AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Price & Availability
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT: Product Attributes and Chipset
As far as product attributes and features are concerned, this graphics card comes with some exciting features that gaming freaks love. AMD has introduced some new features for their graphics cards which in turn boosted the overall efficiency of the product. But there are some attributes that just never change. The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is still based on the graphical architecture of the team Red’s RDNA 2, produced from a 7-nanometer manufacturing process.
The newest feature that AMD added was the new infinity cache. To be specific, instead of the GDDR6X memory, the Radeon RX 6800 XT comes equipped with 16GB of GDDR6 memory.
For those who don’t know, the GDDR6 helped AMD to fill the speed gap. How? Well, the infinity cache boosts the memory by 2.4x more bandwidth per watt than the VRAM initially achieves by asserting 128MB of global cache on a 256-bit bus with the help of GDDR6 VRAM.
Moreover, another feature included in the Radeon RX 6800 XT is the DirectX 12 ultimate compatible ray accelerators. You must be wondering how the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT can handle real-time ray tracing at a playable frame rate? It can do so because the ray accelerators are attached to each of the 72 compute units. For now, we can keep our hopes high for AMD drivers.
In addition to the ray accelerators and the infinity cache, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT comes packed with a total of 26.8 billion transistors spread all across a 519mm² die. We know what you all are thinking; did AMD shrink their processor? The answer is no and, that is the reason that this graphic card comes with a much larger die.
But why didn’t AMD make their die smaller? It is simple. Big die means higher clock speeds. This brings us to the 3rd new feature. The Radeon RX 6800 XT is loaded with a 2,015MHz game clock and up to a 2,250MHz boost clock. This feature tremendously helps me provide a smooth gaming experience and reduces the sustained loads too.
Another feature is power consumption. With great die space and clock speeds, comes a great consumption of power. The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is known to consume 300W. But, upon testing the product, it was found out that the all in all power consumption of the card never went above 250W. This means that the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT has a lot of room to get modified further. Moreover, lower power consumption means lower temperatures. The die of the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT can reach up to a melting temperature of 114 degrees Celsius but, the overall temperature of the card that was recorded turned out to be 78 degrees Celsius.
That’s not all folks! One more important feature that the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT comes equipped with is that the GPU itself is an improved version of the one that comes with the Xbox series X and PS5. The benefit of this is that the new-gen games that have been or will be released would be automatically optimized for this GPU card. AMD has presented the Radeon RX 6800 series with two optional features. The first one is the smart access memory (SAM) and the other one is the Rage mode. Both of these optional features boost the performance of the card.
Rage mode in actuality is an AMD-sanctioned overclock. Luckily, enabling the rage mode won’t affect the product warranty. However, when you access the Radeon software to turn the rage mode on, the software will prompt you that you are about to mess with the arcane settings at your own risk. But, as long as you’re using the default settings, you are safe, so no need to worry.
AMD suggests that if anyone wants to use the SAM feature, they should keep in mind that enabling this feature would give the user a 10 percent boost in the performance but, the user will have to tamper with the BIOS along with the AMD motherboard and processor. Some users may have to install their Windows 10 from scratch because they will have to shut off the CSM. Moreover, the users will have to access the advanced settings and turn on the 4G Decoding along with re-sizing BAR support.
Bit of a hassle, right? That is why we don’t recommend it, AMD however does. But, it’s optional and of course, depends upon the user preference.
Something particularly useful for people playing professional shooter games is the software support that AMD provides by reducing the picture quality in the background when moving quickly, this, in turn, increases the frame rate. All this is possible through the contrast adaptive sharpening and Radeon Boost.
As far as the DLSS technology is concerned, AMD has not yet integrated it into their Radeon RX 6800 XT series. We don’t know the reason behind it but we do know that it’s pretty much important in this decade, particularly until developers understand what PS5 and Xbox Series X SSDs are capable of doing.
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Design
Since this is AMD’s most outstanding graphics card in years, the cooler had to be reconsidered. The blower-style cooler on the Radeon RX 5700 XT just wasn’t going to make it on a graphics card of this standard, so AMD went for a 2.5-space triple fan option. This is why temperatures remain reasonable under default conditions, and if you need to use anything like MSI Afterburner, you can increase temperatures by adjusting the fan bend.
The design of the hardware that AMD opted for Radeon RX 6800 XT, is different from its predecessors. According to AMD, this is the most outstanding graphics card in terms of power so, obviously, they reconsidered the design of the cooler. AMD went for a new caliber 2.5 slots triple fan option instead of the old blower-style cooler that came equipped in the Radeon RX 5700 XT. You must be thinking about how the new AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT will sustain the temperature right? Well, the new cooler style greatly helps in keeping the temperature manageable enough for the graphics card to keep doing its magic.
The AMD Radeon RX 6800 series comes equipped with two 8-pin power connectors at the back. The best thing in terms of design is that AMD opted for the USB-C port. This is where the Nvidia had a drawback though. Moreover, you will find one HDMI 2.1 and two display ports. All of these options will support any modern display available in the market.
Moreover, Radeon RX 6800 XT’s primary color of the body case is all black and upon mounting the graphics card on your system, you will get to see the side of the card which has a red trim along with the Radeon logo, and of course, the logo lights up with the red colored lights too.
Also, if you flip the body case, on the back of it you will find a not-so-premium wide silver strip, not that it matters much but from the backplate, the GPU is somewhat exposed. On the front three fans are surrounded by a silver strip, each of the 3 fans has an ‘R’ logo on them. ‘R’, which stands for Radeon.
Ultimately, after looking at every aspect of the design of the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, we know that some people might find it somewhat outdated. Well, it’s not their fault, the design does give a 2005 feel with a typical black and red color scheme.