AMD has announced a brand new graphics card: the Radeon RX 6800 XT. Announced during the company's 'Where Gaming Begins: Ep. 2' live stream, this new graphics card is built on the brand new RDNA 2 architecture, and aims to top Nvidia's RTX 3080 at 4K and 1440p.
So what can you expect? Well a GPU with up to 26.8bn transistors, for one. AMD promises that will compete with the absolute high-end of graphics cards, and a great deal of that improvement can be attributed to the improvements the Radeon team is bringing with the new architecture, including those carried over from AMD's Zen CPU architecture.
Not only that, it's bringing improved performance per watt with RDNA 2. The company is touting a 54% performance per watt gain over the initial RDNA architecture.
All which culminates in the RX 6800 XT. You can check out the specs below.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | RX 6900 XT | RX 6800 XT | RX 6800 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CUs | 80 | 72 | 60 |
| Process | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 7nm |
| Game clock (MHz) | 2,015 | 2,015 | 1,815 |
| Boost clock (MHz) | 2,250 | 2,250 | 2,105 |
| Infinity Cache (MB) | 128 | 128 | 128 |
| Memory | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 |
| TDP (Watt) | 300 | 300 | 250 |
| Available from | December 8 | November 18 | November 18 |
| Price (USD) | $999 | $649 | $579 |
AMD is also bringing new AMD-only features with the RX 6800 XT, such as one that pairs up your RX 6000-series GPU with your Ryzen 5000 CPU, called AMD Smart Access Memory. This gives your Ryzen CPU full access to the GPU memory, and alongside a one-click overclocking feature called Rage Mode, AMD is promising a significant uplift in performance (in some cases up to 13%, it says).
The AMD RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 will be available from November 18. Meanwhile, the high-end RTX 3090 competitor, the RX 6900 XT, will start shipping December 8.
