AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series Lineup Detailed
Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT Cards Announced
AMD streamed their Radeon RX 6000 Series event today, with trio of RDNA2-powered GPUs announced. Beginning next month AMD will offer the Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT, with the high-end Radeon RX 6900 XT coming in December.
Yes, we finally have official details about “Big Navi”, with the RX 6900 XT offering 80 Compute Units, Boost Clocks of up to 2250 MHz, and 16GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus. But there was more to the memory story.
First, here’s an overview of the basic specs for each GPU:
AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT | AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT | AMD Radeon RX 6800 | |
---|---|---|---|
Compute Units | 80 | 72 | 60 |
Memory | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 |
Memory Interface | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit |
Game Clock | 2015 MHz | 2015 MHz | 1815 MHz |
Boost Clock | Up to 2250 MHz | Up to 2250 MHz | Up to 2105 MHz |
Infinity Cache | 128 MB | 128 MB | 128 MB |
Total Board Power | 300W | 300W | 250W |
Launch Price | $999 | $649 | $579 |
Launch Date (Expected) | 12/8/2020 | 11/18/2020 | 11/18/2020 |
AMD announced a couple of memory-related technologies related to this GPU series launch, with Infinity Cache and Smart Access Memory detailed during the event.
AMD Infinity Cache – A high-performance, last-level data cache suitable for 4K and 1440p gaming with the highest level of detail enabled. 128 MB of on-die cache dramatically reduces latency and power consumption, delivering higher overall gaming performance than traditional architectural designs.
AMD Smart Access Memory – An exclusive feature of systems with AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processors, AMD B550 and X570 motherboards and Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards. It gives AMD Ryzen processors greater access to the high-speed GDDR6 graphics memory, accelerating CPU processing and providing up to a 13-percent performance increase on a AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card in Forza Horizon 4 at 4K when combined with the new Rage Mode one-click overclocking setting.
Performance Preview
AMD showcased performance from these new GPUs during the presentation, with the following chart showing gains of up to 2.2X the Radeon RX 5700 XT at 4K resolution – and high resolution gaming appears to be the focus with these cards, which all offer 16GB of VRAM:
Taking advantage of their exclusive technologies, AMD’s “Rage Mode” one-touch overclocking and Smart Access Memory can provide a performance uplift of between 4% and 13% at 4K resolution, as demonstrated by their slide featuring Radeon RX 6800XT performance compared to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080:
These numbers look quite impressive, with the $649 Radeon RX 6800 XT able to best the RTX 3080 in all but one benchmark at 4K, according to AMD’s testing. It will be interesting to see what impact Rage Mode has on power consumption.
Moving up to AMD’s “Big Navi”, AMD has it trading blows with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, with the benchmarks showcasing some wins at 4K for AMD’s high-end GPU. All of these RX 6900 XT numbers include Rage Mode overclocking:
While only a small sample of what was shown during the presentation, the charts above provide a very promising first look at the potential performance of these new RX 6000 Series GPUs, and of course enthusiasts will also be looking forward to independent testing once cards are available.
The full press release can be viewed here on AMD.com, and the replay of the announcement event is embedded below:
Pricing and Availability
To recap, AMD’s Radeon RX 6800 offers 60 CUs, 16GB of memory, and is priced at $579 USD. The Radeon RX 6800 XT offers 72 CUs, 16GB memory, and is priced at $649 USD. Both of these 6800 GPUs have 16GB of GDDR6 memory and a 128MB Infinity Cache, and are expected to be available on November 18th.
The “Big Navi” Radeon RX 6900 XT offers 80 CUs, has the same 16GB GDDR6/128MB Infinity Cache as the 6800 and 6800 XT, and is expected on December 8th for $999 USD.
Smart Memory Access seems interesting. Looks like it will be game agnostic judging by the range of games in AMDs cherry picked benchmarks.
Also, glad to see 16gb across the board and more reasonable power consumption. I’m guessing RT performance will leave a bit to be desired. Better stock up on the caffeine Sebastian – looking forward to the reviews.
I am most excited to see how these RX 6000 series video cards will compare to a PS5 or the new X boxes.
Hopefully AMD is bringing their A game for a very competitive offering. I would really like to upgrade to one of them from my old GTX 770 to stuck in the machine I built a couple years ago with a Ryzen 5 1600 CPU. I kind of regret not just getting a RX570 back in the day. Maybe I will even be able to afford a RX 6XXX card in early summer (and find one in stock).