Question Is a 6800 XT with three connectors better than a 6800 XT with two?

[Minutoh]

I had an [ASRock Phantom Gaming 6800 XT](https://pg.asrock.com/Graphics-Card/AMD/Radeon%20RX%206800%20XT%20Phantom%20Gaming%20D%2016G%20OC/index.asp) with 3 connectors, but I was having issues with it and returned it for a [https://www.sapphiretech.com/en/con...n/consumer/pulse-radeon-rx-6800-xt-16g-gddr6) with only 2 connectors. Is the Pulse worse than the Phantom Gaming then, or are they the same? I did get the Pulse for $15 less than the Phantom Gaming which is something.

I was able to OC my ASRock to a minimum of 2450, a maximum of 2550, a VRAM frequency of 2124 with fast timing, and undervolted to 1000mV. For my Sapphire, I can only OC it to a min of 2309, a max of 2409, and a VRAM frequency of 2112 with fast timing on, and undervolted to 1100mV. Is this just because of the silicon lottery, or is this because the Sapphire has only 2 connectors?

It seems to be reaching the power limit when I run Time Spy. The PPT limit percentage gets to 99% to 100% when Time Spy crashes, but it also gets to that point when Time Spy doesn’t crash; I suppose something else is causing the crashes then like the silicon lottery. Additionally, the PPT limit is 312.8W anyway when I set the power limit to +15% in Adrenalin, and I heard the most I can get with 2 connectors is 375 W; I don’t plan on using MPT to raise my power limit even more, so that seems to be unrelated to how many connectors I have anyway. Is this actually related to how many connectors I have, or is this limited by the BIOS?

 

[Colif]

they appear to have the exact same specs

Sapphire PULSE RX 6800 XT Specs

AMD Navi 21, 2310 MHz, 4608 Cores, 288 TMUs, 128 ROPs, 16384 MB GDDR6, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

ASRock RX 6800 XT Phantom Gaming D OC Specs

AMD Navi 21, 2310 MHz, 4608 Cores, 288 TMUs, 128 ROPs, 16384 MB GDDR6, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

sapphire have 3 models for the 6800xt and there are 2 different versions of the one above it

1. 6800xt (Stock speeds)
2. Pulse
3. Nitro+
4. Nitro+ SE

So the pulse is the middle layer, slightly warmed up but probably restricted in some ways so it doesn't approach speeds of the Nitro - https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/sapphire-nitro-rx-6800-xt.b8324

its possible the extra connector allows for more power. That is generally main reason for more power connectors.

 

[hotaru.hino]

An additional power connector also helps spread the power distribution load. If the card is getting most of its power from the two PEG connectors, then it might cause a slight amount of voltage drooping when the board starts consuming a lot of power.

If the card works fine on its default settings though, I'd leave it alone, unless your goal is to go after top 100 in benchmark leaderboards

 

[Minutoh]

they appear to have the exact same specs

Sapphire PULSE RX 6800 XT Specs

AMD Navi 21, 2310 MHz, 4608 Cores, 288 TMUs, 128 ROPs, 16384 MB GDDR6, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

ASRock RX 6800 XT Phantom Gaming D OC Specs

AMD Navi 21, 2310 MHz, 4608 Cores, 288 TMUs, 128 ROPs, 16384 MB GDDR6, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

sapphire have 3 models for the 6800xt and there are 2 different versions of the one above it

1. 6800xt (Stock speeds)
2. Pulse
3. Nitro+
4. Nitro+ SE

So the pulse is the middle layer, slightly warmed up but probably restricted in some ways so it doesn't approach speeds of the Nitro - https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/sapphire-nitro-rx-6800-xt.b8324

its possible the extra connector allows for more power. That is generally main reason for more power connectors.

I see, so they’re the same. That’s good to know. Is there a way to check which one has better VRM and heat sinks though or if they’re identical? So the Pulse is the middle layer, and it can’t quite get to Nitro+ speeds. i suppose the Phantom Gaming is similar since that seems to be the midtier ASRock card. Also, does the extra connector matter if I’m not anywhere near that power limit anyway?

 

[Minutoh]

An additional power connector also helps spread the power distribution load. If the card is getting most of its power from the two PEG connectors, then it might cause a slight amount of voltage drooping when the board starts consuming a lot of power.

If the card works fine on its default settings though, I'd leave it alone, unless your goal is to go after top 100 in benchmark leaderboards

Oh okay I see. Is there a way to check for voltage dropping and which one it’s getting power from in HWInfo then? according to that, my PPT does reach 100% in Time Spy a few times. From what I understand, my PCIE slot provides 75W and the connectors provide 300 W, so I suppose the card would be getting most of its power from the connectors if I’m using 312.8 W at +15%. Is there a way to check that too?

It seems to work fine on its default settings, and the max OC I can get is marginally less anyway. I can get a max graphics score of 19600 with this 6800 XT, and I was able to get to 20600 with the previous one. I’m guessing that’s more because of the silicon lottery though.

 

[hotaru.hino]

The only way to check this is to use lab equipment designed for such. While I'm sure the card has sensors on it to tell you how much power it's supposedly consuming, I kinda trust these as much as I trust WCCFTech with rumors.

 

[Minutoh]

The only way to check this is to use lab equipment designed for such. While I'm sure the card has sensors on it to tell you how much power it's supposedly consuming, I kinda trust these as much as I trust WCCFTech with rumors.

Oh okay I see. So that’s not really possible to check with just the sensors. I definitely don’t know how accurate they are for sure. How is voltage drooping identified anyway if I were to somehow get that lab equipment one day (I obviously won’t though haha)?

 

[hotaru.hino]

Oh okay I see. So that’s not really possible to check with just the sensors. I definitely don’t know how accurate they are for sure. How is voltage drooping identified anyway if I were to somehow get that lab equipment one day (I obviously won’t though haha)?

I'm not an expert with electronics to confidently answer this, but I would imagine you would take a baseline measurement, make sure it's within the ATX spec, then put a heavy load on the card and measure it again. If it drops by a significant amount or below the spec, then we have a potential problem

Although realistically I would imagine any well built PSU stays within spec up to 100% of that line's usage.

 

[Minutoh]

I'm not an expert with electronics to confidently answer this, but I would imagine you would take a baseline measurement, make sure it's within the ATX spec, then put a heavy load on the card and measure it again. If it drops by a significant amount or below the spec, then we have a potential problem

Although realistically I would imagine any well built PSU stays within spec up to 100% of that line's usage.

Oh okay I see. That makes sense. So I’ll see what it’s like when it’s not under load and then see what it’s like when it is. I guess I’ll try something like FurMark or a heavy benchmark like that. Where would I look at the ATX spec and all? I do have a 1000W Super Flower Leadex V Gold which seems to be pretty good: https://www.newegg.com/super-flower...0035?itemPosition=1-5&exactIndex=0&isPLP=true

 

[hotaru.hino]

If we went by https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/pc-hardware-in/059600513X/ch26s02s01.html, it's basically +/-5% for 12V, +/-10% at peak load (whatever that means)

 

[Avro Arrow]

I don't believe that it is. I have reference RX 6800 XT and I have not encountered any situation in which two connectors were not enough. When I see an RX 6800 XT with three connectors, my mind screams:

"GIMMICK!!!" (just like it does for ray-tracing)

 

[kerberos_20]

I don't believe that it is. I have reference RX 6800 XT and I have not encountered any situation in which two connectors were not enough. When I see an RX 6800 XT with three connectors, my mind screams:

"GIMMICK!!!" (just like it does for ray-tracing)

not really gimmick, he did mention hitting power delivery limit with two 8pins, 3rd 8pin just gives some more overclocking headroom, those cards can run 2.5GHz, but it drains quantum of power

 

[Minutoh]

If we went by https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/pc-hardware-in/059600513X/ch26s02s01.html, it's basically +/-5% for 12V, +/-10% at peak load (whatever that means)

It’s definitely not as reliable as lab equipment, but, Also, according to HWInfo and Adrenalin, it seems I can’t reach the desired clock speed at the power limit of my GPU. I either get clock speeds in the 2309-2409 range (I set the minimum clock speed to 2309 and the max to 2409) with the power draw being about 260-300 W or clock speeds in the 2250-2300 range with the power draw maxed out. I tried FurMark, and it was able to consistently stay at 312.5 W for an hour. I heard GPUs are automatically throttled in FurMark though, so I tried the Boundsry benchmark too. The power draw ranged from 295 to 312 W and the clock speed was in the 2309-2409 range (generally in the middle), so I suppose that’s fine. It did drop randomly once to 220 W which caused some stuttering, but that was only for a second; I presume something else caused that then. Is this normal though?

As for the ATX specs, I’m still not quite sure how to measure those then. That reminded me that I bought a power supply tester that checks if my CPU and motherboard cables are within those specs; it doesn’t check the GPU cables though, so I suppose I’ll need more specialized equipment for that.

I don't believe that it is. I have reference RX 6800 XT and I have not encountered any situation in which two connectors were not enough. When I see an RX 6800 XT with three connectors, my mind screams:

"GIMMICK!!!" (just like it does for ray-tracing)

Is it okay for my clock speeds to be a bit lower if the power draw is maxed out or for the clock speeds to be a bit higher if the power draw is slightly lower as I said in the part of the post above this? That’s good to know that two connectors are enough and all though.

not really gimmick, he did mention hitting power delivery limit with two 8pins, 3rd 8pin just gives some more overclocking headroom, those cards can run 2.5GHz, but it drains quantum of power

I was reaching the maximum limit in Adrenalin, but I can try going for the actual limit for two 8pins. In terms of OCing, is the experience I was talking about above in my reply to hotaru.hino normal?

 

[Avro Arrow]

not really gimmick, he did mention hitting power delivery limit with two 8pins, 3rd 8pin just gives some more overclocking headroom, those cards can run 2.5GHz, but it drains quantum of power

Well, I suppose if you're going to try and overclock it to the moon, the third power cable could matter but these days, the performance uplift received from overclocking isn't worth the extra power used. I think that it's because the manufacturers are trying to squeeze every bit of performance that they can from their products so that they can be at the top of the performance charts.

It's not like ten years ago when you could do a 25% overclock an FX-8350 without necessarily needing liquid cooling. In this day and age, battles between AMD, Intel and nVidia are waged on tech websites like Tom's Hardware, TechPowerUp, Techspot and Guru3D. Since most people don't do overclocking, these companies have decided that it's a far better thing to be able to advertise better performance than to let the users find it on their own.

 

[Minutoh]

Well, I suppose if you're going to try and overclock it to the moon, the third power cable could matter but these days, the performance uplift received from overclocking isn't worth the extra power used. I think that it's because the manufacturers are trying to squeeze every bit of performance that they can from their products so that they can be at the top of the performance charts.

It's not like ten years ago when you could do a 25% overclock an FX-8350 without necessarily needing liquid cooling. In this day and age, battles between AMD, Intel and nVidia are waged on tech websites like Tom's Hardware, TechPowerUp, Techspot and Guru3D. Since most people don't do overclocking, these companies have decided that it's a far better thing to be able to advertise better performance than to let the users find it on their own.

Oh okay that makes sense. So OCing isn’t really worth it anymore and all. I think I’ll OC within what I can do in Adrenalin, but I won’t use MPT or something to OC even more. It makes sense that they would want to have good reviews of their non overclocked GPUs nowadays.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Is it okay for my clock speeds to be a bit lower if the power draw is maxed out or for the clock speeds to be a bit higher if the power draw is slightly lower as I said in the part of the post above this? That’s good to know that two connectors are enough and all though.

Well, if you did hit a power wall, the card would do a hard system-reset crash. I encountered this with my XFX RX 5700 XT Triple Dissipation card. To this day I don't know for certain if the card hit a power wall but the card that XFX sent back to me in my RMA was an RX 5700 XT THICC-III.

When installing the THICC-III, I noticed that it had two 8-pin connectors while the Triple Dissipation only had one 8-pin and one 6-pin connector. I know that there were widespread crashing problems with the RX 5700 XT and it's possible that it was because the more base model cards had 8+6 connectors. I don't know if this was the cause or not because I know that so many things can go wrong with a card. All I know is that with the 8+8, I never had this problem again.

 

[kerberos_20]

Oh okay that makes sense. So OCing isn’t really worth it anymore and all. I think I’ll OC within what I can do in Adrenalin, but I won’t use MPT or something to OC even more. It makes sense that they would want to have good reviews of their non overclocked GPUs nowadays.

+10% performance traded for +30% more power used, those GPUs can be overclocked, but its not worth it, on the other hand they all seem to undervolt nicely without loosing performance

 

[kerberos_20]

Well, if you did hit a power wall, the card would do a hard system-reset crash. I encountered this with my XFX RX 5700 XT Triple Dissipation card. To this day I don't know for certain if the card hit a power wall but the card that XFX sent back to me in my RMA was an RX 5700 XT THICC-III.

When installing the THICC-III, I noticed that it had two 8-pin connectors while the Triple Dissipation only had one 8-pin and one 6-pin connector. I know that there were widespread crashing problems with the RX 5700 XT and it's possible that it was because the more base model cards had 8+6 connectors. I don't know if this was the cause but I do know All I know is that with the 8+8, I never had this problem again.

you just had bad card, gpus doesnt have maxed power delivery, there are reserves which you cant access unless you mod vbios, hitting power limit wouldnt case issues, its just software wall, not real hardware limit, just gpu clock wont boost anymore

 

[Minutoh]

Well, if you did hit a power wall, the card would do a hard system-reset crash. I encountered this with my XFX RX 5700 XT Triple Dissipation card. To this day I don't know for certain if the card hit a power wall but the card that XFX sent back to me in my RMA was an RX 5700 XT THICC-III.

When installing the THICC-III, I noticed that it had two 8-pin connectors while the Triple Dissipation only had one 8-pin and one 6-pin connector. I know that there were widespread crashing problems with the RX 5700 XT and it's possible that it was because the more base model cards had 8+6 connectors. I don't know if this was the cause but I do know All I know is that with the 8+8, I never had this problem again.

Oh okay I see, so I would get actual system crashes in that case rather than just Time Spy crashes and stuff. That makes sense; I haven’t had any actual system crashes yet, so that’s comforting. It’s good you didn’t have any issues with 2 8 pins then. I don’t know if any with one 8 pin and one 6 pin nowadays, so I don’t have to worry about that for sure. Thanks!

+10% performance traded for +30% more power used, those GPUs can be overclocked, but its not worth it, on the other hand they all seem to undervolt nicely without loosing performance

I see, that is definitely not worth it at all. I will try to undervolt them then though; summers coming up and I have a small room, so I will probably need to undervolt so I don’t melt in my room haha.

you just had bad card, gpus doesnt have maxed power delivery, there are reserves which you cant access unless you mod vbios, hitting power limit wouldnt case issues, its just software wall, not real hardware limit, just gpu clock wont boost anymore

Oh okay I see. How would I tell if my GPU is actually reaching the software power limit then? I guess the GPU clock won’t boost as you said. I suppose it’d only crash if I’m actually reaching the hardware limit and all which I won’t be doing.

 

[Avro Arrow]

you just had bad card, gpus doesnt have maxed power delivery, there are reserves which you cant access unless you mod vbios, hitting power limit wouldnt case issues, its just software wall, not real hardware limit, just gpu clock wont boost anymore

It could very well be. I'm tech-savvy enough to tell when a card is bad but I'm not tech-savvy enough to have any idea what's causing the actual problem. Having said that, it seemed remarkably strange that two different XFX models of the RX 5700 XT had different power connectors. Now, it could just be that it's not all that uncommon and I'd just never seen it before. It just seemed strange because it's cheaper to just buy more of one product in bulk and use it for everything than to use two different products (in this case, the connectors) so I don't know what XFX was doing with that.

Hell, I ordered one of those RX 580 2048SP cards from AliExpress and it was DOA. I even had it tested by Memory Express and they confirmed that it was defective and I got a full refund. I decided to use it as a tinker toy (since it was dead anyway) so I took the cooler off of the card, cleaned the silicon die, applied new thermal paste, put it back together and put it back in the box. That was about a month ago.

Today I put it into a build that I threw together with spare parts I had lying around, thinking that I'd tinker with it some more and maybe get it working. Well, it started up without a hitch. You can imagine my elation and confusion regarding that. I literally said "WTF?!"

Crazy, eh?

 

[SomeGuyonTHW]

yeah it doesnt hurt to have more, it is usually better

 

[Minutoh]

It could very well be. I'm tech-savvy enough to tell when a card is bad but I'm not tech-savvy enough to have any idea what's causing the actual problem. Having said that, it seemed remarkably strange that two different XFX models of the RX 5700 XT had different power connectors. Now, it could just be that it's not all that uncommon and I'd just never seen it before. It just seemed strange because it's cheaper to just buy more of one product in bulk and use it for everything than to use two different products (in this case, the connectors) so I don't know what XFX was doing with that.

Hell, I ordered one of those RX 580 2048SP cards from AliExpress and it was DOA. I even had it tested by Memory Express and they confirmed that it was defective and I got a full refund. I decided to use it as a tinker toy (since it was dead anyway) so I took the cooler off of the card, cleaned the silicon die, applied new thermal paste, put it back together and put it back in the box. That was about a month ago.

Today I put it into a build that I threw together with spare parts I had lying around, thinking that I'd tinker with it some more and maybe get it working. Well, it started up without a hitch. You can imagine my elation and confusion regarding that. I literally said "WTF?!"

Crazy, eh?

Yeah, I definitely haven’t seen any GPUs with a 8 pin and a 6 pin connector nowadays. I suppose times were different back then though. It’s definitely weird that XFX went for the harder approach here.

How much was that RX 580? That definitely seems like a good purchase since you got a full refund and still got to keep it lol. It’s cool that you got it to work relatively easily though! It’s always nice when that happens.

yeah it doesnt hurt to have more, it is usually better

Oh okay I see. Do you think it’s worth returning my Sapphire Pulse to go back to a new ASRock Phantom Gaming then?

 

[Avro Arrow]

Yeah, I definitely haven’t seen any GPUs with a 8 pin and a 6 pin connector nowadays. I suppose times were different back then though. It’s definitely weird that XFX went for the harder approach here.

How much was that RX 580? That definitely seems like a good purchase since you got a full refund and still got to keep it lol. It’s cool that you got it to work relatively easily though! It’s always nice when that happens.


Oh okay I see. Do you think it’s worth returning my Sapphire Pulse to go back to a new ASRock Phantom Gaming then?

I always say "Just get whichever model costs less because the performance difference won't be noticeable." so that's completely up to you.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Yeah, I definitely haven’t seen any GPUs with a 8 pin and a 6 pin connector nowadays. I suppose times were different back then though. It’s definitely weird that XFX went for the harder approach here.

Believe it or not, it was only about three years ago.

How much was that RX 580?

It was only $70CAD. Kinda hard to say no to that.

That definitely seems like a good purchase since you got a full refund and still got to keep it lol. It’s cool that you got it to work relatively easily though! It’s always nice when that happens.

It is, but at the same time, while I did my due diligence (taking it to Memory Express to be tested), the fact that I managed to get it working and the fact that AMD recognised it as an RX 580 2048SP (so it wasn't a fake scam card) makes me feel kinda bad because the card ended up working and that $70CAD makes a much bigger difference to someone in China trying to sell things on AliExpress than it does to me. I don't have the option to go back and give them the money again but I'm thinking that I'll order another card and if it comes dead, I'll just eat it.

Oh okay I see. Do you think it’s worth returning my Sapphire Pulse to go back to a new ASRock Phantom Gaming then?

It depends. If the ASRock is cheaper and there's a big enough price difference to make it worth the hassle and effort, then yes.

Both cards will give you about the same performance.

 

[Minutoh]

Believe it or not, it was only about three years ago.

It was only $70CAD. Kinda hard to say no to that.

It is, but at the same time, while I did my due diligence (taking it to Memory Express to be tested), the fact that I managed to get it working and the fact that AMD recognised it as an RX 580 2048SP (so it wasn't a fake scam card) makes me feel kinda bad because the card ended up working and that $70CAD makes a much bigger difference to someone in China trying to sell things on AliExpress than it does to me. I don't have the option to go back and give them the money again but I'm thinking that I'll order another card and if it comes dead, I'll just eat it.

It depends. If the ASRock is cheaper and there's a big enough price difference to make it worth the hassle and effort, then yes.

Both cards will give you about the same performance.

I see, so things evolve that fast in even 3 short years. That is interesting for sure; who knows how many pins well have in another 3 years lol. And $70 CAD is definitely a great price for that even if you had to put in all that work. Yeah, it definitely does suck for the seller; it’s a shame you can’t send him more money again or something but that’s unfortunately obviously not how it works lol.

I went for the Pulse since it was $520 instead of $535 for the Phantom Gaming; I might as well save a bit if they’re identical anyways. It seems the PG is actually going for $520 now though, so I suppose it’d be slightly better than the Pulse for the same exact price, but whatever, it doesn’t actually matter and Sapphire is a better brand anyway.