AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Roundup: ASRock, Asus, and Sapphire Reviewed

Makaveli

Splendid
Canadian pricing for these cards. Asrock from newegg.ca and the last two from canada computers.

ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi Gaming $1499

SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 6800 XT $1149

ASUS ROG STRIX LC Radeon RX 6800 XT $1299


And for the money Asus is asking for this card, they could have alteast sleeved those fan cables its mess. For $1000+ asking price kinda of a slap in the face.
 
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Jan 20, 2021
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Your testing methodology is flawed.
The memory should not be overclocked in these cards.
These cards show much better results once you push the GPU to the max & leave the memory at stock.
It seems that you & all the other testers I have come to respect in almost 2 decades of reading tests & benchmarks , have become fixated on maxing the mem to the point of "no crush" without even comparing the results.
I hope you still have at least one of the cards at hand to make 1 more test, you will see that stock mem@2000mhz + GPU@2600mhz gets much better results than mem@2140mhz + GPU@2600mhz .

I am active on a different language forum & a local system builder/fine tuner corroborated these results with several different 6800XT cards.
( he is the one that Identified this issue , I don't own such a card at the moment)
He is now testing a 6900XT .

As a bonus , once you leave the memory at stock you get a few extra watts for higher gpu oc.

I don't care that much about the actual value of the specific cards ( definitely not at current pricing ) it is however very important for me to make sure you testing methodology isn't flawed.

I seriously hope you still have one of the cards for one more test .
 
Your testing methodology is flawed.
The memory should not be overclocked in these cards.
These cards show much better results once you push the GPU to the max & leave the memory at stock.
It seems that you & all the other testers I have come to respect in almost 2 decades of reading tests & benchmarks , have become fixated on maxing the mem to the point of "no crush" without even comparing the results.
I hope you still have at least one of the cards at hand to make 1 more test, you will see that stock mem@2000mhz + GPU@2600mhz gets much better results than mem@2140mhz + GPU@2600mhz .

I am active on a different language forum & a local system builder/fine tuner corroborated these results with several different 6800XT cards.
( he is the one that Identified this issue , I don't own such a card at the moment)
He is now testing a 6900XT .

As a bonus , once you leave the memory at stock you get a few extra watts for higher gpu oc.

I don't care that much about the actual value of the specific cards ( definitely not at current pricing ) it is however very important for me to make sure you testing methodology isn't flawed.

I seriously hope you still have one of the cards for one more test .
Define "much better results" for me, please. The overclocking is not supposed to be the major focus, because silicon lottery and other elements come into play. Frankly, I wouldn't bother overclocking most GPUs -- it's just not enough of a gain to warrant the added power and potential stress on the hardware. Anyway, a 7.5% memory OC isn't much, and neither is the 3-7% increase in performance I measured with the 'max' OC I achieved.

Dropping the memory OC and trying for a slightly higher core OC is totally within the parameters of what can be done, and may improve performance more than what I've shown. More effort on tuning voltages, fan speeds, etc. could also improve performance. Without physically modding the cards, though, I strongly doubt you'll see more than a 5% improvement over what I achieved, which is a 10% potential total improvement. In practice, I'm sure it would be far less than that -- probably only a 1-2% difference from my max core + max RAM OC results. And there's a very good chance that, despite what you're positing, overclocking the memory actually does improve performance.

Let me give you just one example, because based on this I see no reason to bother retesting anything more.

SettingAsus Strix LC RX 6800 XT OCAsus Strix LC RX 6800 XT OC StockRAMAsus Strix LC RX 6800 XT
Metro Exodus1080p Ultra
125.09​
123.2​
119.46​
1440p Ultra
105.43​
103.69​
99.77​
4k Ultra
69.44​
68.52​
64.81​

So, in at least one game, using the same card in all three cases (the Asus Strix LC), dropping the RAM OC but leaving the GPU at the same 2600 MHz setting reduced performance by 1-2%. So much for my "flawed" methodology.
 
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shady_021

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Mar 26, 2018
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The only thing I see here is all 6800 XT are equal or slightly ahead of a 6900 XT... so except for the price difference what's the point of having a 6900XT?
 
The only thing I see here is all 6800 XT are equal or slightly ahead of a 6900 XT... so except for the price difference what's the point of having a 6900XT?
The overclocked RX 6800 XT cards match the stock RX 6900 XT. If I overclocked the 6900 XT as well, it comes out a bit ahead again.

This is something I pointed out in the RX 6900 XT review: it has identical clocks, TDP, and VRAM, so the only difference is 80 CUs instead of 72 CUs. That means at most an 11% advantage for the 6900 XT, but because of VRAM being the same it is usually more like 4-5%. So it's not really worth the extra $350, except none of the 6800 XT cards cost $649, and none of the 6900 XT cards cost $999 -- and in fact, neither of those really exists in any meaningful quantity AFAICT. Tens of thousands of cards worldwide perhaps, but that's a drop in the proverbial bucket.
 
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Jan 20, 2021
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JarredWaltonGPU ,
Thank you for taking interest in my comment & performing the relevant tests.
I've ( we actually ) been fed with a lot of information in the past 2 weeks that led me to believe the claim I made .
I apologize that it came out rude.
I trust your findings better .
Thank you.
 
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HC1Gunner

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We've rounded up multiple Radeon RX 6800 XT cards to see how the various models stack up. Higher factory overclocks, liquid cooling hybrids, massive coolers, and increased pricing are the general trend while GPUs continue to be in short supply.

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Roundup: ASRock, Asus, and Sapphire Reviewed : Read more
Question, how is this a round up, when other manufactures like Gigabyte weren't included?
Kind of stupid to do these reviews, when you can't find any of these cards for retail sale.
 
Question, how is this a round up, when other manufactures like Gigabyte weren't included?
Kind of stupid to do these reviews, when you can't find any of these cards for retail sale.
A roundup isn't every card or manufacturer possible; it's a roundup of the cards we were sent. So rather than three individual 6800 XT reviews, you get a roundup of three cards plus the reference model.
 

Gurg

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Mar 13, 2013
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Shockingly there are actually 6800xt (6@$1030)and 6800 (12@ $930) in local MC today.
Limited supply of 3090 @ $2140, $2030 and $1870 as well as limited 3070 @ $750

The most new GPUs I've seen listed in a long time.

Still 25+ 5600x CPUs in stock for $300 with the excellent Wraith Stealth cooler you can try to offload on EBay. They have been in stock for a few days now.