to MacOS. 

Apple lists compatibility with AMD's Radeon RX 6800, Radeon RX 6800 XT, and Radeon RX 6900 XT among the MacOS Big Sur 11.4 Beta features. Meanwhile, the documents don't say which Macs now support AMD's latest graphics boards.

Being a notebook-centric PC maker, Apple offers only one PC that can accommodate a standalone graphics card, the Mac Pro. Right now, these workstations come equipped with Intel's Xeon W 'Cascade Lake' CPUs with up to 28 cores as well as AMD's Radeon Pro graphics cards based on the GCN 4.0/Polaris, GCN 5.1/Vega, and RDNA architectures. Apple uses are proprietary MPX modules with Mac Pro, and not the typical add-in-boards we're used to. The system can still house an off-the-shelf graphics card, though. 

It is unclear whether Apple plans to change its policy and begin equipping its Mac Pro with non-professional graphics cards in a standard FHHL form-factor, or if the company just added RDNA2 support to allow users to upgrade the Mac graphics subsystem to play games. After all, it is possible to equip a modern MacBook Pro notebook with a graphics card using an eGFX box with a Thunderbolt 3 interface. 

It is unlikely that Apple will equip its workstation with a graphics card that is not certified by the developers of professional applications, so RDNA2 support is likely aimed at gamers. Meanwhile, the depicted card is not necessarily a Radeon RX, but rather a yet-unannounced Radeon Pro powered by the RDNA2 architecture. 

In any case, Apple's upcoming macOS Big Sur 11.4 will support AMD's latest Radeon RX 6800/6900 graphics cards, which is good news for gamers.

AMD this week made select capabilities of its FidelityFX package available to Microsoft Xbox Series X|S developers. For Xbox Series X|S, AMD makes available FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS), Variable Shading, and ray-traced shadow Denoiser technologies, which are already supported by numerous PC games. 

AMD's FidelityFX is a collection of technologies that can greatly enhance visual quality of games or improve their performance without noticeable degradation of image quality. AMD has introduced eight FidelityFX technologies.

• Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS)
• Combined Adaptive Compute Ambient Occlusion (CACAO)
• Variable Rate Shading (VRS)
• Stochastic Screen Space Reflections (SSSR)
• Ray-traced shadow Denoiser
• AMD's Luminance Preserving Mapper for HDR-supporting FreeSync Premium Pro monitors
• Single Pass Downsampler (SPD)
• Parallel Sort (optimized version of the radix sort algorithm)

So far, game developers have implemented support for CAS, CACAO, and SPD on PCs, but eventually AMD expects developers to adopt more technologies from the package. One of the most anticipated FidelityFX technologies is AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), a rival for Nvidia's DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling). Unfortunately, this technology is currently not supported either on PC or Xbox X|S. 

Making ingredients from the FidelityFX package available on Microsoft's latest game consoles has a lot of rationale for AMD. Firstly, the consoles come in two configurations and it is easier for developers to make sure everything works on them as they do not have to test over a dozen of different RDNA/RDNA2-based graphics cards that are used by gamers. This is barely important for those 40 games that already support CAS (as well as CACAO and SPD) on Windows PCs, but for those titles that yet have to support CAS, variable shading, and ray-traced shadow denoiser supporting them on consoles first makes quite a lot of sense. 

Secondly, at around 4.5 million consoles sold to date, Microsoft's Xbox Series X|S have a larger installed base that AMD's entire RDNA2 lineup, so game developers are more inclined to use the collection of FidelityFX technologies (well, three of them at this point) for the new consoles rather than for the latest graphics cards. Of course, it would make even more sense for AMD to get its FidelityFX to the latest Xbox Series X|S and to PlayStation 5 (i.e., to over 11.5 million systems) to popularize the package, but right now the collection seems to be a more PC centric.  

Earlier AMD said that it was going to support arguably the most anticipated FidelityFX Super Resolution technology available on all RDNA/RDNA2 platforms, which includes PCs running AMD's Radeon RX 5000 and Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs, Microsoft's Xbox Series X|S, and Sony's PlayStation 5. Meanwhile, the company has not disclosed when it plans to roll out its FSR.

According to a leak reported at VideoCardz, at 6am PST AMD plans to release a special black edition of its Radeon RX 6800 XT. 

AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black edition graphics board is based on the Navi 21 GPU featuring 4608 stream processors, 288 texture units (TUs), and 128 render output units (ROPs) that is paired with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. As the name suggests, the Midnight Black edition is supposed to be all black, so expect it to look different from AMD's usual Radeon RX 6800 XT reference design.  

There is a catch about AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black though: it will be available only from AMD.com to members of the AMD Red Team community for a limited time and while supplies last. The product will be available starting from 6am PST/9am EST April 7, 2021. 

"Based on community feedback and popular demand, we have created a select quantity of AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black graphics cards featuring the same great performance of the widely popular AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT," a statement by AMD published by VideoCardz reads. "This is an exclusive advance notice to members of the AMD Red Team community and this offer has limited availability, while supplies last." 

At this point it is unclear whether the Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black will cost $649, like other reference design RX 6800 XT boards, or will cost more since it is an exclusive product. Furthermore, it is unknown how many of such graphics cards will be made available.

Asus is apparently preparing what could be the ultimate AMD gaming laptop. According to a CPU-Z posting, the new iteration of the ROG Strix G15 will arrive with a lethal combination of AMD's Ryzen 9 5900HX (Cezanne) processor and Radeon RX 6800M graphics cards.

The unreleased laptop (via Tum_Apisak) sports the G513QY model number. Unless Asus is working on a new gaming laptop, the G513 corresponds to the brand's ROG Strix G15 G513, which was previously only available with discrete graphics options from Nvidia.

For starters, the G513QY will be based on the flagship Ryzen 9 5900HX processor. Asus already offers the ROG Strix G15 with the aforementioned processor, though. The octa-core Zen 3 chip features a 3.3 GHz base clock and a 4.6 GHz boost clock. However, the Ryzen 9 5900HX supports overclocking and a cTDP up to 54W, so there is enough wiggle room for overclocking.

In terms of discrete graphics, the G513QY will rely on the forthcoming Radeon RX 6800M, which is the mobile version of the Radeon RX 6800. AMD hasn't officially announced the mobile RDNA 2 (Big Navi) graphics cards yet, so the specifications are unknown. However, the CPU-Z submission points to the Radeon RX 6800M having up to 12GB of GDDR6 memory, only 4GB less than the desktop counterpart.

Having an AMD processor and graphics card in the same device obviously brings benefits. The fusion will enable the G513QY to leverage AMD's SmartShift technology that balances the power between the processor and graphics card according to the workload. AMD touts a performance boost of up to 14% with SmartShift enabled. The technology debuted with Dell's G5 15 SE, so it's good to see other vendors going all-in with AMD.

The Radeon RX 6800M will logically be the bell cow of the mobile RDNA 2 army. Assuming that AMD will replace every mobile RDNA 1 part with a RDNA 2equivalent, we could be seeing up to three more SKUs, such as the Radeon RX 6700M, RX 6600M and maybe even a RX 6500M. AMD hasn't given any clues when it will unleash its mobile RDNA 2 offerings so there’s nothing left to do but wait.

PowerColor has lifted the curtains on the brand's Liquid Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT. The new graphics cards arrive with a full-cover EKWB designed waterblock and are ready to be integrated into your custom watercooling system.

The Liquid Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT jump out of the same mold. Both offerings measure 266 x 162 x 42mm while only requiring two slots from your case. PowerColor has outfitted the RDNA 2 graphics cards with a 14+2-phase power delivery subsystem to unleash Big Navi's full potential without any compromises. 

Both of the cards come with 16GB GDDR6 of memory but their clock speeds differ, with the RX 6900 XT offering a 2,135 MHz game clock, and 2,365 MHz boost and the 6800 XT coming in at a slightly slower 2,110 MHz and 2,360 MHz respectively. Powercolor has also implemented high polymer capacitors into the card that can deal with over 400W of power. Naturally, the EKWB waterblock plays an important role in cooling the graphics cards.

The waterblock features a nickel-plated copper baseplate that effectively transfers the heat away from the GPU. It features a full-cover design that covers all the important components inside the graphics card, such as the GPU, memory and PWM. The waterblock is partially made from acrylic so it also offers some RGB flair. A matching aluminum backplate rounds out the design.

The perks of putting a graphics card under liquid cooling include performance and silence. In regards to performance, Liquid Devil models are up to 6% and 5% faster than AMD's reference specification.

Since not everyone wants to go all out on performance, PowerColor added a handy switch on the graphics card to switch between the vBIOS profiles. Both the Liquid Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT come with two operational modes: Unleash for the utmost performance and OC for stable overclocked performance.

The graphics cards require three 8-pin PCIe power connectors to function correctly. PowerColor recommends a power supply that has a minimum capacity of 900W to feed these monsters. As for display outputs, both offer one HDMI 2.1 port and two DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and the USB Type-C port.

The Liquid Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT will be available starting March 15, but PowerColor didn't reveal their pricing.

Lenovo (via HXL) has teased the Radeon RX 6900 XT and Radeon RX 6800 XT Legion Edition graphics cards on the company's Weibo account. The graphics cards are likely an exclusive for Lenovo's Savior Blade 7000P 2021 gaming PCs, though.

It's unknown if Lenovo manufactures the Legion graphics cards itself or the company relies on a third-party OEM. Aesthetically, the Radeon RX 6800 XT Legion Edition looks awfully familiar, like a dolled-up Radeon VII. The rectangular shroud makes a comeback with the characteristic "R" logo with red illumination in the corner. To give the design a new twist, Lenovo opted for a black exterior and some RGB lighting.

The Radeon RX 6800 XT Legion Edition looks a tad bigger than AMD's reference edition, however, so it should still take up three PCI slots inside your case. The triple-fan cooling setup remains untouched, but the backplate has been customized to Lenovo's Legion branding.

The Radeon RX 6800 XT Legion Edition draws power from two standard 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Other than that, we don't know the graphics card's other specifications.

Lenovo has given its Savior Blade 7000P gaming systems a much-needed upgrade to AMD's latest Ryzen 5000 (codename Vermeer) processors. Therefore, the Radeon RX 6800 XT Legion Edition will be able to leverage the Smart Access Memory (SAM) feature, which essentially allows the processor and graphics card to tap into each other's memory. This results in a nice boost in gaming performance.

The graphics card shortage is affecting both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, and it doesn't look like the situation will improve anytime soon. Lenovo's Savior Blade 7000P 2021 could provide consumers an option to gain access to a high-end graphics card, even if it's just in China.

MSI this week officially launched its top-of-the-range AMD-based graphics card, the Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming X Trio 16G, which it showcased first in late December. The board uses a custom design and comes with a massive cooling system in a bid to maximize its overclocking potential. To feed the beast, its owner will need a PSU that will deliver it up to 300W of power to the board. 

MSI's Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming Trio lineup includes two models: the RX 6900 XT Gaming Trio 16G and the RX 6900 XT Gaming X Trio 16G. Both cards use the same printed circuit board (PCB) design featuring a 16-phase voltage regulating module (VRM) as well as a massive 2.7-wide Tri Frozr 2 cooling system with six heat pipes that interconnect several aluminum heatsinks, three Torx 4.0 fans, and has a backplate. Both cards require three eight-pin power connectors and have four display outputs (three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors and one HDMI 2.1 port).

The non-X version of the boards features a game core clock of 2,015 MHz and a boost clock of up to 2,250 MHz. The maxed-out X version comes with a game frequency of 2105 MHz as well as a boost clock of up to 2,340 MHz, which makes it, on paper, one of the fastest air-cooled Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card available. 

Like other MSI's Gaming series graphics cards, Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming Trio are designed with overclocking in mind. To that end, they will need a spacious PC chassis as well as a powerful PSU to feed the product with enough juice.

MSI says that its Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming Trio lineup will be available starting early February worldwide. Given today's situation with availability of GPUs and add-in-cards, MSI does not disclose MSRPs of its new product family as real-world prices will depend on actual supply.

AMD launched the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 on November 23, 2020. The first of the new RDNA2 architecture graphics cards had plenty to offer, ranking near the top of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy and earning a place on our list of the best graphics cards. AMD does particularly well with games that don't support ray tracing. In such cases, there are quite a few games where the 6800 XT leads the (theoretically) more expensive RTX 3080, though enabling ray tracing or DLSS quickly turns the tables. The biggest problem, as we've seen with all of the recent GPU launches, is actually finding one in stock. Now we're looking at three third-party custom cards, from ASRock, Asus, and Sapphire, to see what they bring to the table.

The core features and RDNA2 architecture are all unchanged, so the main differences between the cards will be in clock speeds, cooler designs, and aesthetics. There are also a few third-party add-ons, in the way of software, that might sway your purchasing decision. But let's be real: Finding any of these cards in stock can be an exercise in futility, and with the recent surge in cryptocurrency mining, it could be months before supply is anywhere close to matching demand. In other words, if you want an RX 6800 XT as soon as possible, the brand and model of card will be far less of a consideration than whatever you can actually lay your grubby little mitts on.

The good news is that performance across all of the tested RX 6800 XT cards is very close. At factory stock settings, the speediest of the cards we've tested is only 2-3 percent faster than the reference RX 6800 XT. Between the three custom cards, the performance deltas are even smaller, to the point of being effectively non-existent. But that doesn't mean the cards are all equal, as the cooling designs and other elements come into play. Here's a quick overview of the specs before we get into the individual card analysis and benchmark results. 

Let's first address the elephant in the room: The pricing is either fantasy land or, in the case of actual 'street' pricing, egregious. Theoretically, the Sapphire Nitro+ initially launched at $769, but of course, it was sold out — just like every other GPU. Newegg currently lists it at $999, and it’s still out of stock. The Asus Strix LC is a similar story, with a launch price of $899 but a current Asus store price of $1,080, and it's also sold out. ASRock gave a launch price of $829, but retail prices are much higher than that, and naturally, the reference AMD RX 6800 XT can't be had for anything close to $649.

Beyond price, the only difference in specs is the TDP. Sapphire lists 350W, while Asus and ASRock don't give any value. We put in 350W with a question mark based on our testing. All three AIB cards have the same 2360 MHz Boost Clock, which they can exceed in some cases. That's where the cooling solutions come into play.

That's it for the introduction. Let's get to the individual cards, and we'll dig into the finer points of each one, including any extra features that can help it stand out. We're going to dispense with actual scores on these cards, mostly because they all feel like ghost launches. Yes, they technically went on sale, but both pricing and availability are so limited that we don't know where they'll really land. They're all more or less equal, depending on your wants and needs.

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ASRock's Taichi brand is generally used for the company’s top-of-the-line products, and the RX 6800 XT Taichi is no exception. It's big and bold, with one of the largest coolers we've seen on a third party card, plus a copious amount of bling. Meanwhile, performance is as you'd expect: right in line with the other top-tier solutions from competing cards.

The 6800 XT Taichi is a massive card, dwarfing the reference model 6800 XT and tipping the scales at 1.75kg (3.85 pounds). ASRock actually lists the weight at 1815g, but my scale disagreed by about 65g. The dimensions are 330x140x56mm, and the cooler occupies 2.8-slots, which in today's single GPU market isn't much of a problem. The Taichi is also one of the longest cards we've seen — 13 inches long — so you'll definitely need a spacious case if you want this card to fit.

For a while, most high-end GPUs tried to stay close to a 2-slot thickness so that you could add a second (or even third) card for CrossFire or SLI, but multi-GPU support in games has seriously declined in recent years, so it's now less of a consideration. The most common use case for multi-GPU these days is cryptocurrency mining, but since coin miners just build custom mining chassis with PCIe extension cables, size isn't much of a factor there either. That means manufacturers are more willing to create cards that effectively block off the two expansion slots adjacent to the GPU.

ASRock's Taichi brand is generally used for the top-of-the-line products from the company, and the RX 6800 XT Taichi is no exception. It's big and bold, with one of the largest coolers we've seen on a third party card, plus a copious amount of bling. Performance meanwhile is as you'd expect: right in line with the other top-tier solutions from competing cards.

The 6800 XT Taichi is a massive card, dwarfing the reference model 6800 XT and tipping the scales at 1.75kg (3.85 pounds). ASRock actually lists the weight at 1815g, but my scale disagreed by about 65g. The dimensions are 330x140x56mm and the cooler occupies 2.8-slots, which in today's single GPU market isn't much of a problem. The Taichi is also one of the longest cards we've seen — 13 inches long — so you'll definitely need a spacious case if you want this card to fit.

For a while, most high-end GPUs tried to stay close to a 2-slot thickness so that you could add a second (or even third) card for CrossFire or SLI, but multi-GPU support in games has seriously declined in recent years and so it's now less of a consideration. The most common use case for multi-GPU these days is cryptocurrency mining, but sice coin miners just build custom mining chassis with PCIe extension cables, size isn't much of a factor there either. That means manufacturers are more willing to create cards that effectively block off the two expansion slots adjacent to the GPU.

ASRock provides plenty of RGB lighting, with the center fan lighting up along with the top Taichi logo and the surrounding light strip, and there's another Taichi icon on the back of the card as a final RGB option. I sort of wish the company had gone whole hog and used RGB on the other two fans, but that would make for a very bright card. Also of note is that in a traditional PC case, the 'front' fans on the graphics card will often end up facing the bottom of the case. That means you won't even see the fans unless you use a case that supports a vertically mounted GPU (which would also need to be able to handle a triple slot thickness, or you'd obstruct the fan intakes).

There are some Taichi elements that haven't been updated to match the competitive landscape, and here I'm looking specifically at the fans. Most of the latest generation RTX 30-series and RX 6000-series GPUs now have fans with an integrated 'barrier rim' around the outside of the fan blades. This ring helps improve static pressure and airflow, improving cooling capabilities while potentially reducing fan noise. Meanwhile, ASRock has traditional fan blades like what we've seen for many years. It's a small thing, but we'd like to see the latest technology utilized on a premium card.

ASRock doesn't specify a TDP for the Taichi, though it does recommend a PSU wattage of 800W or more. The card also requires three 8-pin PEG power connectors, which in theory can deliver 450W of power, giving the card a peak power delivery of 525W when combined with the 75W of the x16 PCIe slot. (It didn't come close to hitting that mark, though maybe an adventurous overclocker with LN2 could do so.) In our testing, the Taichi used a bit less power than the other custom cards. It averaged 332W in Metro Exodus (still 10 percent more than the reference 6800 XT) and 352W in FurMark. Overclocking pushed power use up to 344W in Metro and 400W in FurMark. That means there's still potential for higher overclocks, but we generally seem to hit a similar limit with all of the 6800 XT cards of around 2.5GHz.

Digging into the overclocking specifics, for now, we're still somewhat restricted in what utilities we can use on RX 6000 cards, as MSI Afterburner doesn't fully support the new GPUs yet. AMD's own Radeon Software seems the best option, and we used it to increase the power limit by 15 percent, set the GPU to a maximum clock of 2580 MHz, and bumped the GDDR6 speed up by 150 MHz (to 17.2 Gbps). Combined with a more aggressive fan curve, we reached a stable OC where clocks in Metro Exodus averaged 2529 MHz, compared to 2391 MHz at factory stock settings. That's a 6 percent increase in GPU clocks and 7.5 percent on VRAM clocks, which improved performance in our test suite by 4-5 percent overall. 

ASRock offers its Tweak software for tuning, which is sufficient for modest overclocking but doesn't really do much more than AMD's own Radeon Settings. You can see the default power limits (289W, or 317W in OC mode), but that's just for the GPU power — the VRAM, VRMs, and other components will also use power. Ultimately, we didn't see much reason to install the custom ASRock Tweak software, since the core functionality is already present with AMD's drivers.

Technically, the ASRock Taichi ended up as the slowest of the three custom cards, but that's very much splitting hairs. It’s within 0.5 percent of the other two cards at stock, and it's within 1.5 percent of the faster Asus card when overclocked. Performance when overclocked is also basically tied with the stock RX 6900 XT. It's also up to 2 percent faster than the reference 6800 XT.

Frankly, performance and even pricing are sort of a non-issue for now, as none of the cards are readily available for purchase. If you want a 6800 XT and can find the Taichi in stock somewhere, and you're willing to pay $900 or more for it, be our guest. Our general advice is to wait for supply to improve and hopefully for prices to end up closer to MSRP. With the recent tariffs on graphics cards further impacting pricing, however, it could be a long and painful wait.

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Asus has traditionally stayed away from the AIO graphics card market, but that changes with the ROG Strix LC. Not only does it come with an AIO (all-in-one) liquid cooler, but it includes a relatively large 240mm radiator. Some people will love that option, but it comes at a higher price and can be cumbersome to install — for someone like me that swaps GPUs regularly, AIO cards are more trouble than they're worth.

The external radiator adds a lot of bulk to the package, with the card plus radiator weighing in at 2166g. That's about as much as the RTX 3090 Founders Edition, but the good news is the x16 motherboard slot only has to deal with a 1340g card, with the rest of the bulk secured to the PC chassis. Thanks to the large radiator, the Strix LC can also get by with a traditional 2-slot thickness and a single blower fan on the main card, and the blower doesn't really have to work that hard.

The main graphics card measures 277x131x43.6mm, but the radiator is an additional 276x120x51.7mm. Make sure your case has a good mounting location before taking the plunge. If you're also using a 240mm or larger AIO for CPU cooling, speaking from experience, you'll definitely want to verify both coolers will fit properly before buying.

The ROG Strix line is known for being Asus's top offering, and the Strix LC takes that one step further. Besides the RGB lighting on the graphics card, the two radiator fans also have RGB lighting. The above photos don't really show the RGB properly, but if you have a reasonably dark room and the radiator mounted in a case, there's plenty of RGB to go around. As with many other graphics cards, however, the RGB on the front of the card will end up facing the bottom of your PC in most builds, which sort of defeats the purpose.

Asus lists a relatively tame PSU requirement of 750W, which is technically sufficient based on our testing, but we recommend at least 850W. Actually, with most of the high-end graphics cards, you can make a legitimate argument for 1000W power supplies. PSUs often hit peak efficiency with a load of around 50 percent, and in a high-end PC build, that means the entire PC will consume close to 500W (depending on CPU and other factors) while gaming. If you do plan on using a lower wattage PSU, make sure it's a high-quality offering because the Asus card can hit power draws of over 400W when overclocked.

The big selling point with the Strix LC is, of course, the liquid cooling, and what that does for thermals. Despite having a similar power use and clock speed relative to the other two cards, thermals are far lower even with a modest fan speed. At stock, the Asus card has an excellent temperature of just 53C in FurMark, and that didn't change with our overclocked settings (though fan speeds did have to go up). Temps and fan speeds are even better when playing games, which are generally not as demanding as FurMark when it comes to power. Overall, the Asus card runs 15-20C cooler than the other two custom cards, with the same level of performance, and it delivers a bit more headroom for overclocking.

Speaking of overclocking, you can use Asus's GPU Tweak II (and GPU Tweak III) software suite in addition to the built-in Radeon Software options. By default, like many of Asus's graphics cards, the 6800 XT ROG Strix LC will run at 'gaming' clocks, and you need to install GPU Tweak II and select the OC profile to unlock the full potential. We did this for our testing, though the difference between 'gaming' and 'OC' modes is pretty minimal.

Is the Strix LC worth the price, though? Originally released with a $900 MSRP, Asus is one of several companies that has recently increased prices due to US tariffs and other factors. The Strix LC 6800 XT now shows a price of $1,080 at the Asus store, and it's still out of stock. It's hard to recommend spending that much money on a GPU that has a nominal price of $650, but then again, that nominal price is nowhere to be found. Maybe we'll eventually see RX 6800 XT cards selling at $700 or less, but for now, they're more commonly in the $1,000+ range. By the time supply improves, we might have other GPUs that represent a better overall value. 

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The Sapphire RX 6800 XT Nitro+ is perhaps the most traditional of the three custom cards we're looking at today. It's not quite as large and certainly not as heavy as the ASRock card, but the cooling still gets the job done and the card runs cool and quiet. It's actually lighter than AMD's reference card, despite being slightly larger physically. The Nitro+ measures 310x134x55.3mm, so it's a bit shorter than the ASRock card but still occupies 2.7 slots. However, it only weighs 1232g, over 500g less than the ASRock, and 350g less than the AMD reference design. (AMD's card measures 267x120x49mm and weighs 1500g, if you're wondering.)

Sapphire often has three different models of each GPU. The base model is the Pulse, the Nitro+ is a step up and offers a higher factory overclock and more RGB lighting, and sometimes a Nitro+ SE kicks things up another notch. The top GPUs may also get a Toxic variant, which boasts the highest overclocks and pulls out all the stops, often with extreme pricing. Due to the limited quantity of Navi 21 GPUs currently available, Sapphire doesn't have a Pulse 6800 XT right now, or a Toxic. Maybe those will come in the future, but currently all of Sapphire's 6800 XT cards are from the Nitro+ line.

The main difference between the Nitro+ we're looking at and the Nitro+ SE is that the SE has RGB fans. If you want extra bling, the SE might be what you're after. Our take is that Sapphire actually has a smarter RGB setup than many other GPUs, as the fans typically face the bottom of the PC case and aren't even visible. The Nitro+ has all of its lighting on the 'top' of the card (which would face the side of your PC case, right where the window would be) and also puts an RGB icon on the back of the card (which would face upward in your typical case). There's a light strip on the top along with the Sapphire logo, and while it's not quite as in-your-face as other cards, it gets the job done.

Sapphire is also the only company to specify a higher 350W TDP on its Nitro+, though all three custom cards use similar amounts of power in practice. No surprise there, since they're all rated at 2360 MHz boost clocks (and can often exceed that speed in games). Sapphire also recommends an 850W power supply. With a pair of 8-pin power connectors, plus the PCIe slot, the Nitro+ has access to 375W of power and uses nearly all of it. Overclocking does push the card beyond 375W, but the extra power comes from the 8-pin PEG rather than the x16 slot, which is good. Even overclocked, the highest PCIe slot power we measured for the Nitro+ was only 45W. Sapphire also has new fans with an integrated rim to improve static pressure, and the thermals and noise levels are very good.

One extra that Sapphire offers is its TriXX software suite, which now has a new trick that's perhaps work checking out. TriXX Boost leverages AMD's own RIS (Radeon Image Sharpening) and supports upscaling of content. In most games (specifically, games that don't detect your monitor's native resolution and then internally scale from that), TriXX Boost lets you create a custom resolution that will then get scaled to the normal native resolution, and the sharpening helps to avoid the normal blurriness.

How does it perform? At 4K, upscaling from 85 percent resolution (3264x1836) to 4K, we measured performance that was anywhere from 20 to 30 percent higher than native. Did it look worse? Using screenshots and comparing, sure, there was a slight loss in fidelity, but it’s not something you'd really notice in motion. 20-30 percent higher fps, though? Yeah, that was very noticeable. It's perhaps not as sophisticated as Nvidia's DLSS technology, but it's worth considering for relatively minor upscaling of around 10-15 percent.

Interestingly, because of TriXX Boost, Sapphire specifically discourages end-user overclocking and doesn't support it via TriXX. You can check the fans and tweak the lighting, but overclocking requires some other utility. Considering overclocking can void your warranty and cause instability in pursuit of usually 5 percent more performance, toying with resolution scaling generally delivers far more noticeable performance improvements.

Thanks to the traditional design, Sapphire officially has the lowest price of the custom cards we've looked at so far. Whether it will remain at $770, or jump to a higher price segment (we're seeing a 'suggested' price of $1000 at Newegg right now), however, isn't clear. Is the Sapphire Nitro+ 6800 XT a good value? That depends on actual prices. For now, good luck finding one in stock. In fact, supply of AMD's Big Navi chips appears to be even worse than Nvidia's Ampere GPUs, which is why the retailers are charging extra. If you can find the Sapphire Nitro+ at a more reasonable price, we have no qualms recommending it. At $1,000 or more, though, we'd suggest biding your time. 

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We’ll shift away from the specific cards for the next several pages and look at gaming performance and other test results. We've tested all of the RX 6800 XT GPUs using AMD's most recent 20.12.1 drivers, and we'll include a few other GPUs as reference points in the charts. Our standard test bed hardware is listed to the right, and it includes a stock clocked (4.7 GHz all-core) Core i9-9900K processor with overclocked DDR4-3600 CL16 memory.

While our CPU reviews focus on performance with the CPUs at full stock, meaning DDR4-2666 memory on the 9900K, my take is that enthusiasts will at least enable the memory XMP profile, and DDR4-3600 kits are readily available. We looked at performance scaling with similar memory kits (all running at DDR4-3600) with Core i9-10900K and Ryzen 9 5900X, and while there are instances where the newer CPUs do better — particularly at 1080p — in general the top three current CPUs are all within spitting distance of each other.

Our testing for the RX 6800 XT cards will use our expanded test suite from recent reviews, which includes the same nine games that we've used for the past year, plus four newer releases. We've tested all of the games at 'ultra' settings (or whatever the highest preset is called — or in the case of Red Dead Redemption 2, we set all of the advanced settings to the minimum option and then set the basic settings to maximum).

Only two of the games we've tested have ray tracing enabled, and one of those (Dirt 5) is an AMD-promoted game using a still-in-beta DXR patch. We didn’t enable DLSS on any of the games, though it can boost performance quite a bit, especially at 4K. We also want to note that our testing suite is decidedly slanted toward AMD right now, with half of the games as AMD-promoted titles, and two of the newer additions (Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Dirt 5) relatively strongly favoring AMD. If you want to view the larger picture of how the various GPUs stack up, we recommend looking at the full set of results, including DXR testing that we've done in other articles, including the RX 6800 XT and 6800 launch review. Since we're mostly focused on the custom 6800 XT cards here, any inherent bias in our game selection is less of a factor.

We'll start with 1080p results and then move up to 1440p and 4K on the following pages, and wrap up with power and thermal testing. We have both stock and overclocked results for the four RX 6800 XT cards in the charts as well, which generally clump together. We'll focus our commentary on the main results, with the individual gaming charts as background detail.

Given the mix of games and APIs used, it's not too surprising that the top four GPUs (RTX 3090, RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 3080) end up relatively close in performance. The overclocked 6800 XT cards end up tying the 3090 and 6900 XT, but we're also hitting CPU bottlenecks in many of the games. While you can make the argument that 1080p is still the most popular resolution, and it's also the only place where you can get 240 Hz and 360 Hz displays right now, the latter is really only beneficial for a few select esports games. Out of the 13 games we tested, only Strange Brigade (which isn't exactly a popular game) breaks 240 fps at 1080p, and five of the games don't even get above 144 fps at the settings we've used.

As far as the four 6800 XT cards go, the results are pretty close to margin of error differences. The Asus Strix LC does take first place at both stock and overclocked settings, and the AMD reference card does take fourth place, but in general, you wouldn't be able to tell the cards apart when actually playing games.

Looking at the individual games, there's a bit of variability in some instances, like The Division 2, but nothing that gives us any real indication that any of the custom cards are clearly superior. Aesthetics, availability, features, and pricing are going to be much greater factors than pure performance. 

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We still feel like 1440p gaming is the sweet spot for most people. Reasonably high frame rates are possible on quite a few GPUs, high refresh rate displays with adaptive sync technology can be had for under $300, and even 144Hz IPS and VA panels are commonplace. In our 1080p testing, we noted that a lot of games couldn't break 144 fps even at the lower resolution, but G-Sync and FreeSync make that less of a concern. CPU bottlenecks also become less of a factor at the higher resolution. Which doesn't actually change the overall standings much. 

At stock settings, the three custom 6800 XT cards are within 0.2 fps of each other, emphasizing once again how little difference there is among cards with the same GPU. The reference card does fall a bit off the pace, largely because it's using less power we'd wager, though even with our overclocked settings it can't quite close the gap. Interestingly, despite having three 8-pin PEG connectors and a large cooler, the ASRock card doesn't do any better than the Sapphire card — actually, it's a bit worse. It could be the luck of the draw, or just variance between benchmark runs, but our results consistently put the ASRock a bit below the other two AIB cards.

In the larger scheme of things, the overclocked 6800 XT cards continue to basically match the reference 6900 XT. The RTX 3090 starts to pull away from the other GPUs a bit, now that CPU bottlenecks are reduced, while the 6800 XT still leads the RTX 3080. It will be interesting to see what happens if Nvidia actually does release a 20GB 3080 (or 3080 Ti) card in the future, though the pricing on such a GPU would be higher than the current 3080. Well, theoretical 3080 prices, since most cards are selling for quite a bit more than MSRP and supplies are still very limited.

There's a bit more variation in performance this time, but nothing particularly noteworthy. The Sapphire Nitro+ takes the top spot in both stock and overclocked modes in several games, but most of the results are within 1-2 percent of each other at most (among the 6800 XT custom cards).

Looking at frame rates, even at stock clocks all of the games run at well over 60 fps, often into the 100+ fps range. Only a few break 144 fps, but again, that's why G-Sync and FreeSync are useful. There's one exception, naturally: Watch Dogs Legion with ray tracing enabled is a beast to run, as are most DXR games without DLSS. The 6800 XT can only manage high-30s performance, and it's worth mentioning that the DXR reflections on AMD and Nvidia still aren't the same. Check out the extra images in the gallery below to see what we're talking about.

The above are with the latest patches in place, and we're still getting a lot of differences between AMD and Nvidia DXR (DirectX Raytracing) quality. It's only used for reflections in Watch Dogs Legion, but you can see the differences in puddles, shiny metal surfaces, and various windows. It's as though AMD has greatly reduced the range of testing for ray triangle intersections, which could improve performance but at the cost of image quality.

Whether you want or need ray tracing is debatable, but with consoles now supporting the tech, we expect to see additional DXR games. Will they also support DLSS, or AMD's upcoming FidelityFX Super Resolution? And will they be 'dumbed down' for the console GPUs? Those are good questions, and considering the RX 6800 is faster than the Xbox Series X, we suspect limited RT effects on console games will be more common than more robust implementations like we've seen in Cyberpunk 2077. 

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The next-gen consoles are supposed to tackle 4K gaming, but there's 4K gaming and then there's 4K gaming. 4K via upscaling and ray tracing effects targeting 30 fps is most likely what we'll see from the PS5 and XSX. 4K native at 60 fps, even without ray tracing, is going to be more difficult, even on high-end PC hardware. 

The good news is that many games easily reach 60+ fps at 4K on the RX 6800 XT cards, along with other extreme performance GPUs. The custom AIB models all end up around 2 percent faster than the reference 6800 XT at stock, which isn't actually that great considering they also use about 10 percent more power. Overclocking pushes the cards into 370W and higher territory, again for relatively minor performance improvements.

It's important to remember the mix of games and settings used when looking at this overall chart as well. If we toss out the newer games that strongly favor one GPU brand, like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Dirt 5, and Watch Dogs Legion, the relative performance can shift around quite a bit. But we figure we at least capture a relatively large cross-section of the overall market with 13 games. The 3080 ends up just slightly ahead of the 6800 XT cards at stock, mostly thanks to its significant advantage in WDL. Do you need DXR to make a game fun? Absolutely not. However, it's also disingenuous to suggest that DXR doesn't matter at all; it's just going to take longer to get to the point where DXR and RT become the norm rather than an option for extreme hardware. 

Individual gaming charts at 4K mostly echo what we've seen already, just with lower frame rates. Every game outside of Watch Dogs Legion easily surpassed 60 fps at 1440p ultra, but there are a few more exceptions at 4K. Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Dirt 5 join WDL in the sub-60 group, though they're both relatively close to 60 fps on the 6800 XT. On the other hand, Watch Dogs isn't even close — it falls below 20 fps on the custom 6800 XT cards we're focusing on. Radeon gamers will definitely need to disable DXR reflections or run at a lower resolution if they want to play that game at acceptable frame rates. 

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Wrapping up our performance testing, the power and thermal results are actually more interesting than the raw performance. At least there's more variation between the cards in these areas, though all three custom cards stay reasonably cool and should run fine in any PC large enough to accommodate the hardware.

For these tests, we're using Powenetics software to gather the actual power draw of the graphics cards. GPU-Z is used to collect thermal, clock speed, and fan speed data. We also have an SPL meter that we set up 15cm from the side of the cards to capture noise. However, we don't have an anechoic chamber or anything particularly fancy. External noise (e.g., from traffic) means we have to simply eyeball the meter rather than logging data and generating a chart. We test all of these metrics using Metro Exodus, set to loop five times, and FurMark running at 1600x900 in stress test mode.

Let's quickly talk about the noise levels first. Recent changes to my office mean the new setup isn't identical to the old one, but the noise floor (when traffic isn't driving by) is now 34 dB. The SPL meter is kept close to the GPUs in order to isolate the noise from the card and not pick up as much fan noise from the CPU cooler, though differences in card design can be a factor. All of the latest GPUs support 0 dB fan technology, which means idle noise levels are all the same: 34 dB. Literally any other noise, like typing or someone walking around, registers at much higher levels than that, so it's pretty quiet.

Under load, the GPUs start to show their differences. For example, the Asus has two large 120mm fans on the radiator that move quite a bit of air, while the third fan on the card itself is basically silent. Asus ended up being the loudest of the three GPUs in the gaming test, measuring 45.6 dB peak and generally hovering in the 43-45 dB range, but the actual fan noise tends to be lower and, to my ears at least, not as noticeable as smaller fans. ASRock peaked at 44.5 dB in gaming, again with a range of around 41-44 dB. Sapphire showed the most variation, running as quiet as 37 dB but peaking at 42.1 dB.

Results under FurMark are more consistent, but the cards deal with the extreme power draw in different ways. As a result, ASRock was the loudest card in FurMark, peaking at 45.6 dB and basically staying in the 45+ dB range. Asus came in second at 44.1 dB, while the Sapphire card was the quietest of the three and only ran at 39.5 dB. Again, we didn't make charts because it's just the three cards, but none of the cards are particularly loud. Pay attention to the actual GPU clocks and thermals below when looking at noise levels, however, as all of these metrics are interrelated.

As mentioned earlier, the three custom AIB cards all have higher power use than the reference 6800 XT. In the Metro test, the ASRock uses the least power at around 332W, 30W more than the reference model. The Asus card uses 341W, though it has a pump and two larger fans on the radiator that undoubtedly use more power than the three smaller fans used on the other two cards. The Sapphire card ends up with the highest power use of 344W, which is as much as some of the other cards use even when overclocked. Overclocking isn't even that bad when you consider that performance improves by 4-7 percent (in Metro), while power use increases 1-6 percent. (Except for the reference card, which used 13 percent more power.)

FurMark takes power use to even higher values, ranging from 352W for the ASRock to 358W on the Asus and Sapphire cards. Overclocking pushes the three cards into the 400W and higher range, again with Sapphire using the most power of the 6800 XT models.

At factory stock settings, all of the RX 6800 XT cards meet or exceed the official boost clock, though in-game clocks will vary by game. In Metro, the custom cards reach 2386-2394 MHz average clocks, with overclocking pushing all three cards into the 2500 MHz and higher range. FurMark is a different story, with the GPUs reigning in clocks in order to keep thermals and power use in check, but 2.1GHz while running FurMark is still quite impressive, and overclocking takes that up to around 2.25GHz. 

Temperatures have a direct correlation with fan speed and noise, so they can't be considered on their own. As noted earlier, the Asus card had the highest noise levels, and while the fan speeds are quite low, two large 120mm fans still move a lot of air and can create more noise and turbulence than three 90mm fans. Still, the Asus runs over 15C cooler than the other custom cards in Metro, and over 17C cooler in FurMark, all while hitting similar clocks. Somewhat surprisingly, the Sapphire card has lower fan speeds than the ASRock but tends to be just as loud while running a bit hotter. Still, 72-75C isn't particularly high for a high-end GPU playing a demanding game.

You can also see how the significant ramp in fan speed to help with overclocking affects things. Temperatures are actually lower than stock, but that's because overclocking puts enough of a strain on the GPU that we didn't want to risk instability in pursuit of lower noise levels. If you want low thermals with a decent overclock, the Asus liquid cooler ends up being far superior to traditional air cooling.

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The performance, features, power, and aesthetics for these RX 6800 XT cards doesn't do much good if you can't actually buy the product, unfortunately. That's where we find ourselves right now. Theoretically, the Radeon RX 6800 XT is a good product, particularly if you're not as concerned about ray tracing performance. It's also theoretically slightly less expensive than the competing GeForce RTX 3080. In practice, however, it's all for naught.

As bad as the supply is on GeForce RTX 30-series cards, it might be even worse on AMD's alternatives. It's difficult to ascertain exactly how many of any of the cards are actually being shipped and sold, though, and both feel like ghost products right now. Tell someone you actually saw any of the latest GPUs in stock and they're liable to put you away. Which makes reviewing these cards a bit weird, but such is the way of the tech world right now.

The problem is that it's not just one thing causing the shortages. COVID plays a big role, and that impacted worldwide shipping as well. More people working and schooling from home, or just wanting to play games, means more demand. And in the case of the AMD RX 6800 XT, AMD uses TSMC's N7 process, which is in high demand from other companies as well. In the latest TSMC news, you can see that TSMC only does about 55-60 thousand wafers per month. How many of those go to Apple and Nvidia, and how many are for AMD? And of the AMD wafers, there will be Zen 3 CPUs, PS5 and XSX console APUs, and RDNA2 GPUs.

Suppose AMD gets one-third of TSMC's N7 production. That's perhaps 20K wafers. However, the PS5 and XSX consoles probably use up 75 percent of the allotment, meaning only 5K wafers for GPUs and CPUs. And right now, the Zen 3 CPUs are more lucrative (smaller chips means more per wafer, and higher profit margins). It's entirely possible that AMD is only doing a few thousand (or less) Navi 21 wafers per month. With a 520mm square die size, that's at best around 100 GPUs per wafer. Even that might be optimistic, as based on what we've seen it seems like less than 100K RX 6800 XT cards exist. Or maybe demand is simply so much higher than the supply that even with hundreds of thousands of cards, it wouldn't be enough.

If you want an RX 6800 XT and can find one of these cards in stock at a price you're willing to pay, have at it. The same applies to most of the other recent GPU launches. What everyone really wants to know is when these cards will be readily available at anything close to the launch price of $650-$700. Sadly, we don't know. Maybe in a few months, but we heard multiple companies at CES 2021 suggest that graphics card shortages are likely to continue until June at least. And if Bitcoin and Ethereum prices stay high, that would only make the situation worse, plus tariffs are also impacting prices in the United States.

It's annoying, and that's putting it nicely. In July, I wrote that it was a terrible time to buy a graphics card and updated that article after the new cards launched and immediately sold out. In retrospect, if you bought a previous-gen RTX 20-series or RX 5700-series GPU at MSRP or below right before the new cards launched, that was a smart buy. An even better buy would have been purchasing an RTX 20-series card back in 2018 because you'd then have over two years of enjoyment from it, and you could probably still sell it at close to the original price.

The winner of the current GPU battle will be whichever company can produce the most GPUs first and ship them at reasonable prices, with features, performance, and all the other aspects being secondary concerns. If we take the RX 5700 XT and the RTX 2060 Super as $400 graphics cards for our baseline, the RX 6800 XT is around 75 percent faster than the 5700 XT and 90 percent faster than the 2060 Super. That means we could reasonably accept prices of $700-$800. Anything more than that and we recommend waiting and searching for a better deal.

We know for certain that, just as the 2017 GPU shortages eventually came to an end, the current shortages will also pass into history at some point. Hopefully, that happens sooner rather than later.

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The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti brings the entry price for Ampere GPUs down to $400, because apparently the GeForce RTX 3070, GeForce RTX 3080, and GeForce RTX 3090 weren't selling out fast enough. Maybe that's not fair, but round four of the Nvidia Ampere architecture seems destined to repeat recent history and sell out within minutes of launch. The fact that this is now the best price to performance ratio in GPU land makes it one of the best graphics cards, and it currently occupies seventh place on our GPU Benchmarks hierarchy, not counting any Titan cards. Maybe if you've been really good (or you're really lucky), you'll be able to procure one this side of 2021. [Update: Yup, the RTX 3060 Ti sold out fast. Here's our advice on how to buy an RTX 3060 Ti (or other new Nvidia GPU).]

Not a whole lot has changed relative to the RTX 3070. Both the RTX 3060 Ti and 3070 use the same GA104 GPU, but the 3060 Ti has fewer functional units enabled. You get the same 8GB of GDDR6 memory, clocked at the same 14Gbps. Meanwhile, the GPU core has 38 SMs enabled, versus 46 SMs on the 3070, making the 3060 Ti theoretically around 17 percent slower. Clock speeds also factor in a bit, as the boost clock on the 3060 Ti is 3.5 percent lower, so in general, the largest performance gap will be about 20 percent — and as we'll see, it's often quite a bit less than that.

The specs tell the same story relative to the previous generation Nvidia Turing GPUs. The 3060 Ti has quite a bit more theoretical compute performance than the RTX 2080 Super, and more than doubles the compute performance relative to the RTX 2060 Super. We know GPU prices are all kinds of screwed up right now, but it's worth remembering that the 2060 Super had the same official $399 price as the 3060 Ti. Power requirements are slightly higher than the 2060 Super, but lower than the 2080 Super.

Of course, theoretical specs don't always jive with real-world performance. One of the big changes with Ampere is that the INT32 cores can now do FP32 calculations as well. However, there's a decent amount of INT32 work in most games, so a good chunk of the potential FP32 performance is used up elsewhere. Still, with the other architectural changes, we expect the 3060 Ti to perform roughly on par with the 2080 Super, which means it will also be significantly faster than the 2060 Super.

Meet the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition 

There are no surprises in regards to the design and aesthetics of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition: It's identical to the RTX 3070 FE, except for the small text that now says RTX 3060 Ti. It's a reasonably compact card that will fit in most cases, measuring 9.5 inches long. If you're doing a mini-ITX build, plan accordingly, but most ATX and micro-ATX cases should be fine.

With a reduced TDP of 200W, and considering what we saw from the 3070, cooling and noise shouldn't pose any problem. We'll get to the hard numbers later, but let's just say that the 1665 MHz boost clock is very conservative at stock, and there's a decent bit of overclocking headroom as well.

Connectivity consists of the same triple DisplayPort 1.4a outputs and single HDMI 2.1 port that we've seen on other Ampere Founders Edition models. You can use up to four monitors, and there's some ventilation on the rest of the IO bracket.

Somewhat interesting is that even the RTX 3060 Ti Founder Edition continues to use Nvidia's 12-pin power connector. Again, we're not quite sure what the point is, particularly since it just takes a single 8-pin PEG connector on one end and passes that through to the 12-pin connection. Even better is that Nvidia had concept renderings of the 3070 with an 8-pin connector. It doesn't really matter, as the adapter cable is included in the box, but it's also completely unnecessary. The 3080/3090 at least changed the PCB and have the 12-pin connector mounted in such a way that it uses a bit less area. Not surprisingly, none of the AIB partners seem interested in pushing the 12-pin agenda, so if you really don't like it, there will be plenty of other options.

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I didn't have good luck with the MSI Afterburner frequency scanner this round — it kept failing after 10-15 minutes or so of testing. That put us back to manually overclocking, which in practice usually means similar results, just with a bit more fiddling. We start by looping the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark in a window at 1440p extreme, then bump up RAM clocks in 250 MHz increments until the GPU crashes or visual anomalies appear. Then we go back to the previous 'safe' level and repeat the same process for GPU clocks, except with 25 MHz increments.

We were nearly able to max out the GDDR6 overclock at 16.5-17Gbps, but the EDR feature (Error Detection and Retry) meant performance was actually slower than a lesser RAM OC. Eventually, we stuck with a 1000 MHz overclock on the RAM (the best-case maximum would be in the 1000-1250 MHz range, based on our testing), giving an effective data rate of 16Gbps. For the GPU, 150 MHz was nearly stable but crashed in two tests, so we dropped down to a 140 MHz overclock that completed the full test suite.

Besides changing the memory and GPU clocks, we also increased the power limit to the maximum 110 percent and adjusted the fan curve. That last one is critical for maintaining a stable overclock, as sticking with a default fan curve tends to lead to periodic crashes. Basically, we set the fan to a 50 percent minimum and gave it a steady ramp from 50 percent at 40C up to 100 percent at 80C. We could certainly do more tuning, but that was sufficient to keep temperatures in check and still wasn't overly loud.

Overclocked results are present in our standard benchmark charts, but not in the bonus extended tests or DirectX Raytracing (DXR) suites. We have several AIB 3060 Ti cards we'll be looking at in the future that have factory overclocks, so if you want something a bit more potent than the reference design, stay tuned.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti — Test Setup 

As with the recent Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 review, we have multiple test suites we'll be running. The baseline suite consists of the same games we've been using throughout 2020: nine games, none of which were released this year, which means drivers should be good and optimized by now. We ran the stock and overclocked GPU through this suite.

Our second extended test suite includes the nine legacy games and then adds two ray tracing enabled games (Dirt 5 and Watch Dogs Legion) — that's a heavily AMD-biased game, with an Nvidia-influence game, just to keep things a bit equal. Worth noting is that the DXR support in Dirt 5 is currently in beta/preview, so take it with an extra scoop of salt. Two more games from 2020 (Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Horizon Zero Dawn) complete the suite, with both being AMD promoted games. It doesn't seem to matter much on HZD, but Valhalla very much favors AMD GPUs right now. This extended test suite is only run on the latest generation GPUs (RTX 30-series and RX 6000 series), but we also run it on a Core i9-10900K PC and a Ryzen 9 5900X PC to show CPU scaling. However, there are differences in motherboard and RAM, which appear to at least partially influence the final results.

If the extended suite seems a bit AMD slanted, we make up for that in the DXR suite. Here we've benchmarked 10 games and tests, most of which are Nvidia promoted. That's largely because prior to the RX 6800 launch last month, AMD didn't have any ray tracing capable GPUs, but there's certainly potential for the games to be more heavily optimized for Nvidia's RTX hardware. The DXR tests are run on our standard i9-9900K PC.

We've run all of the tests at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K ultra. We've also run the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti with DLSS enabled where possible (in Quality mode if it's an option) on the DXR suite, to show how that affects things. Spoiler: It helps performance a lot. Given this is a $400 graphics card, 1080p and 1440p are the primary targets, but 4K isn't out of the question, so we'll go through all three resolutions. If you want medium quality results, we'll be updating our best graphics card article shortly with the full standard suite of results at all six settings/resolution combinations. 

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9 Game Average

Starting with the 1080p combined results, which are the average of the nine individual games, the RTX 3060 Ti looks quite nice. At stock, it's slightly faster than the RTX 2080 Super and a solid 34 percent bump in performance relative to the 2060 Super. It's also just 7 percent slower than the RTX 3070 while costing 20 percent less. Overclocked, it comes pretty darn close to matching the 3070, but then the 3070 can also be overclocked.

We won't bother commenting on the individual gaming results and just let the charts speak for themselves. There are a few games that are clearly running into CPU limits, and some of the games tend to favor AMD more while others lean toward Nvidia. In general, though, there's not a huge difference in standings. For 1080p in particular, this is probably about as high up the GPU ladder as we'd recommend going — unless you're playing a ray tracing game, of course.

Borderlands 3

Division 2

Far Cry 5

Final Fantasy XIV

Forza Horizon 4

Metro Exodus

Red Dead Redemption 2

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Strange Brigade

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Stepping up to 1440p, there's not a huge change in rankings, but the difference between the various GPUs becomes a bit more pronounced. That's because CPU bottlenecks are largely gone at 1440p, except perhaps for the absolute fastest GPUs (like the RTX 3090). 

9 Game Average

Nvidia claims the RTX 3060 Ti is faster than the outgoing RTX 2080 Super, and that continues to be the case. The aggregate score puts it 5 percent ahead of the 2080 Super, and 40 percent ahead of the 2060 Super — not bad for a single generation upgrade. Overclocking improves performance another 8 percent, putting it just behind the stock 3070. It's going to be interesting seeing what AMD does with lower-tier RDNA2 offerings, as right now the RX 6800 is just 18 percent faster than the 3060 Ti. The rumored RX 6700 XT will supposedly have 40 CUs and 12GB of memory, which would be a pretty significant cut relative to the 6800. 

Borderlands 3

Division 2

Far Cry 5

Final Fantasy XIV

Forza Horizon 4

Metro Exodus

Red Dead Redemption 2

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Strange Brigade

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4K is more of an academic question for most gamers buying a $400 GPU, but the 3060 Ti still does as well as the 2080 Super. If you're willing to turn down a few options, you can still hit 60 fps in most games. Just don't plan on playing maxed-out settings with ray tracing at 4K and 60 fps. 

9 Game Average

The margin of victory at 4K doesn't change much with the 3060 Ti. It's still 5 percent faster than the 2080 Super, and 44 percent faster than the 2060 Super. Overclocked, it's only 2 percent behind the stock RTX 3070. It's also 19 percent slower than the RX 6800, but that's fine considering it costs over 30 percent less. Of the nine games we tested, the 3060 Ti manages more than 60 fps at 4K in four games. We'll look at a slightly wider selection below. 

Borderlands 3

Division 2

Far Cry 5

Final Fantasy XIV

Forza Horizon 4

Metro Exodus

Red Dead Redemption 2

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 4

Strange Brigade

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As with the RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 review, our second suite of gaming benchmarks includes four newer games from 2020, and it's run on two additional CPUs, the Core i9-10900K and the Ryzen 9 5900X. These are pretty much the three fastest gaming CPUs currently available, and other options (e.g., the Ryzen 9 5950X or Core i9-10850K) wouldn't change the overall picture much. Actually, outside of a few games, the CPU doesn't really matter too much. Core i9-9900K remains plenty powerful, so if your primary focus is gaming and you already have a fast Intel 8th or 9th gen Core i7 or better — or an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or better — you won't miss much.

We're going to group all three resolutions into each gallery this time to keep things from becoming too bloated. Just swipe through the galleries to check out the 1440p and 4K results, as well as the fps percentile line charts. Note once more that the RAM configuration isn't identical on the three platforms, so there's a bit of variation in how each CPU performs. We'll provide individual game commentary this time, as there's a lot more going on.

We're only looking at the latest generation Ampere and RDNA2 (aka Big Navi) GPUs, so it's no surprise that the RTX 3060 Ti falls to the bottom of these charts. That's not because it's slow so much as it's slower than the other options. Hopefully, the more mainstream pricing means that Nvidia will have a lot more GPUs to go around, though we'll be surprised if inventory lasts more than a few minutes. After Black Friday and Cyber Monday, where even previous generation cards were selling for more than 25 percent over the launch pricing, it's clear that demand for gaming GPUs is at an all-time high.

Looking at the overall results, the 3060 Ti ends up trailing the RTX 3070 by anywhere from 6 to 11 percent, depending on the CPU and resolution. Most of the individual results are about what you'd expect, but there are a few anomalies that we'll point out below. Something else to mention is that the RTX 3060 Ti breaks 60 fps at 1440p in all but two of the 13 games tested — and those two exceptions had ray tracing enabled.

We're going in alphabetical order, so Assassin's Creed Valhalla is the first in our extended test suite. This is a new game, promoted by AMD… and damn if AMD doesn't crush Nvidia here, at least when we're looking at the 6800 series. We expect things will improve over the coming weeks, and this is a DirectX 11 game, so drivers can affect performance more than in DX12 or Vulkan games. It's also quite the demanding game for the 3060 Ti, just barely managing to break 60 fps at 1440p. Of course, we don't have a direct AMD competitor for the 3060 Ti yet, so we'll have to wait and see how this changes over time. 

Borderlands 3 is another AMD promotional game, and this time we're using the DirectX 12 (DX12) API. There's not much to say about the 3060 Ti here, though it's interesting that AMD's new RX 6800 GPUs (and the RTX 3090) do slightly better on our Intel CPUs than on the 5900X, while the other GPUs don't seem to care much about the processor. 

Huge caveat here: Dirt 5 is an AMD promotional game and we're using a beta / early access DXR patch. This is one of just two games that are promoted by AMD and feature ray tracing effects, the other being Godfall. But Godfall doesn't support DXR on Nvidia GPUs yet, so this is our only real look at how an AMD-optimized DXR game might behave. Again, big scoops of salt, but AMD GPUs come out ahead in most instances relative to their Nvidia counterparts. The RTX 3060 Ti also only breaks 60 fps at 1080p on the 9900K, and not by much.

Speaking of which, something else that's interesting is how much better the Nvidia cards do on the Core i9-9900K compared to the other two platforms. Chalk it up to beta wonkiness, and let's also note that the ray traced shadows don't particularly change the appearance of the game much (swipe through the gallery to see the comparison screenshots). It looks more like a contrast filter has been applied with DXR enabled, and the performance hit is lower than many other DXR games as well.

We're on a bit of an AMD promotional roll, and The Division 2 is another game with AMD branding. We test using DX12, and this is an old enough game that both AMD and Nvidia GPUs appear to have received plenty of optimization work. 1080p is a bit more CPU limited this time, and the 5900X comes in ahead of the 9900K, with the 10900K mostly coming in on top, at least for the Nvidia GPUs. For AMD GPUs, there's a bit more variation at 1080p, with the 6800 XT doing best on the 5900X. That's probably just the margin of error in the testing, though. 

Far Cry 5 is one of the oldest games in our test suite, and while it's yet another AMD promoted game, it's DX11 only, and Nvidia GPUs tend to have a slight advantage. It's also very much CPU limited at 1080p and even 1440p on the faster cards, with only 4K ending up with the expected GPU groupings. AMD's new GPUs also top out at a lower average fps, suggesting there are some driver inefficiencies at play. 

Another relatively old game, Final Fantasy XIV, is our first Nvidia promoted game — or at least, it uses a few of the GameWorks libraries for graphics effects. This time, AMD's 5900X CPU clearly comes out on top for most of the GPUs, particularly at 1080p. Minimum fps is also much lower than in other tests, mostly due to the way the standalone benchmark works (lots of scene changes that can cause fps dips). Anyway, even at maximum detail, the 3060 Ti and every other card easily break 60 fps, making this one of the lighter games in our test suite. 

This is technically a GPU-agnostic game that's not specifically promoted by AMD or Nvidia, but Forza Horizon 4 definitely favors AMD GPUs. They have higher maximum fps and better minimum fps as well, potentially thanks to the DX12 code. The game also tends to be pretty CPU-limited on the higher GPUs at 1080p and 1440p, with the 5900X and 10900K outperforming the 9900K. 

Horizon Zero Dawn came out on PS4 back in 2017 but only arrived for PC this past August. It's based on the same game engine as Death Stranding and uses the DX12 API. Given its console heritage, you might expect this one to favor AMD GPUs a bit, and it does. Or at least, AMD has more consistent fps and fewer oddities. 

For example, the 3060 Ti with the 10900K outperforms the 3070 with 5900X and 10900K. We may need to retest (again), but we've run out of time for the initial launch review so we'll just mark this down as another 'questionable' result. (That's why some of these games are expanded coverage and not part of our traditional test suite, which we're working on updating.) 

Metro Exodus was one of the first games with ray tracing support, but we're just using the default ultra preset here. It's an Nvidia promoted game, thanks mostly to the RTX enhancements, though the 3080 does come out ahead of the 6800 XT here. The 3060 Ti does fine up to 1440p, but 4K proves to be a bit much. 

Red Dead Redemption 2 is our first Vulkan API result — it supports DX12 as well, but our previous testing showed that Vulkan performs best in most cases. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti again does well up to 1440p, but starts to struggle at 4K. The three CPUs all perform similarly, and the lengthy benchmark sequence tends to vary a bit more than in other games, so we wouldn't worry too much about the 1-2 fps difference between runs. 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is another DXR-enabled game that we're testing without ray tracing (but we'll include the RT results below), and it's an Nvidia promoted game thanks to the DXR and DLSS support. There's quite a bit of noise in the charts at 1080p, where the game is mostly CPU limited and the 9900K at least holds back a few of the GPUs. Things settle down at 1440p and 4K, with the 3060 Ti once more coming up a bit short of 60 fps. 

Strange Brigade is our other Vulkan API game, and this time it favors Nvidia's GPUs (even though this is an AMD promotional game). Of course, it's mostly academic as all of the cards hit 100 fps or more even at 4K, and everything is in the 200+ fps range at 1080p. 

Last but not least, Watch Dogs Legion is our second DXR enabled game for the expanded test suite. This time, we're looking at an Nvidia promoted game, and patches and driver updates have fixed AMD's earlier rendering problems. (At launch, the RX 6800 cards weren't rendering all of the ray tracing effects properly and performed about 40 percent better than the new results shown here.) 

With the full DXR rendering now in place, Big Navi doesn't look so hot. In fact, the RTX 3060 Ti basically ties the RX 6800 XT at 1080p and 1440p, and we won't worry much about the 4K results considering nothing is even remotely playable — at least not without DLSS enabled. How does the 3060 Ti with DLSS perform? We'll get to that next. 

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Given what we've seen so far, it's a safe bet that the RTX 3060 Ti will be about as good as the RTX 2080 Super when it comes to ray tracing performance. We've tested most DXR-capable GPUs from AMD and Nvidia, omitting only the Titan RTX and the non-Super 20-series GPUs.

We've also tested the RTX 3060 Ti with DLSS enabled on the games that support DLSS. That's seven of the ten DXR games, which makes sense as DXR can prove to be a bit much for most of the GPUs running at native resolution. Note that the composite score for the 3060 Ti DLSS does not include results from the other three tests at all, so it's not fully comparable, but it's an interesting data point regardless.

We'll go with the same format as the extended test suite, so 1080p, 1440p, and 4K results are lumped together in each gallery. Swipe to view the additional charts, and as mentioned earlier, all of these tests were run on the Core i9-9900K PC. Again, since Nvidia was the only ray tracing option until last month, most of the games are Nvidia promoted titles. They're also inherently optimized more for Nvidia's hardware.

Overall, ray tracing continues to be brutally demanding, particularly when using native rendering. On average, the 3060 Ti just barely breaks 60 fps across the test suite at 1080p. It also beats the RX 6800, illustrating quite clearly how much faster Nvidia's ray tracing hardware is compared to Nvidia's Ray Accelerators. At 1440p, even with DLSS enabled, the 3060 Ti can't average 60 fps, though it's still quite a bit faster than the PS5 and Xbox Series X when it comes to ray tracing workloads. And 4K … well, the less said, the better. With DLSS, 4K averages just over 30 fps — though it does boost performance by over 50 percent. 

 Our first DXR 'game' is the 3DMark Port Royal test, which definitely isn't a game. It does use multiple ray tracing techniques, including shadows and reflections, and performance is generally a bit lower than our composite score. Interestingly, AMD's RX 6800 does better in 3DMark than in most other DXR games, though that could be due to UL taking a more agnostic approach to specific GPU optimizations. 

Boundary isn't an actual game, at least not yet, but it does use a bunch of ray tracing effects, and it's extremely demanding. Without DLSS, only the 3080 and 3090 can break 60 fps, even at 1080p. With DLSS Quality mode enabled, the RTX 3060 Ti joins those cards. It also basically ties the RX 6800 XT. Based on what we're seeing right now, the actual game will probably need to have DLSS Balanced or DLSS Performance mode enabled to get smooth framerates. 

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War uses ray tracing effects for shadows, with a higher fidelity (and more demanding) result in the previous Modern Warfare (2019) reboot. The 3060 Ti breaks 60 fps at 1080p native, and DLSS can further improve its performance. At 1440p, DLSS Quality mode still manages a decent 67 fps, and the 3060 Ti continues to lead AMD's options. The 6800 XT does squeak ahead at 4K, probably thanks to its 16GB of memory, but we doubt many people are going to want to play multiplayer Call of Duty at 30 fps. 

Control remains our favorite example of what ray tracing can add to a game, thanks to the office environment with lots of vertical mirrored windows. Ray tracing is also used for diffuse lighting and ambient occlusion, and the result is once again the 3060 Ti leading AMD's 6800 XT. DLSS Quality meanwhile improves performance by more than 50 percent, so even 1440p is very playable. 

Crysis Remastered uses some funky hybrid of DirectX 11 code with some hacks to get ray tracing working. Our initial look at the ray tracing setting didn't impress us too much (most of the scenes hardly change when disabling the RT setting). Still, it's extremely demanding, particularly at the 'Can It Run Crysis?' setting. There's no DLSS support, but the 3060 Ti does break 60 fps at 1080p, while 1440p is moderately playable, and 4K generally proves to be too much for today's hardware. 

We already looked at Dirt 5 with DXR above, but this time we have a few additional GPUs. The game is clearly optimized more for AMD's hardware right now, and the RT effects aren't particularly noteworthy. But then, we could say the same about many of the RT effects. Most people will likely prefer running with higher fps and fewer stutters more than the enhanced visuals. 

We didn't even max out the ray tracing options in Fortnite, as it's already brutal — we're basically using medium ray tracing. At 1080p with DLSS Quality, the 3060 can break 60 fps, as can the 3090 (without DLSS). And that's about it. DLSS does nearly double the fps for the 3060 Ti at 1080p (and actually does double it at 1440p and 4K), so the 3080 and 3090 might be able to manage a playable result at 1440p with DLSS enabled. Unless you're just kicking around some creative mode worlds, though, you'll probably want to skip the visuals and go with more competitive high fps settings. 

Metro Exodus is pretty old now, and it only supports DLSS 1.0. There are some weird rules about what GPUs can enable DLSS at various resolutions, and you can see that at 1080p – DLSS isn't enabled. It provides a minor bump in performance at 1440p and a larger improvement at 4K, but if you're hoping to run Metro at maxed-out settings and 4K with ray tracing enabled, you pretty much need the 3080 or 3090. Interestingly, the RX 6800 comes out ahead of the 3060 Ti here, perhaps because RT is only used for global illumination. 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is another DLSS 1.0 game, and you can't use DLSS at 1080p on the 3060 Ti. DLSS also results in lower minimum fps at 1440p since it adds to the processing time of the scenes and can create a bit of stutter, but it does better at 4K. With only one RT effect in use (shadows), AMD's GPUs again rank higher than in many of the other more complex ray tracing games. 

We looked at Watch Dogs Legion in our CPU scaling suite, and here you can see additional GPUs as well as DLSS  on the 3060 Ti. The newcomer basically matches AMD's 6800 XT, with DLSS pushing it into the lead. DLSS is also the only way to get above 60 fps with the 3060 Ti. Like Control, there are quite a few vertical reflective surfaces that actually help make the ray tracing effects more noticeable, but the performance hit is still quite steep. 

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The RTX 3060 Ti has a relatively tame power rating of just 200W. Even overclocked with the power limit set at the maximum 110 percent isn't going to be too bad, as that's only around 220W. For these tests, we run Metro Exodus at 1440p ultra, without ray tracing or DLSS. We also use FurMark running at 1600x900 in a window using the stress test mode. We'll look at power, GPU clocks, temperatures, and fan speeds.

We also measured the noise levels of the RTX 3060 Ti from a distance of 15cm. At idle, from that distance, our PC's noise floor is 46.0 dB (or 34 dB from where my head is relative to the case on the floor). After running Metro for 15 minutes, the 3060 Ti FE noise levels were barely above that — 46.9 dB. For reference, that's basically the same result as the 3070, which you'd expect considering the two share the same core design.

Clock speeds, temperatures, fan speeds, and power are all interrelated. Drop the clocks, and you reduce the power and temperature. Raise the fan speed, and you reduce the temperature and maybe even power use, potentially allowing for higher clocks. It's a four-way balancing act, and utilities like EVGA Precision X1 and MSI Afterburner allow you to customize your particular card (within limits).

As we've seen with several other Nvidia GPUs, power use ends up being slightly higher than the official TDP. I don't think anyone will cry foul about a card using 205W instead of 200W, but it's interesting that the 3070 so far is the only Ampere GPU that came in below its official TDP (while gaming). Overclocked, the 3060 Ti actually exceeded the 3070 in power use. 

Nvidia tends to be quite conservative with its advertised boost clocks, and the RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition proves that yet again. The official boost clock is only 1665 MHz, but during our Metro Exodus test, the GPU averaged 1900 MHz. Overclocking pushed that up to 2070 MHz. FurMark does drop the GPU clock just a bit below the rated boost clock (1623 MHz), but it's higher than the base clock of 1410 MHz. Much as you'd expect, our 150 MHz overclock also translates into a 155 MHz average clock speed increase for FurMark. 

Temperatures for the RTX 3060 Ti FE are good as well. Most GPUs can happily run at 70C, and that's basically where the card ends up at stock. Because of the higher fan speeds we applied during overclocking, that actually drops the temperature (but increases the noise levels). Both Metro and FurMark top out at around 69-70C.

Interestingly, the 3060 Ti's fan speeds are slightly higher than the 3070. That could just be variance on the cards and fans, or perhaps more likely, the GA104 silicon in the 3060 Ti was binned and determined to be a better fit for a lower-tier card, with the higher-quality silicon going into the 3070 cards. At stock, the 3060 Ti fans ran at around 1380 RPM in Metro and 1440 RPM in FurMark. Our aggressive fan speed curve for overclocking bumped the RPM up to around 2350. We could certainly tune things better, but this was sufficient for our testing purposes. 

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Now that we've seen the RTX 3070 along with AMD's RX 6800, we have a better feel for the GPU market we're likely to see during the coming year. AMD doesn't have a viable alternative to the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti at the $400 price point yet, so for now, this is the undisputed upper mainstream champion. Some might say $400 isn't really a mainstream GPU, but given the sales of previous-gen GTX 1070 and RTX 2060 / 2060 Super cards, there are clearly plenty of people willing to spend that much money on a graphics card. And to be clear, this is a great card for that price.

The RTX 3060 Ti is about 35-40 percent faster than the previous-gen 2060 Super and about 30 percent faster than AMD's RX 5700 XT — and that's without even getting into ray tracing or DLSS support. In ray tracing games, the 3060 Ti lead grows to 40-45 percent over the 2060 Super, and AMD's RX 5000 series doesn't even have the option to try and run DXR games. Even against AMD's new RX 6800, though, the RTX 3060 Ti delivers better overall DXR performance — and can improve by around 30 percent on average for games that support DLSS, using DLSS Quality mode. Plus, Cyberpunk 2077 will launch in about ten days [not that I'm counting, #fanboy] with plenty of ray tracing effects and DLSS 2.0. The RTX 3070 is supposed to be good for 1440p ultra with ray tracing, or 4K ultra without ray tracing, which means the 3060 Ti should be able to handle those settings as well. And thankfully, unlike graphics cards, digital downloads of a game aren't going to sell out.

Which brings us to the problem of supply. We'll be shocked if RTX 3060 Ti doesn't sell out just as fast as the 3070, 3080, 3090, 6800, and 6800 XT. Hell, we've seen people buying used previous-gen cards off eBay for more than their original launch price, which is sad. It's not quite as bad as the GPU shortages during the great cryptocurrency mining craze of 2017, but it's not much better. And hey, Bitcoin is flirting with $20,000 per BTC again, so maybe there's still hope. (/sarcasm, if that's not clear.)

Anyway, Nvidia's CEO said Ampere supply likely wouldn't keep up with demand until 2021. That actually makes plenty of sense, as it takes about 5-6 months from placing an order for a bunch of chips (silicon wafers) to getting shipping graphics cards using those chips. Six months ago, we were right in the midst of the first COVID-19 surge, and there was a lot of uncertainty about the future. In retrospect, Nvidia could have doubled or even tripled its orders and probably been just fine, but we can't imagine what the reaction would have been had someone suggested that back in April! Hindsight, such a lovely thing.

The one potential bright side is that Nvidia should have more RTX 3060 Ti cards than all previous RTX 30-series parts combined. That's just our guess, but when you look at GPU sales, $400 cards sell way units more than $500 and $700 cards. Plus, we'd imagine there are plenty of GA104 chips that can't quite work as a 3070, so hopefully there will be enough to last more than a couple of minutes. (Side note: We've also received more RTX 3060 Ti AIB cards before the launch has even happened than any of the other RTX 30-series cards, which is potentially a good sign.)

If you already have an RTX 2080 Super or even a 2060 Super, there's not much need to upgrade to an RTX 3060 Ti. But if you purchased a GTX 1070 back in 2016 and you're still sitting on it today, you can now double your GPU performance for roughly the same price that the GTX 1070 launched at. Again, assuming you can find one in stock. As for AMD, an RX 6700 XT could be a formidable opponent, particularly in games that don't use ray tracing or DLSS. How long will we have to wait for those cards to arrive, and will AMD ship as many GPUs as Nvidia? After the RX 6800 launch, we're guessing the answer to the second part of that question is no, but we'll probably find out more in early 2021.

Right now, Nvidia just gave a nice boost in performance and features to the $400 market. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is a relatively small step down from the RTX 3070, with a larger step down in price. That hits the sweet spot in both price and performance — in fact, out of the current and previous-gen GPUs, it's the best overall card in price to performance ratio (fps per dollar). If you're hoping to upgrade to a new graphics card, the RTX 3060 Ti definitely belongs on your shortlist.

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Unlike many of its peers, MSI didn't give an early glimpse of its custom-designed AMD Radeon RX 6800/6900-series graphics cards well ahead of release, instead only showcasing its reference boards. That doesn't mean the company had no plans to release appropriate products, though. In fact, MSI is prepping a range of its Gaming series Big Navi-powered solutions with quite an impressive design. There's a catch, though: due to the short supply of AMD's Navi 21 GPUs, MSI will only offer custom Gaming series cards for now.

Hours before Christmas eve, MSI finally showcased its custom Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT Gaming X Trio graphics cards on its YouTube channel (via VideoCardz). The company didn't demonstrate its top-of-the-range AMD offering, the MSI Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming X Trio, but implied the card is still in the works. That's not particularly surprising because all Navi 21-based graphics cards can use very similar printed circuit board (PCB) designs, making it easy to develop a product family.

MSI's Radeon RX 6800-series Gaming X Trio graphics cards use an extremely oversized PCB design featuring a 16-phase VRM and two eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors. Given the 16-phase VRM, MSI's Radeon RX 6800/6800 XT graphics boards are long and tall, which is why they will require a spacious chassis. 

MSI's representative said the company hadn't finalized the PCB design for the Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming X Trio. Still, considering that it is showcasing an image of a Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming X Trio board with three power connectors on its website, we can make some assumptions about where MSI is going with its AMD-based flagship. 

In a bid to maximize the performance of its custom Big Navi graphics cards, MSI naturally equipped them with rather massive 2.7-wide cooling systems. The coolers comprise several aluminum heatsinks 'interconnected' using six copper heat pipes that directly contact the GPU. Traditionally for Big Navi-based products, MSI's Radeon RX 6800/6800 XT Gaming X Trio graphics cards feature three fans, some of which will stop under light loads. Obviously, there is a backplate and a special holder that prevents the card from bending.

As far as display outputs are concerned, MSI equipped the boards with three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors and one HDMI 2.1 port.  

Like other CPU makers these days, MSI didn't announce MSRPs for its products, as actual pricing will depend on supply and demand. There's another thing to point out, too: If MSI does not begin volume production of its Gaming X Trio-series Radeon RX 6000-series products in January for whatever reason (e.g., not enough GPUs or other components), it will not begin until after the Chinese New Year, which is on February 12. As a result, the new boards might not arrive until March, over two months from now.         

Graphics cards are the heart and soul of any powerful gaming PC, as without a high-quality GPU, a system will struggle to play the latest and greatest titles available from AAA developers. Therefore, it’s important that you pick a GPU that delivers in two key ways: cooling prowess and raw graphics horsepower. Among the cards that fit the bill, you won’t find anything that tops what Gigabyte is offering with its AORUS RX 6800 XT MASTER. Here’s a look at why. 

 The strength of MAX Covered Cooling is unmatched 

The primary thing that makes the AORUS RX 6800 XT MASTER stand out from the crowd is its unique and incredibly effective MAX Covered Cooling design. This design ensures that as you put the GPU through its paces, it will stay cool in even the toughest and most taxing in-game scenarios. 

There are four key features that make MAX Covered Cooling as powerful as it is: a stacked fan design, alternate spinning, special wind claw fan blades, and screen cooling. 

The first feature, stacked fans, eliminates traditional cooling dead zones where air from the fans normally doesn’t reach by stacking the side fans above the middle one, making it possible to move each fan closer to one another. This makes sure that the entire GPU receives cooling from the fans. Secondly, the middle fan spins in an alternate direction compared to the left and right ones. This reduces the turbulence between each fan’s airflow and guarantees that all of the cool air is actually used to dissipate heat and isn’t wasted. Additionally, the left and right fans also have a stationary fan blade under them called wind claws that channel the airflow from the fans directly onto the GPUs heatsink, boosting cooling efficiency. Finally, the extended heatsink design of the AORUS RX 6800 XT MASTER allows more air to pass through it, resulting in improved cooling results. This effect is referred to as “screen cooling.”

The reason why cooling like this is important is because as components like GPUs get hot, their performance goes down. Therefore, GPUs that can stay cool even while under heavy stress are valuable because you can depend on them to perform consistently no matter what.

 Cutting edge power 

The other thing that makes the AORUS RX 6800 XT MASTER a stellar GPU is the fact that it offers some of the best power you can find in a graphics card today. With its massive hardware improvements compared to last-gen GPUs, the AORUS RX 6800 XT MASTER is more than up to the task of powering 4K gaming. Additionally, it also allows you to enjoy real-time ray tracing in games that support the feature. This enables you to enjoy incredible lighting and reflections that simply aren’t possible without the use of ray tracing. 

Things get even better when you throw AMD’s Ryzen 5000-series “Vermeer” CPUs into the mix. Thanks to AMD’s new Smart Access Memory feature, pairing a Ryzen 5000 CPU with a 6000-series Radeon GPU like the AORUS RX 6800 XT MASTER allows that Ryzen processor to make use of more VRAM than ever before, resulting in performance improvements of up to 11%. There’s also Rage Mode, which is AMD’s user-friendly overclocking available through Radeon software. Rage Mode automatically figures out what the most stable overclock is for your GPU and then activates it, allowing you to boost your performance beyond normal levels. 

The AORUS RX 6800 XT MASTER works excellently with Gigabyte’s AMD-focused AORUS SSDs and monitors, too. The former cut down on loading times significantly, while the latter have support for AMD FreeSync, a feature that synchronizes frame rate with refresh rate and guarantees smooth, stable gameplay.

 It simply doesn’t get better than this 

Ultimately, it doesn’t get better than the AORUS RX 6800 XT MASTER when it comes to top-of-the-line GPUs. Between its superb MAX Covered Cooling design and its fantastic graphics power, the AORUS RX 6800 XT MASTER is nothing short of a phenomenal choice — especially if you pair it with AMD’s Ryzen 5000-series CPUs for Smart Access Memory and make good use of Rage Mode while in-game. 

Asus enabled the Resizable BAR feature on its Z490 motherboards not so long ago, and Japanese media outlet ASCII has already published some encouraging results that will make any Intel owner smile.

Resizable BAR (Base Address Register), which can boost throughput between a CPU and a GPU to improve performance, isn't some type of alien technology from another universe. In fact, the feature has been part of the PCIe specification since Revision 2.0. Still, it has gone under everyone's radar until AMD brought it up in the mold of the chipmaker's Smart Access Memory (SAM), with the caveat that it would only work if you paired a Radeon 6000 series GPU with a Ryzen 5000 CPU and X570 motherboard. The Red Team certainly spearheaded the adoption of Resizable BAR, and now Intel and Nvidia are working to bring the technology to their corresponding products.

ASCII's testbed included a Core i9-10900K (Comet Lake-S) processor, Asus ROG Maximus XII Extreme on the latest 1002 firmware, and a Radeon RX 6800 XT (Big Navi) graphics card. Enabling the Resizable BAR feature was easy and only required enabling the "Above 4G Decoding" and "Re-Size BAR Support" options in the motherboard's BIOS. ASCII performed its tests across four modern titles: Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Forza Horizon 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege. The publication used the highest image quality for each game at a 1920 x 1080 resolution.

Resizable Bar On Intel Z490 Benchmarks

On Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Resizable BAR improved the minimum and average frame rates by 12.8% and 14.2%, respectively. In Forza Horizon 4, we're looking at 20.3% higher minimum and 19.4% average frame rates at 1920 x 1080, and 17% better minimum and 15.9% average frame rates at 2560 x 1440.

As for Red Dead Redemption 2, activating Resizable Bar netted improved minimum and average frame rates up to 181.6% and 7.8%, respectively. The explanation behind the massive improvement in minimum frame rates is that the game's benchmark tends to suffer from dips during the run. However, Resizable Bar seems to resolve that issue, which explains the improved values.

The overall takeaway from ASCII's testing is that Resizable BAR has a significant impact on gaming performance in titles that support the feature. As noted, not every game engine benefits from Resizable BAR. For example, Resizable BAR has a negligible effect on average frame rates in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, although it did improve minimum frame rates by 11.8%.

In the midst of all the impressive numbers, we have to bear in mind that the 1002 firmware from Asus is currently in the beta stage, and the performance uplift with Resizable BAR enabled is evidently visible. It'll be very interesting to see whether the final firmware improves performance even further.

It's no secret that availability of the best graphics cards has been dismal. New cards from both AMD and Nvidia have been nearly impossible to find. European tech retailer Proshop has been sharing its stock numbers since Nvidia's 30-series cards launched. It recently shared new figures showing availability for the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT still isn't looking good. 

Of course, this is just the supply of a single vendor. However, it does give us a good perspective on the GPU shortage and what suppliers are dealing with.

The amount of stock Proshop has received of the RX 6800/RX 6800 XT is hilariously small -- so much so it  almost makes Nvidia's Ampere shortage look good. Proshop has only received 100 RX 6800 cards, and they're all from Powercolor. It's also expecting eight Asus RX 6800 TUF OCs and five Asus RX 6800 Strix OCs. That's a measly 113 cards, compared to the 2,213 cards the Proshop reportedly ordered from all the AIB partners.

RX 6800 XT stock for Proshop is even worse. The retailer only received 25 PowerColor RX 6800XT cards. Regarding the aftermarket models, just six Asus RX 6800XT Strix LC OC and three Asus RX 6800XT TUF OC cards are incoming. That equates to 34 RX 6800 XTs. The retailer ordered 1,909.

Meanwhile, Proshop has updated its stock on Nvidia 30-series supply as well. While not great, it's vastly superior to that of AMD's stock currently.

This is really unfortunate for buyers. AMD hinted several times that it was going to "learn from Nvidia's mistakes" and have more volume than the competition. But it's clear that stock issues remain. Hopefully, AMD will fulfill its promise to fix its supply shortages by the end of December, but our hopes aren't high.

AMD's RDNA2 architecture has been full of surprises, especially in its ability to hit astronomically high core frequencies compared to the Nvidia competition. But, it appears we haven't seen the best of what RDNA 2 can offer. Patrick from Twitter has tweeted that the RX 6900 XT can hit 3 GHz (if cooling isn't a bottleneck) before running into artificial limiters. Similarly, IgorsLAB shared specifications in BIOS for the yet unannounced RX 6700 XT, showcasing its official limit of 2950Mhz on the core clock.

Note that these numbers are highly theoretical and way above what these GPUs do at stock settings. Both the Radeon RX 6800 XT and 6900 XT have rated boost clocks of 2,250 MHz. So, unless you're using liquid nitrogen or other crazy cooling methods, it's unlikely that you would hit or be able to exceed the reported 2.8-GHz limit on the 6800 XT, 3-GHz limit on the 6900 XT and 2.95-GHz limit on the 6700 XT.

It makes sense that the RX 6900 XT would have the highest frequency limit, as it is the highest tiered GPU in AMD's lineup and presumably has the best silicon as well. But what's really interesting is that the RX 6700 XT is alleged to have a maximum clock of 2950 MHz while the the RX 6800 XT maxes out at 2.8 GHz. This indicates that the 6700 XT could be great for overclocking.

IgorsLAB dug into the RX 6700 XT's BIOS a bit more and discovered that the board partner BIOSes (AIB partners unknown) feature much higher power limits and higher core voltage than the reference RX 6800. BIOS 1 (which Igor thinks is for the reference spec) is targeted at around 186W for TGP (total graphics power). For the 2nd BIOS (Igor thinks is for a high trim model) that TGP goes up to 211W. And core voltages for the RX 6700 XT are supposedly higher than the RX 6800, whose reference spec allows just 203W for TGP.

If this is true, and the RX 6700 XT cards ship around these specifications, we could see the highest factory overclocked RDNA2 chips on the market. The 40 CUs on the RX 6700 XT would potentially be fed with more juice, allowing higher frequencies on air, and only having 40 CUs means it's much easier to cool vs. 60 CUs like on the RX 6800.

After the huge fail that was the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT launch just a week ago, Hardware Unboxed reports that AMD has assured them that its partner cards for the RX 6800XT will ship in the next four to eight weeks, and even better, all of them should sell at their associated MSRPs.

This is potentially good news for RX 6800XT buyers. The RDNA2 launch for both the RX 6800XT and RX 6800 was an absolute disaster, and worse than the Nvidia RTX 3080 launch because it appears there were even fewer RX 6000-series cards available on day one than Nvidia's Ampere. 

It's good to see that AMD will step up to try to get the situation under control, but the proof will be in the shipping units. It's best to take AMD's word with a grain of salt. Demand for the latest generation of graphics cards has been absolutely enormous, and prices have been super inflated by the pandemic, making any new GPU purchase impossible for most buyers.

Even if AMD and its AIB partners deliver, there's still a huge chance all the stock will be eaten alive by remaining customers who haven't had a chance to purchase a new GPU. 

Hopefully everything goes to plan, and you all can grab a shiny new RX 6800 XT by late December 2020 or January of next year.

If you have no choice but to buy a new graphics card right now, be sure to check out our Best Cyber Monday Graphics Card Deals to see what remaining graphics cards are still good for your money. The selection is slim and doesn't include any newer models, but that's the unfortunate state of the industry right now. 

An RTX 3080 Ti or RTX 3080 20GB graphics card might be on the horizon. Hkepc has reported that a RTX 3080 Ti might be in the works for Nvidia, with reportedly a GA102-250-KD-A1 GPU core and a 320-bit memory bus with 20GB of GDDR6X. All with a potential release of January 2021 at $999.99. 

We also learned today that MSI has copyrighted "GeForce RTX 3080 20GB" badging for several of its graphics card lineups, indicating Nvidia might also be working on a high capacity VRAM variant of the RTX 3080, which is currently one of the best graphics cards. 

However, it's possible that MSI copyrighted this name just in case Nvidia makes an RTX 3080 20GB.

So it seems that Nvidia may be working on both an RTX 3080 Ti and a RTX 3080 20GB, or just a RTX 3080 Ti. We won't know unless the vendor makes an official announcement.

Would an RTX 3080 20GB make sense from Nvidia's perspective? Sort of. A 20GB RTX 3080 would expand the card's longevity, particularly if you plan on gaming at high resolutions and playing the latest AAA titles.

A 20GB RTX 3080 would also serve as a good content creation GPU, where VRAM capacity is just as important as GPU horsepower. 

One problem, though is cost. GDDR6X is already more expensive than GDDR6, and with 20GB of it, the 3080 20GB would for likely cost much more than an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and too close to any RTX 3080 Ti.

On the other hand, n RTX 3080 Ti at $999.99 with the same fully unlocked GA102 core as the RTX 3090 could be appealing. If Hkepc is correct about the 3080 Ti's specs, it'd be a real competitor to the RX 6900 XT. The 3080 Ti will reportedly have more VRAM, RT accelerated cores, tensor cores and Nvidia's NVENC ASIC for capturing high-quality gameplay with near-zero performance loss, which the 6900 XT lacks. However, based on the unconfirmed Nvidia specs, the RX 6900 XT may have the upper-hand in power efficiency. 

Yesterday marks the day that the custom AIB RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT cards were  revealed (our unboxing of the Sapphire RX 6800XT Nitro+ here), and Gigabyte is joining the fray with its own Aorus Master series alongside the more mainstream Gaming OC line. 

Of course, the star of the show today is the Aorus Master RX 6800 XT, which comes packing a massive triple-slot, triple-fan cooler and is absolutely smothered with RGB. The cooler comes with a backplate, and most notably, a small LCD screen on the side of the GPU for displaying GIFs, custom images, texts, or monitoring the GPU temperature.

The RX 6800 Aorus Master comes with the same design philosophy, with both cards also featuring elaborate VRM circuitry fed by a pair of 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors. Default, both cards come with three DisplayPort 1.4a ports and one HDMI 2.1 port, but the RX 6800XT Aorus Master also comes in a variant that swaps one of the DisplayPort outputs for a Type-C jack.

Normally, the Aorus Master line features Gigabyte's highest-clocked GPUs, but at this time, the company hasn't revealed clock speeds yet. 

Don't Need the Bling? Go Gaming OC

If the extravagant designs of the Aorus Master line doesn't appeal to you, or you just don't want to spend top dollar on a card, Gigabyte also has the more approachable Gaming OC line of cards. These skip the majority of the RGB, lighting up only the Gigabyte logo and a line underneath on the side of the card. They do still come with great board designs, dual-bios, and triple-fan coolers, so they should still be a solid improvement over the reference cards without driving the price up too much.

Clock speeds for the RX 6800 Gaming OC are rated to boost up to 2155 MHz (reference is 2105 MHz), with typical game clocks at 1925 MHz over the reference 1815 MHz. The RX 6800 XT Gaming OC model bumps those figures up to 2285 MHz boost (reference 2250 MHz) and the game clock up to 2045 MHz, where reference sits at 2015 MHz.

All of these cards should offer excellent 1440p and 4K performance, competing with the Best Graphics cards. 

No word on pricing or availability, but at this time, we wouldn't get your hopes up for any great deals.

AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 (Big Navi) are two of the best graphics cards that money can buy right now and rank at the top of our GPU benchmarks. However, the custom models are where the real performance is really at. AMD's partners have launched their personalized iterations today, which are available for purchase at different retailers around the country.

It goes without saying that there is a vast offering of Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 graphics cards on the market now. We've put together a roundup of models whose specifications are available, for those of you who want to know which vendor offers the fastest graphics cards. The graphics cards are ranked them according to their rated clock speeds without taking into consideration their aesthetics, cooling solution or pricing.

It is undoubtedly difficult to find these cards in stock. For your best chance, see our article on how and where to buy a Radeon RX 6800 XT or RX 6800.

Fastest Radeon RX 6800 XT On The Market

The top Radeon RX 6800 XT models come with a 2,110 MHz game clock and 2,350 MHz boost clock. The ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X, Asus Strix LC Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming, Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT SE and Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT stand out from the crowd.

At $769.99, the Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is the least expensive one out of the four. The special edition of Sapphire's model retails for $829.99, while the ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X and Asus Strix LC Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming cost $829.99 and $899.99, respectively.

Fastest Radeon RX 6800 On The Market

With the Radeon RX 6800, the list of speediest models jumps up to seven, which is good since consumers have more options to choose from. The candidates share the same clock speeds, promising a 1,980 MHz game clock and 2,190 MHz boost clock.

Admittedly, retailers haven't listed the majority of the custom Radeon RX 6800 models. Out of the list of seven models, the ASRock Radeon RX 6800 Phantom Gaming D and the Asus TUF Gaming Radeon RX 6800 seem to be the most affordable at $679.99.

If you had hopes of getting a shiny new RDNA 2 graphics card from AMD this upcoming Black Friday, you'll likely be very disappointed. Even though AMD's launch for third-party custom Radeon RX 6000 graphics cards officially occurred today, every single tech store has sold out its entire stock in both aftermarket and reference flavors. That isn't surprising, as some retailers didn't even have stock to begin with. 

Both graphics card manufacturers and some stores have gone to Twitter to share the problems with the RX 6000 series volume. Simply put, just like the Ampere shortages, AMD and its partners are unable to manufacturer enough graphics cards to meet demand.

Most of the recent product launches have been plagued by bots, but that doesn't seem to be the cause of the shortage this time around. In fact, Microcenter says it had zero cards for the launch today. 

If stores order, say, 50,000 units, they are lucky to get a few hundred on shelves in time for the holiday season. Suffice it to say, we probably won't see major volume for the Radeon series until 2021, much like Nvidia said about its own cards.

So what should you do as a gamer? Right now is perhaps one of the worst times to build a system, so if you're a DIYer we would highly recommend you wait until next year to build a new workstation/gaming machine when stock goes back to normal and prices are not over-inflated. 

But, if you're a gamer and desperate to grab anything to get your game on, check out our Black Friday deal guides here, which can help you get together a gaming machine. If you don't mind going with entry-level graphics like an RX 5500 XT, those are still a solid option for a "gaming-capable PC."

It really is a terrible time to build a gaming computer, especially if you were considering purchasing an RX 6800 or RX 6800 XT. If you really need something to game on now, be prepared to make some sacrifices.

AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 officially launched one week ago, joining the best graphics cards and GPU benchmarks hierarchy lists. Today marks the arrival of third-party add-in board (AIB) partner cards. Sort of. Much like Nvidia's RTX 3090, RTX 3080, and RTX 3070, as well as AMD's Ryzen 5000 series CPUs, all of the RX 6800 series cards are sold out. But we received Sapphire's Radeon RX 6800 XT Nitro+ just yesterday, and we're working on running it through our test suite for a full review. Until then, here's the quick unboxing and look at what Sapphire has to offer.

The card itself is quite large, basically matching the longest cards we normally see. It measures 310 x 134.3 x 55.3 mm (12.2 x 5.3 x 2.17 inches), so you'll need plenty of clearance in your case. It's a 2.7-slot design as well, blocking the two adjacent expansion slots on your motherboard.    

What's interesting is that the card actually isn't all that heavy, relatively speaking. It checks in at 1237g, which is less than AMD's reference card, as well as the RTX 3080 Founders Edition.

Sapphire changes up plenty of other aspects of the card design as well. It has three DisplayPort and one HDMI 2.1 outputs, with no USB-C connector. Most people will be happier with this configuration, we think, though it's always good to have other options. The rear IO panel also has plenty of ventilation ports, though with the fins on the heatsink running parallel to the IO bracket, we're not sure how much heat will actually exhaust out the back of the card.

Sapphire says the new design ends up running quieter while delivering better cooling compared to its previous designs. That's probably thanks once again to the new fan design with an integrated rim, though there are notches in the Sapphire fan. The benefit of the improved cooling is that Sapphire can increase the boost clock on the RX 6800 XT to 2360 MHz, with a 350W TBP (Total Board Power). Interestingly, MSI Afterburner and Asus GPU Tweak II both report the boost clock as 2409 MHz on our sample, but then neither utility has been updated for the RX 6800 series.

Compared to the reference 6800 XT, you can easily see how much larger the Sapphire card is. The reference card measures 268 x 107 x 50 mm, so Sapphire's model is about 4cm longer and 2.5cm taller, and just a bit thicker. The reference card also weighs 1505g, so the Nitro+ is 268g lighter. That means less stress on your PCIe slot, though we've seen GPUs in the 1.5kg range for several years at least (e.g., Zotac's Amp! Extreme line).

But you're probably most interested in how the card performs. Unfortunately, that's several days worth of testing, which means we won't have a full review until next week. Until then, we can offer this glimpse of performance courtesy of 3DMark.

That's a bit faster than the reference 6800 XT, as you'd expect considering the difference in TDP and boost clocks. For example, in Port Royal, the reference card scored 9106 in graphics, while the Nitro+ got 9329. But the GPU clocks are more interesting than the score.

The minimum GPU clock during the test sequence on the Sapphire card was 2287 MHz, with a peak clock of 2415 MHz. The reference card ran at 2210-2349 MHz. In general, at 'factory stock' settings, you'll get an extra 100 MHz or so of performance. We'll be looking to see if we can push the card a bit further in our full review.

Of course, the big story remains the continuing GPU shortages. Many were hoping AMD would do better than Nvidia, but it sounds like stock of the AIB partner cards is even worse than we saw with Ampere. As we noted in our RX 6800 XT review, that's not really surprising. Given a choice between producing more Ryzen 5000 CPU cores (80mm square per compute die) and more Navi 21 GPU cores (519mm square), AMD makes far more money off the CPUs and can produce more of them. Unless TSMC can start producing more wafers for all of its partners, the shortages could continue for many more months.

Following PowerColor's official announcement of the Red Devil Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800, VideoCardz has shared renders of what we can expect from the vendor's Red Dragon series.

In regards to hierarchy, PowerColor's Red Dragon-branded graphics cards are a notch below the Red Devil. Therefore, the offerings typically come with a more modest design and a factory overclock. As the renders show, the Red Dragon Radeon RX 6800 XT features less flamboyant aesthetics. There are zero traces of RGB lighting on the shroud, which will surely appease consumers that loathe having a Christmas tree inside their PCs.

Given Big Navi's considerable power requirements, the Red Dragon series will still lean on a triple-fan cooling solution to remain cool. The small cooling fan in the center is in the company of two larger cooling fans - one on each side. 

For the moment, the Red Dragon Radeon RX 6800 XT's dimensions are unknown, but it looks just as long as the Red Devil iteration. While the latter occupies up to three PCI slots, the Red Dragon seems to adhere to a 2.5-slot design. The difference in thickness owes to the fact that the Red Dragon doesn't come with an aggressive factory overclock compared to the Red Devil, and therefore, it can get away with a smaller cooler.

The Red Dragon Radeon RX 6800 XT also appears to come with a metal backplate and a dual-BIOS switch. In addition to the PCIe slot, the graphics card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

The display outputs on the Red Dragon Radeon RX 6800 XT differ from AMD's reference design and the Red Devil. The latter two provide one HDMI 2.1 port, two DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, and a single USB Type-C port. On the Red Dragon, PowerColor decided to dispose of the USB Type-C port in favor of another DisplayPort 1.4 output, bringing the total to three.

AMD's partners have the green light to launch their custom models tomorrow, so we'll likely see both the Red Devil and Red Dragon invade the hardware shelves. We can only hope that the supply is better than the disappointment with the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 reference edition.

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800 have arrived, joining the ranks of the best graphics cards and making some headway into the top positions in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. Nvidia has had a virtual stranglehold on the GPU market for cards priced $500 or more, going back to at least the GTX 700-series in 2013. That's left AMD to mostly compete in the high-end, mid-range, and budget GPU markets. "No longer!" says Team Red. 

Big Navi, aka Navi 21, aka RDNA2, has arrived, bringing some impressive performance gains. AMD also finally joins the ray tracing fray, both with its PC desktop graphics cards and the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles. How do AMD's latest GPUs stack up to the competition, and could this be AMD's GPU equivalent of the Ryzen debut of 2017? That's what we're here to find out.

We've previously discussed many aspects of today's launch, including details of the RDNA2 architecture, the GPU specifications, features, and more. Now, it's time to take all the theoretical aspects and lay some rubber on the track. If you want to know more about the finer details of RDNA2, we'll cover that as well. If you're just here for the benchmarks, skip down a few screens because, hell yeah, do we have some benchmarks. We've got our standard testbed using an 'ancient' Core i9-9900K CPU, but we wanted something a bit more for the fastest graphics cards on the planet. We've added more benchmarks on both Core i9-10900K and Ryzen 9 5900X. With the arrival of Ryzen 5000, running AMD GPUs with AMD CPUs finally means no compromises.

Update: We've added additional results to the CPU scaling charts. This review was originally published on November 18, 2020, but we'll continue to update related details as needed.

AMD Radeon RX 6800 Series: Specifications and Architecture 

Let's start with a quick look at the specifications, which have been mostly known for at least a month. We've also included the previous generation RX 5700 XT as a reference point. 

When AMD fans started talking about "Big Navi" as far back as last year, this is pretty much what they hoped to see. AMD has just about doubled down on every important aspect of its architecture, plus adding in a huge amount of L3 cache and Ray Accelerators to handle ray tracing ray/triangle intersection calculations. Clock speeds are also higher, and — spoiler alert! — the 6800 series cards actually exceed the Game Clock and can even go past the Boost Clock in some cases. Memory capacity has doubled, ROPs have doubled, TFLOPS has more than doubled, and the die size is also more than double.

Support for ray tracing is probably the most visible new feature, but RDNA2 also supports Variable Rate Shading (VRS), mesh shaders, and everything else that's part of the DirectX 12 Ultimate spec. There are other tweaks to the architecture, like support for 8K AV1 decode and 8K HEVC encode. But a lot of the underlying changes don't show up as an easily digestible number.

For example, AMD says it reworked much of the architecture to focus on a high speed design. That's where the greater than 2GHz clocks come from, but those aren't just fantasy numbers. Playing around with overclocking a bit — and the software to do this is still missing, so we had to stick with AMD's built-in overclocking tools — we actually hit clocks of over 2.5GHz. Yeah. I saw the supposed leaks before the launch claiming 2.4GHz and 2.5GHz and thought, "There's no way." I was wrong.

AMD's cache hierarchy is arguably one of the biggest changes. Besides a shared 1MB L1 cache for each cluster of 20 dual-CUs, there's a 4MB L2 cache and a whopping 128MB L3 cache that AMD calls the Infinity Cache. It also ties into the Infinity Fabric, but fundamentally, it helps optimize memory access latency and improve the effective bandwidth. Thanks to the 128MB cache, the framebuffer mostly ends up being cached, which drastically cuts down memory access. AMD says the effective bandwidth of the GDDR6 memory ends up being 119 percent higher than what the raw bandwidth would suggest.

The large cache also helps to reduce power consumption, which all ties into AMD's targeted 50 percent performance per Watt improvements. This doesn't mean power requirements stayed the same — RX 6800 has a slightly higher TBP (Total Board Power) than the RX 5700 XT, and the 6800 XT and upcoming 6900 XT are back at 300W (like the Vega 64). However, AMD still comes in at a lower power level than Nvidia's competing GPUs, which is a bit of a change of pace from previous generation architectures.

It's not entirely clear how AMD's Ray Accelerators stack up against Nvidia's RT cores. Much like Nvidia, AMD is putting one Ray Accelerator into each CU. (It seems we're missing an acronym. Should we call the ray accelerators RA? The sun god, casting down rays! Sorry, been up all night, getting a bit loopy here...) The thing is, Nvidia is on its second-gen RT cores that are supposed to be around 1.7X as fast as its first-gen RT cores. AMD's Ray Accelerators are supposedly 10 times as fast as doing the RT calculations via shader hardware, which is similar to what Nvidia said with its Turing RT cores. In practice, it looks as though Nvidia will maintain a lead in ray tracing performance.

That doesn't even get into the whole DLSS and Tensor core discussion. AMD's RDNA2 chips can do FP16 via shaders, but they're still a far cry from the computational throughput of Tensor cores. That may or may not matter, as perhaps the FP16 throughput is enough for real-time inference to do something akin to DLSS. AMD has talked about FidelityFX Super Resolution, which it's working on with Microsoft, but it's not available yet, and of course, no games are shipping with it yet either. Meanwhile, DLSS is in a couple of dozen games now, and it's also in Unreal Engine, which means uptake of DLSS could explode over the coming year.

Anyway, that's enough of the architectural talk for now. Let's meet the actual cards.

Meet the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 Reference Cards 

We've already posted an unboxing of the RX 6800 cards, which you can see in the above video. The design is pretty traditional, building on previous cards like the Radeon VII. There's no blower this round, which is probably for the best if you're worried about noise levels. Otherwise, you get a similar industrial design and aesthetic with both the reference 6800 and 6800 XT. The only real change is that the 6800 XT has a fatter heatsink and weighs 115g more, which helps it cope with the higher TBP.

Both cards are triple fan designs, using custom 77mm fans that have an integrated rim. We saw the same style of fan on many of the RTX 30-series GPUs, and it looks like the engineers have discovered a better way to direct airflow. Both cards have a Radeon logo that lights up in red, but it looks like the 6800 XT might have an RGB logo — it's not exposed in software yet, but maybe that will come.

Otherwise, you get dual 8-pin PEG power connections, which might seem a bit overkill on the 6800 — it's a 250W card, after all, why should it need the potential for up to 375W of power? But we'll get into the power stuff later. If you're into collecting hardware boxes, the 6800 XT box is also larger and a bit nicer, but there's no real benefit otherwise.

The one potential concern with AMD's reference design is the video ports. There are two DisplayPort outputs, a single HDMI 2.1 connector, and a USB Type-C port. It's possible to use four displays with the cards, but the most popular gaming displays still use DisplayPort, and very few options exist for the Type-C connector. There also aren't any HDMI 2.1 monitors that I'm aware of, unless you want to use a TV for your monitor. But those will eventually come. Anyway, if you want a different port selection, keep an eye on the third party cards, as I'm sure they'll cover other configurations.

And now, on to the benchmarks.

Radeon RX 6800 Series Test Systems 

It seems AMD is having a microprocessor renaissance of sorts right now. First, it has Zen 3 coming out and basically demolishing Intel in every meaningful way in the CPU realm. Sure, Intel can compete on a per-core basis … but only up to 10-core chips without moving into HEDT territory. The new RX 6800 cards might just be the equivalent of AMD's Ryzen CPU launch. This time, AMD isn't making any apologies. It intends to go up against Nvidia's best. And of course, if we're going to test the best GPUs, maybe we ought to look at the best CPUs as well?

For this launch, we have three test systems. First is our old and reliable Core i9-9900K setup, which we still use as the baseline and for power testing. We're adding both AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and Intel Core i9-10900K builds to flesh things out. In retrospect, trying to do two new testbeds may have been a bit too ambitious, as we have to test each GPU on each testbed. We had to cut a bunch of previous-gen cards from our testing, and the hardware varies a bit among the PCs.

For the AMD build, we've got an MSI X570 Godlike motherboard, which is one of only a handful that supports AMD's new Smart Memory Access technology. Patriot supplied us with two kits of single bank DDR4-4000 memory, which means we have 4x8GB instead of our normal 2x16GB configuration. We also have the Patriot Viper VP4100 2TB SSD holding all of our games. Remember when 1TB used to feel like a huge amount of SSD storage? And then Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) happened, sucking down over 200GB. Which is why we need 2TB drives.

Meanwhile, the Intel LGA1200 PC has an Asus Maximum XII Extreme motherboard, 2x16GB DDR4-3600 HyperX memory, and a 2TB XPG SX8200 Pro SSD. (I'm not sure if it's the old 'fast' version or the revised 'slow' variant, but it shouldn't matter for these GPU tests.) Full specs are in the table below.

Anyway, the slightly slower RAM might be a bit of a handicap on the Intel PCs, but this isn't a CPU review — we just wanted to use the two fastest CPUs, and time constraints and lack of duplicate hardware prevented us from going full apples-to-apples. The internal comparisons among GPUs on each testbed will still be consistent. Frankly, there's not a huge difference between the CPUs when it comes to gaming performance, especially at 1440p and 4K.

Besides the testbeds, I've also got a bunch of additional gaming tests. First is the suite of nine games we've used on recent GPU reviews like the RTX 30-series launch. We've done some 'bonus' tests on each of the Founders Edition reviews, but we're shifting gears this round. We're adding four new/recent games that will be tested on each of the CPU testbeds: Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Dirt 5, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Watch Dogs Legion — and we've enabled DirectX Raytracing (DXR) on Dirt 5 and Watch Dogs Legion.

There are some definite caveats, however. First, the beta DXR support in Dirt 5 doesn't look all that different from the regular mode, and it's an AMD promoted game. Coincidence? Maybe, but it's probably more likely that AMD is working with Codemasters to ensure it runs suitably on the RX 6800 cards. The other problem is probably just a bug, but AMD's RX 6800 cards seem to render the reflections in Watch Dogs Legion with a bit less fidelity.

Besides the above, we have a third suite of ray tracing tests: nine games (or benchmarks of future games) and 3DMark Port Royal. Of note, Wolfenstein Youngblood with ray tracing (which uses Nvidia's pre-VulkanRT extensions) wouldn't work on the AMD cards, and neither would the Bright Memory Infinite benchmark. Also, Crysis Remastered had some rendering errors with ray tracing enabled (on the nanosuits). Again, that's a known bug.

Radeon RX 6800 Gaming Performance

We've retested all of the RTX 30-series cards on our Core i9-9900K testbed … but we didn't have time to retest the RTX 20-series or RX 5700 series GPUs. The system has been updated with the latest 457.30 Nvidia drivers and AMD's pre-launch RX 6800 drivers, as well as Windows 10 20H2 (the October 2020 update to Windows). It looks like the combination of drivers and/or Windows updates may have dropped performance by about 1-2 percent overall, though there are other variables in play. Anyway, the older GPUs are included mostly as a point of reference.

We have 1080p, 1440p, and 4K ultra results for each of the games, as well as the combined average of the nine titles. We're going to dispense with the commentary for individual games right now (because of a time crunch), but we'll discuss the overall trends below.

9 Game Average

Borderlands 3

The Division 2

Far Cry 5

Final Fantasy XIV

Forza Horizon 4

Metro Exodus

Red Dead Redemption 2

Shadow Of The TombRaider

Strange Brigade

AMD's new GPUs definitely make a good showing in traditional rasterization games. At 4K, Nvidia's 3080 leads the 6800 XT by three percent, but it's not a clean sweep — AMD comes out on top in Borderlands 3, Far Cry 5, and Forza Horizon 4. Meanwhile, Nvidia gets modest wins in The Division 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Metro Exodus, Red Dead Redemption 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and the largest lead is in Strange Brigade. But that's only at the highest resolution, where AMD's Infinity Cache may not be quite as effective.

Dropping to 1440p, the RTX 3080 and 6800 XT are effectively tied — again, AMD wins several games, Nvidia wins others, but the average performance is the same. At 1080p, AMD even pulls ahead by two percent overall. Not that we really expect most gamers forking over $650 or $700 or more on a graphics card to stick with a 1080p display, unless it's a 240Hz or 360Hz model.

Flipping over to the vanilla RX 6800 and the RTX 3070, AMD does even better. On average, the RX 6800 leads by 11 percent at 4K ultra, nine percent at 1440p ultra, and seven percent at 1080p ultra. Here the 8GB of GDDR6 memory on the RTX 3070 simply can't keep pace with the 16GB of higher clocked memory — and the Infinity Cache — that AMD brings to the party. The best Nvidia can do is one or two minor wins (e.g., Far Cry 5 at 1080p, where the GPUs are more CPU limited) and slightly higher minimum fps in FFXIV and Strange Brigade.

But as good as the RX 6800 looks against the RTX 3070, we prefer the RX 6800 XT from AMD. It only costs $70 more, which is basically the cost of one game and a fast food lunch. Or put another way, it's 12 percent more money, for 12 percent more performance at 1080p, 14 percent more performance at 1440p, and 16 percent better 4K performance. You also get AMD's Rage Mode pseudo-overclocking (really just increased power limits).

Radeon RX 6800 CPU Scaling and Overclocking

Our traditional gaming suite is due for retirement, but we didn't want to toss it out at the same time as a major GPU launch — it might look suspicious. We didn't have time to do a full suite of CPU scaling tests, but we did run 13 games on the five most recent high-end/extreme GPUs on our three test PCs. Here's the next series of charts, again with commentary below. 

13-Game Average

Assassin's Creed Valhalla

Borderlands 3

The Division 2

Dirt 5

Far Cry 5

Final Fantasy XIV

Forza Horizon 4

Horizon Zero Dawn

Metro Exodus

Red Dead Redemption 2

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Strange Brigade

Watch Dogs Legion

These charts are a bit busy, perhaps, with five GPUs and three CPUs each, plus overclocking. Take your time. We won't judge. Nine of the games are from the existing suite, and the trends noted earlier basically continue.

Looking just at the four new games, AMD gets a big win in Assassin's Creed Valhalla (it's an AMD promotional title, so future updates may change the standings). Dirt 5 is also a bit of an odd duck for Nvidia, with the RTX 3090 actually doing quite badly on the Ryzen 9 5900X and Core i9-10900K for some reason. Horizon Zero Dawn ends up favoring Nvidia quite a bit (but not the 3070), and lastly, we have Watch Dogs Legion, which favors Nvidia a bit (more at 4K), but it might have some bugs that are currently helping AMD's performance.

Overall, the 3090 still maintains its (gold-plated) crown, which you'd sort of expect from a $1,500 graphics card that you can't even buy right now. The RX 6800 XT mixes it up with the RTX 3080, coming out slightly ahead overall at 1080p and 1440p but barely trailing at 4K. Meanwhile, the RX 6800 easily outperforms the RTX 3070 across the suite, though a few games and/or lower resolutions do go the other way.

Oddly, my test systems ended up with the Core i9-10900K and even the Core i9-9900K often leading the Ryzen 9 5900X. The 3090 did best with the 5900X at 1080p, but then went to the 10900K at 1440p and both the 9900K and 10900K at 4K. The other GPUs also swap places, though usually the difference between CPU is pretty negligible (and a few results just look a bit buggy).

It may be that the beta BIOS for the MSI X570 board (which enables Smart Memory Access) still needs more tuning, or that the differences in memory came into play. I didn't have time to check performance without enabling the large PCIe BAR feature either. But these are mostly very small differences, and any of the three CPUs tested here are sufficient for gaming.

As for overclocking, it's pretty much what you'd expect. Increase the power limit, GPU core clocks, and GDDR6 clocks and you get more performance. It's not a huge improvement, though. Overall, the RX 6800 XT was 4-6 percent faster when overclocked (the higher results were at 4K). The RX 6800 did slightly better, improving by 6 percent at 1080p and 1440p, and 8 percent at 4K. GPU clocks were also above 2.5GHz for most of the testing of the RX 6800, and it's default lower boost clock gave it a bit more room for improvement.

Radeon RX 6800 Series Ray Tracing Performance 

So far, most of the games haven't had ray tracing enabled. But that's the big new feature for RDNA2 and the Radeon RX 6000 series, so we definitely wanted to look into ray tracing performance more. Here's where things take a turn for the worse because ray tracing is very demanding, and Nvidia has DLSS to help overcome some of the difficulty by doing AI-enhanced upscaling. AMD can't do DLSS since it's Nvidia proprietary tech, which means to do apples-to-apples comparisons, we have to turn off DLSS on the Nvidia cards.

That's not really fair because DLSS 2.0 and later actually look quite nice, particularly when using the Balanced or Quality modes. What's more, native 4K gaming with ray tracing enabled is going to be a stretch for just about any current GPU, including the RTX 3090 — unless you're playing a lighter game like Pumpkin Jack. Anyway, we've looked at ray tracing performance with DLSS in a bunch of these games, and performance improves by anywhere from 20 percent to as much as 80 percent (or more) in some cases. DLSS may not always look better, but a slight drop in visual fidelity for a big boost in framerates is usually hard to pass up.

We'll have to see if AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution can match DLSS in the future, and how many developers make use of it. Considering AMD's RDNA2 GPUs are also in the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X, we wouldn't count AMD out, but for now, Nvidia has the technology lead. Which brings us to native ray tracing performance.

10-game DXR Average

3DMark Port Royal

Boundary Benchmark

Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War

Control

Crysis Remastered

Dirt 5

Fortnite

Metro Exodus

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

WatchDogs

Well. So much for AMD's comparable performance. AMD's RX 6800 series can definitely hold its own against Nvidia's RTX 30-series GPUs in traditional rasterization modes. Turn on ray tracing, even without DLSS, and things can get ugly. AMD's RX 6800 XT does tend to come out ahead of the RTX 3070, but then it should — it costs more, and it has twice the VRAM. But again, DLSS (which is supported in seven of the ten games/tests we used) would turn the tables, and even the DLSS quality mode usually improves performance by 20-40 percent (provided the game isn't bottlenecked elsewhere).

Ignoring the often-too-low framerates, overall, the RTX 3080 is nearly 25 percent faster than the RX 6800 XT at 1080p, and that lead only grows at 1440p (26 percent) and 4K (30 percent). The RTX 3090 is another 10-15 percent ahead of the 3080, which is very much out of AMD's reach if you care at all about ray tracing performance — ignoring price, of course.

The RTX 3070 comes out with a 10-15 percent lead over the RX 6800, but individual games can behave quite differently. Take the new Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. It supports multiple ray tracing effects, and even the RTX 3070 holds a significant 30 percent lead over the 6800 XT at 1080p and 1440p. Boundary, Control, Crysis Remastered, and (to a lesser extent) Fortnite also have the 3070 leading the AMD cards. But Dirt 5, Metro Exodus, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Watch Dogs Legion have the 3070 falling behind the 6800 XT at least, and sometimes the RX 6800 as well.

There is a real question about whether the GPUs are doing the same work, though. We haven't had time to really dig into the image quality, but Watch Dogs Legion for sure doesn't look the same on AMD compared to Nvidia with ray tracing enabled. Check out these comparisons:

Apparently Ubisoft knows about the problem. In a statement to us, it said, "We are aware of the issue and are working to address it in a patch in December." But right now, there's a good chance that AMD's performance in Watch Dogs Legion at least is higher than it should be with ray tracing enabled.

Overall, AMD's ray tracing performance looks more like Nvidia's RTX 20-series GPUs than the new Ampere GPUs, which was sort of what we expected. This is first gen ray tracing for AMD, after all, while Nvidia is on round two. Frankly, looking at games like Fortnite, where ray traced shadows, reflections, global illumination, and ambient occlusion are available, we probably need fourth gen ray tracing hardware before we'll be hitting playable framerates with all the bells and whistles. And we'll likely still need DLSS, or AMD's Super Resolution, to hit acceptable frame rates at 4K.

Radeon RX 6800 Series: Power, Temps, Clocks, and Fans 

We've got our usual collection of power, temperature, clock speed, and fan speed testing using Metro Exodus running at 1440p, and FurMark running at 1600x900 in stress test mode. While Metro is generally indicative of how other games behave, we loop the benchmark five times, and there are dips where the test restarts and the GPU gets to rest for a few seconds. FurMark, on the other hand, is basically a worst-case scenario for power and thermals. We collect the power data using Powenetics software and hardware, which uses GPU-Z to monitor GPU temperatures, clocks, and fan speeds. 

GPU Total Power

AMD basically sticks to the advertised 300W TBP on the 6800 XT with Metro Exodus, and even comes in slightly below the 250W TBP on the RX 6800. Enabling Rage Mode on the 6800 XT obviously changes things, and you can also see our power figures for the manual overclocks. Basically, Big Navi can match RTX 3080 when it comes to power if you relax increase the power limits.

FurMark pushes power on both cards a bit higher, which is pretty typical. If you check the line graphs, you can see our 6800 XT OC starts off at nearly 360W in FurMark before it throttles down a bit and ends up at closer to 350W. There are some transient power spikes that can go a bit higher as well, which we'll discuss more later. 

GPU Core Clocks

Looking at the GPU clocks, AMD is pushing some serious MHz for a change. This is now easily the highest clocked GPU we've ever seen, and when we manually overclocked the RX 6800, we were able to hit a relatively stable 2550 MHz. That's pretty damn impressive, especially considering power use isn't higher than Nvidia's GPUs. Both cards also clear their respective Game Clocks and Boost Clocks, which is a nice change of pace. 

GPU Core Temp

GPU Fan Speed

Temperatures and fan speeds are directly related to each other. Ramp of fan speed — which we did for the overclocked 6800 cards — and you can get lower temperatures, at the cost of noise levels. We're still investigating overclocking as well, as there's a bit of odd behavior so far. The cards will run fine for a while, and then suddenly drop into a weak performance mode where performance might be half the normal level, or even worse. That's probably due to the lack of overclocking support in MSI Afterburner for the time being. By default, though, the cards have a good balance of cooling with noise. We'll get exact SPL readings later (still benchmarking a few other bits), but it's interesting that all of the new GPUs (RTX 30-series and RX 6000) have lower fan speeds than the previous generation. 

We observed some larger-than-expected transient power spikes with the RX 6800 XT, but to be absolutely clear, these transient power spikes shouldn’t be an issue — particularly if you don’t plan on overclocking. However, it is important to keep these peak power measurements in mind when you spec out your power supply.

Transient power spikes are common but are usually of such short duration (in the millisecond range) that our power measurement gear, which records measurements at roughly a 100ms granularity, can’t catch them. Typically you’d need a quality oscilloscope to measure transient power spikes accurately, but we did record several spikes even with our comparatively relaxed polling.

The charts above show total power consumption of the RX 6800XT at stock settings, overclocked, and with Rage Mode enabled. In terms of transient power spikes, we don’t see any issues at all with Metro Exodus, but we see brief peaks during Furmark of 425W with the manually overclocked config, 373W with Rage Mode, and 366W with the stock setup. Again, these peaks were measured within one 100ms polling cycle, which means they could certainly trip a PSU's over power protection if you're running at close to max power delivery.

To drill down on the topic, we split out our power measurements from each power source, which you’ll see above. The RX 6800 XT draws power from the PCIe slot and two eight-pin PCIe connectors (PEG1/PEG2). 

Power consumption over the PCIe slot is well managed during all the tests (as a general rule of thumb, this value shouldn’t exceed 71W, and the 6800 XT is well below that mark). We also didn’t catch any notable transient spikes during our real-world Metro Exodus gaming test at either stock or overclocked settings.

However, during our FurMark test at stock settings, we see a power consumption spike to 206W on one of the PCIe cables for a very brief period (we picked up a single measurement of the spike during each run). After overclocking, we measured a simultaneous spike of 231W on one cable and 206W on the other for a period of one measurement taken at a 100ms polling rate. Naturally, those same spikes are much less pronounced with Rage Mode overclocking, measuring only 210W and 173W. A PCIe cable can easily deliver ~225W safely (even with 18AWG), so these transient power spikes aren’t going to melt connectors, wires, or harm the GPU in any way — they would need to be of much longer duration to have that type of impact.  

But the transient spikes are noteworthy because some CPUs, like the Intel Core i9-9900K and i9-10900K, can consume more than 300W, adding to the total system power draw. If you plan on overclocking, it would be best to factor the RX6800 XT's transient power consumption into the total system power.   

Power spikes of 5-10ms can trip the overcurrent protection (OCP) on some multi-rail power supplies because they tend to have relatively low OCP thresholds. As usual, a PSU with a single 12V rail tends to be the best solution because they have much better OCP mechanisms, and you’re also better off using dedicated PCIe cables for each 8-pin connector.  

Radeon RX 6800 Series: Prioritizing Rasterization Over Ray Tracing 

It's been a long time since AMD had a legitimate contender for the GPU throne. The last time AMD was this close … well, maybe Hawaii (Radeon R9 290X) was competitive in performance at least, while using quite a bit more power. That's sort of been the standard disclaimer for AMD GPUs for quite a few years. Yes, AMD has some fast GPUs, but they tend to use a lot of power. The other alternative was best illustrated by one of the best budget GPUs of the past couple of years: AMD isn't the fastest, but dang, look how cheap the RX 570 is! With the Radeon RX 6800 series, AMD is mostly able to put questions of power and performance behind it. Mostly.

The RX 6800 XT ends up just a bit slower than the RTX 3080 overall in traditional rendering, but it costs less, and it uses a bit less power (unless you kick on Rage Mode, in which case it's a tie). There are enough games where AMD comes out ahead that you can make a legitimate case for AMD having the better card. Plus, 16GB of VRAM is definitely helpful in a few of the games we tested — or at least, 8GB isn't enough in some cases. The RX 6800 does even better against the RTX 3070, generally winning most benchmarks by a decent margin. Of course, it costs more, but if you have to pick between the 6800 and 3070, we'd spend the extra $80.

The problem is, that's a slippery slope. At that point, we'd also spend an extra $70 to go to the RX 6800 XT … and $50 more for the RTX 3080, with its superior ray tracing and support for DLSS, is easy enough to justify. Now we're looking at a $700 graphics card instead of a $500 graphics card, but at least it's a decent jump in performance.

Of course, you can't buy any of the Nvidia RTX 30-series GPUs right now. Well, you can, if you get lucky. It's not that Nvidia isn't producing cards; it's just not producing enough cards to satisfy the demand. And, let's be real for a moment: There's not a chance in hell AMD's RX 6800 series are going to do any better. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but these cards are going to sell out. You know, just like every other high-end GPU and CPU launched in the past couple of months. (Update: Yup, every RX 6800 series GPU sold out within minutes.)

What's more, AMD is better off producing more Ryzen 5000 series CPUs than Radeon RX 6000 GPUs. Just look at the chip sizes and other components. A Ryzen 9 5900X has two 80mm square compute die with a 12nm IO die in a relatively compact package, and AMD is currently selling every single one of those CPUs for $550 — or $800 for the 5950X. The Navi 21 GPU, by comparison, is made on the same TSMC N7 wafers, and it uses 519mm square, plus it needs GDDR6 memory, a beefy cooler and fan, and all sorts of other components. And it still only sells for roughly the same price as the 5900X.

Which isn't to say you shouldn't want to buy an RX 6800 card. It's really going to come down to personal opinions on how important ray tracing will become in the coming years. The consoles now support the technology, but even the Xbox Series X can't keep up with an RX 6800, never mind an RTX 3080. Plus, while some games like Control make great use of ray tracing effects, in many other games, the ray tracing could be disabled, and most people wouldn't really miss it. We're still quite a ways off from anything approaching Hollywood levels of fidelity rendered in real time.

In terms of features, Nvidia still comes out ahead. Faster ray tracing, plus DLSS — and whatever else those Tensor cores might be used for in the future — seems like the safer bet long term. But there are still a lot of games forgoing ray tracing effects, or games where ray tracing doesn't make a lot of sense considering how it causes frame rates to plummet. Fortnite in creative mode might be fine for ray tracing, but I can't imagine many competitive players being willing to tank performance just for some eye candy. The same goes for Call of Duty. But then there's Cyberpunk 2077 looming, which could be the killer game that ray tracing hardware needs.

We asked earlier if Big Navi, aka RDNA2, was AMD's Ryzen moment for its GPUs. In a lot of ways, it's exactly that. The first generation Ryzen CPUs brought 8-core CPUs to mainstream platforms, with aggressive prices that Intel had avoided. But the first generation Zen CPUs and motherboards were raw and had some issues, and it wasn't until Zen 2 that AMD really started winning key matchups, and Zen 3 finally has AMD in the lead. Perhaps it's better to say that Navi, in general, is AMD trying to repeat what it did on the CPU side of things.

RX 6800 (Navi 21) is literally a bigger, enhanced version of last year's Navi 10 GPUs. It's up to twice the CUs, twice the memory, and is at least a big step closer to feature parity with Nvidia now. If you can find a Radeon RX 6800 or RX 6800 XT in stock any time before 2021, it's definitely worth considering. RX 6800 and Big Navi aren't priced particularly aggressively, but they do slot in nicely just above and below Nvidia's competing RTX 3070 and 3080.

A few days ago, Chinese overclocker Takukou pushed an RX 6800 XT to a blisteringly fast 2.8 Ghz on liquid nitrogen (LN2). Allowing AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT to hit an overall 3dMark Fire Strike score of 48,890 and a graphics score of 61,831. Marking it the fastest GPU in the world for now.

It is remarkable to see how easily AMD's RDNA2 architecture scales with extra cooling, and this is just with the reference RX 6800 XT design on LN2. Hopefully, with more powerful AIB partner cards coming soon, we'll see even higher frequencies, possibly even a 3 Ghz card. Four years ago Nvidia's GTX 1060 managed to break the 3 Ghz barrier under LN2, it would be cool to see the same happen with a GPU from the red team.

And this isn't the fastest card coming from AMD this year, the Radeon RX 6900 XT is coming soon and should overtake the 6800 XT with a world record fire strike score under LN2. The only world record it might struggle with is breaking the 3 Ghz barrier. If Pascal has taught us anything, it's that the mid-range cards with fewer cores can clock the highest, so we'll have to wait and see what AMD's most powerful GPU can do!