Question RX 6700 XT vs RX 6800 XT -£200 difference, worth it?

[Neon233]

Hi,

I was originally considering getting a RX 6700 xt priced @ £300 cheapest value, upgrading from the old GTX 970. I had noticed that the RX 6800 XT was going for @ £500 cheapest value. The additional VRAM, the performance increase was impressive and overall looked a solid card. I was considering if future proofing aspects as well and the overall performance boost justifies the £200 difference. I generally play 1080p and would like to play the current and future triple A games on ultra settings. What are your guys opinion on this?

 

[Dj0gany]

There is a pretty big performance difference between the two.
I say go for the 6800XT, its worth.
You are looking at atleast 30% performance increase on 1080p ultra settings. Note that it requires a better PSU, so make sure you have a good PSU unit first!!

 

[Neon233]

Yup, I've got a RM850x on it's way.

 

[Dj0gany]

Yup, I've got a RM850x on it's way.

Perfect!

 

[XxDarkMario20xX]

If you go with 6700xt then once you get it you might keep wondering what happens if went with 6800xt will play on your mind. Price difference is not that much so go with the higher one. 1080P is abit overkill but you never know you might want to upgrade to 2k monitorin future and 6800xt will do that

 

[Neon233]

Yeah those are good points. I was initially hesitant since it's nearly double the price and on benchmark videos the fps increase was averaging 30fps. I have also read that most likely in the future triple A will need even more VRAM so the 6800 xt is a good choice.

 

[Dj0gany]

Yeah those are good points. I was initially hesitant since it's nearly double the price and on benchmark videos the fps increase was averaging 30fps. I have also read that most likely in the future triple A will need even more VRAM so the 6800 xt is a good choice.

Yeah, you will need all the Vram you can get lol.
Ultra settings, even at 1080p, tend to require more than 10gb of VRam, although you would be fine with 12GB's the 6700XT offers for the next couple of years, 6800XT's 16GB's will ensure that longevity.

 

[Neon233]

1 thing I do want to point out is that I checked the bottleneck calculator and saw that my CPU will bottleneck my GPU if I go with the RX 6800 XT. Got a core i7 8700k. However I've also read that in most games are largely GPU dependent and the cpu shouldn't bottleneck it that much.

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[Dj0gany]

1 thing I do want to point out is that I checked the bottleneck calculator and saw that my CPU will bottleneck my GPU if I go with the RX 6800 XT. Got a core i7 8700k. However I've also read that in most games are largely GPU dependent and the cpu shouldn't bottleneck it that much.

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No, your 6800XT will absolutely not be bottlenecked by your i7 8700k.
You've said it yourself, most games (especially AAA titles) are more GPU dependant, especially if you max the settings out.
i7 8700K is a 6core/12 thread beast, it will handle every game you throw at it.
Your system is balanced, no need to worry about anything.

 

[Neon233]

Awesome stuff. Thank you guys for your advice. I really appreciate it. One last question I have the choice between a few brands. Originally when looking at the 6700xt I was gonna go with sapphire pulse. But now I gotta choose between these cards. The rest are priced quite higher. Any recommendations? The xfx cards are from amazon whilst rest are from sellers I've never bought from so I'm slightly less keen on them.


XFX Speedster MERC 319 CORE
ASRock Phantom Gaming OC
XFX Speedster SWFT 319
PowerColor Red Dragon OC

 

[Dj0gany]

They are all triple fan GPU's, will perform really good, and very similarly when it comes to cooling.
Its up to you to see which one you like the most aesthetically, they all seem pretty to me!

 

[Karadjgne]

Go for the 6700xt. It's a massive upgrade from a 970. You are still at 1080p, so for the most part any use of the 6800xt will be wasted. That said, the next upgrade will be the cpu, maybe in a couple of years time. That's going to be a platform change, ram + mobo + cpu. By that time, the 8700xt/8800xt will be out and you'd be looking at double the performance of the 6700xt, which will balance out against whatever cpu you go for.

At which point you'll definitely be looking at 1440p/144Hz monitors anyway.

I see the 6700xt as a tide-me-over until you essentially just replace everything in a few years, 'future proofing' is a fools game and even the 6800xt then will be not much better than if you had a 980ti instead of a 970 now.

Save the 200 quid, you'll either be closer to having the budget for a full upgrade, or you'll have an extra £200 to apply to the budget when you do upgrade. Or maybe £200 closer to a decent 1440p monitor.

There's not a person I can think of, that even exists, that could look at two otherwise identical pc's, side by side, playing identical games/frames and definitively tell the difference between a 6700xt and 6800xt without looking at the actual fps outputs and doing the math in their head. Especially at 1080p.

 

[Neon233]

Those are very good points. If I wanted my setup to last for say the next couple years without upgrading and I may be looking at getting 1440p after a while would it be worth it? I saw the performance boost from the 6700 xt to 6800 xt pretty good especially with games like hogwarts for example where it maintains fps close to 100. I thought that as games will get more demanding in the future the 6800xt will last longer before its unable to handle triple A games compared to 6700 xt. I want a build and squeeze as much out of it before having to change it after say like 5 -7 years like I did with my gtx 970 from 2016. I just think that I would easily achieve this and have a more enjoyable time with the 6800xt whereas the 6700xt might struggle to keep games @ ultra settings in next few years. But yeah these are just my thoughts. What's your opinion on this?

 

[Karadjgne]

Imho, as a non-expert, but somewhat versed in pc's since I've been building them for the last 40+ years, future proofing is a total gamble. The 2070Super came out in July of 2019, 4 years ago. It's somewhat comparable to a 3060ti, or a 4050±. 4 years ago it was a great performer, most ppl used it or skipped the 2080 for the 2080ti. For games like Hogwarts, the 2070Super is lacking, especially at 1440p or better, it struggles at 1080p. 4 years. The 6700xt gets @ 20-40% better frames than a 2070Super, and that was 2 years ago. A 2070Super gets anywhere from 100% to 400% better frames than a 970.

The 30% upgrade from a 6700xt to a 6800xt for £200, just doesn't seem worth it, especially when the 8700xt isn't far in the future and after a year or so will be priced somewhere around where the 6700xt is now. At at least 20+% higher give or take performance than the 6800xt is currently.

I'd go for ok performance as a hold until ready to just replace everything, since the 8700k/slow ddr4 won't hold it's value in gaming performance in another couple of years anyway.

There's always something better, just around the corner, tomorrow, that's a given in electronics. That said, by the time you've got everything else necessarily updated, even with a 6800xt you'll be behind the times, you'll be on a 2070Super when everyone else (including games) is looking at the 4080-4090 series cards. If in a couple of years you'll by necessity have to replace everything anyways, starting out at a 8700xt level will be far better than starting out at 6800xt or you'd be tossing £500 worth of gpu that was mostly unusable compared to tossing a £300 gpu.

 

[Neon233]

Imho, as a non-expert, but somewhat versed in pc's since I've been building them for the last 40+ years, future proofing is a total gamble. The 2070Super came out in July of 2019, 4 years ago. It's somewhat comparable to a 3060ti, or a 4050±. 4 years ago it was a great performer, most ppl used it or skipped the 2080 for the 2080ti. For games like Hogwarts, the 2070Super is lacking, especially at 1440p or better, it struggles at 1080p. 4 years. The 6700xt gets @ 20-40% better frames than a 2070Super, and that was 2 years ago. A 2070Super gets anywhere from 100% to 400% better frames than a 970.

The 30% upgrade from a 6700xt to a 6800xt for £200, just doesn't seem worth it, especially when the 8700xt isn't far in the future and after a year or so will be priced somewhere around where the 6700xt is now. At at least 20+% higher give or take performance than the 6800xt is currently.

I'd go for ok performance as a hold until ready to just replace everything, since the 8700k/slow ddr4 won't hold it's value in gaming performance in another couple of years anyway.

There's always something better, just around the corner, tomorrow, that's a given in electronics. That said, by the time you've got everything else necessarily updated, even with a 6800xt you'll be behind the times, you'll be on a 2070Super when everyone else (including games) is looking at the 4080-4090 series cards. If in a couple of years you'll by necessity have to replace everything anyways, starting out at a 8700xt level will be far better than starting out at 6800xt or you'd be tossing £500 worth of gpu that was mostly unusable compared to tossing a £300 gpu.

Thanks, I've further looked around and did more research and I will be getting the 6700xt because it seems really solid at 1080p and even 1440p. I can always sell it in the future and then upgrade my whole system as you've said.

I think I was fixated on having high fps, over 100 consistently to be exact, at high settings. Which would be nice tbh with my 144hz. There's not too many games where the 6700 xt fails to break past the 100fps mark so it's not a big deal for me.

Thanks for sharing your insight, really appreciate it.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I'll preface this by saying that I have an RX 6800 XT and it is just a phenomenal card.

Having said that, if you're just playing at 1080p, I'm not sure that there's much point to it. The RX 6800 XT was made for 1440p gaming and at 1080p, it's really an overkill card.

Having said that, there are some frightening rumours that may cause you to decide on the RX 6800 XT.

Firstly, there's the rumour that Radeon will be leaving the high-end of the market which will, of course, allow nVidia to seriously rape consumers at the high-end. To be honest, this was caused by all of the high-end consumers choosing GeForce cards so it's hard to feel sorry for them.

The far scarier rumour however is that there will be a new GPU shortage caused by companies like AMD, Intel and nVidia using more of their fab allocations for AI GPUs instead of gaming cards.

The last time I saw rumours like this was three years ago and I dismissed it. I paid dearly for that mistake. So, when I saw a discounted RX 7900 XTX, I snapped it up to ensure that I'm covered for possibly the next decade or so. You might consider the RX 6800 XT for the same reason. At 1080p, an RX 6800 XT might last you as long as the RX 7900 XTX will last me.

 

[Karadjgne]

Yeah, just what we need now, SkyNet.