AMD's Dual-GPU, Apple-Only Graphics Card Bests RTX 4080 in Head-to-Head PC Matchup

News
By
Published

Overclocker gets Radeon Pro W6800X Duo running on a PC

AMD Radeon Pro W6800X Duo
AMD Radeon Pro W6800X Duo (Image credit: Roman Hartung/YouTube)

It's a pity that the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo didn't make it outside Apple's ecosystem. Given its latest performance show, the dual Navi 21-based offering from AMD would rival the best graphics cards on the market.

The Radeon Pro W6800X Duo features not one but two Navi 21 (Sienna Cichlid) dies. They communicate with each other via AMD's Infinity Fabric interconnect. Unfortunately, AMD didn't let the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo leverage the full Navi 21 silicon. Instead, the chipmaker disabled 20 CUs (compute units) from each Navi 21, leaving the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo with just 60 CUs or 3,840 SPs (stream processors). Each Navi 21 dies also arrives with 32GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit memory interface and 128MB of Infinity Cache.

Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
News Editor, RAM Reviewer & SSD Technician

Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

17 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bit_user
    Kudos to 3DMark for still supporting multi-GPU and obviously props to der8eur for his curiosity and ingenuity.

    I wonder if a dual RX 6900 XT could've even bested a RTX 4090. That'd be 33% more CU's. If it scaled really linearly, then it could just squeak past the 27% margin held by the Nvidia card.
    Reply
  • newtechldtech
    This does not outperform anything .. and should be compared against Nvidia SLI setup.
    Reply
  • DaveLTX
    newtechldtech said:
    This does not outperform anything .. and should be compared against Nvidia SLI setup.
    Are you aware Nvidia has killed SLI?

    I'm not sure how you can compare if you cant do SLI
    Reply
  • YouFilthyHippo
    If this card is not available natively for a standard desktop, then how did this person find drivers for it?
    Reply
  • bit_user
    YouFilthyHippo said:
    If this card is not available natively for a standard desktop, then how did this person find drivers for it?
    It must just work with the normal AMD drivers. Either that or it was running on Linux, under Wine - but I seriously doubt that.

    I'd hazard a guess that the software sees it as two RX 6800 GPUs on a PCI bridge, with a Crossfire link between them.
    Reply
  • blppt
    "I'd hazard a guess that the software sees it as two RX 6800 GPUs on a PCI bridge, with a Crossfire link between them. "

    I tend to doubt it is using CFX technology, which never worked on Mac that I can recall, OGL or Metal. It might actually be seen as one gpu.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    YouFilthyHippo said:
    If this card is not available natively for a standard desktop, then how did this person find drivers for it?
    Towards the end of the video he said he got advice to get the bootcamp drivers from Apple's website which is what ended up allowing the testing he was able to complete.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    thestryker said:
    Towards the end of the video he said he got advice to get the bootcamp drivers from Apple's website which is what ended up allowing the testing he was able to complete.
    Ah, so those are the drivers you use inside a Windows VM, on a x86 Mac? Kinda weird that they'd work in Windows running natively.
    Reply
  • WilliamRJK
    No, the drivers you use to run native windows on a mac pro as multiboot. Windows is a Apple supported OS on all Intel Mac hardware.
    Reply
  • Elusive Ruse
    Damn, does it mean Apple paid AMD enough money to stop them from releasing this on PC even if it meant it would rival Nvidia's high-end products? Sheeeeiiiittt!
    Reply