*multiple sources* AMD GPU reveal info thread (Updated: review)

[ENTERPRISE]

Been watching the reviews on the 6800XT 

 

 

 

I think I am still going to have to go Nvidia this round, good rasterization but still lacking badly in so many other areas including RT, but we expected that as it is their first go at it. The issue for me is the lack of feature support on AMD's side (Video encoding, DLSS, Lack of CL support compared to CUDA)

[The Pook]

 

maybe next generation

[Farih]

Looks good to me, i game at 1440p and don't care for RT.
On 1080p and 1440p AMD seems to edge out NV with the 6800XT and the standard 6800 is like 15% faster then the 3070, sadly also 15% more expensive.

Wish the 6800 would be priced like 499$ though............... and is actually available to buy.

[Sir Beregond]

I definitely feel on the fence again and will reiterate my position that its overpriced.

[UltraMega]

I wonder if the RT performance will improve over time, or work better/worse in different implementations. Currently all the ray tracing games are RTX which means Nvidia only so we only have the 3Dmark score to look at, which if I'm not mistaken is purely reflections and not GI-RT. RT reflections are nice but so far all the games I've seen that use them seem to over-use it almost like they're a tech demo for RT reflections. WD Legion seems like a great example of that. If performance was more on par when using ray tracing for GI instead of reflections, that would definitely change the situation but for now it seems like the RT performance is disappointingly far behind. Being worse in full path tracing than a 2080Ti (which has pretty weak RT performance anyway) makes RT seem like a non existing feature for AMD right now because with that kind of performance it's just not practical to use it. 

 

Separate from that though, it will be really interesting to see how performance scales when titles start using more Vram or using more advanced features like some of the stuff we saw in the UE5 demo. It seems like we don't really have any true next gen titles to look at yet. Everything "next gen" right now is just the same type of games as last gen but with RT added in. 

 

One thing that was interesting was in the gamers nexus review they point out that AMD has better frame time consistency and generally better 1% lows.

Edited November 18, 2020 by UltraMega

[Mistio]

Raytracing is math. 
RTX is a marketing gimmick and not a proprietary solution. 

Nvidia has better hardware and software.

 

[J7SC_Orion]

...another review of the 6800 XT below. Elsewhere, I think I read ('Google translate') that the RX 6K series do support CrossFire...leaving out the pros and cons of CrossFire, SLI etc, for a moment... a nice Ryzen 5950 build w/ 2x RX 6900 XTs  and full w-cooling for all components might be an interesting project for early '21...but a lot more reviews of both AMD and NVidia to come before then...

   

 

Edited November 18, 2020 by J7SC_Orion

[Sir Beregond]

Stock cooler 6800XT now #1 on FireStrike. Note LN2 cooled overlcocked 5950X.

 

https://hwbot.org/submission/4606724_lucky_n00b_3dmark___fire_strike_radeon_rx_6800_xt_47932_marks

 

https://hwbot.org/benchmark/3dmark_-_fire_strike/rankings?start=0&cores=1#start=0#interval=20

[Diffident]

I've only looked at the review on Techspot and the Phoronix review, but the 6800XT performance seems to be up and down.  In 1440p it edges a 3080 in some games, but then loses in 4k.  In Linux it's all over the place.  With the open source drivers it comes close to a 3080 in some games, but then in others it's being beaten by a 2080ti....and then it's killing the 3080 in Superposition and Heaven benckmarks.

[J7SC_Orion]

...still more reading and reviewing to do, but it seems that at lower resolutions, the 6800XT is very strong while at 4K, memory bandwidth limitations start to come into play, even with Infinity Cache. Then again, I expect multiple driver updates, patches and the like...another reason to wait a bit as to how it all shakes out between AMD and NVidia

 

EDIT: ...added Hardware Unboxed review (a lot of 1440p and 4K gaming data). As my top system is exclusively 4K, I am a little bit disappointed re. memory bandwidth. While the upcoming 6900 XT will be a real competitor to the NVidia 3090, I think it has the same memory setup as the 6800 XT...Infinity Cache clearly was deemed necessary for good reason, but I can't help wonder what a 6900 XT with HBM2 would do...

   

 

Edited November 19, 2020 by J7SC_Orion

[Darkpriest667]

What good is a product that you can't purchase folks? This was an abysmal failure by AMD. They had the opportunity to earn real marketshare and ruined it.

[mouacyk]

15 hours ago, Diffident said:

I've only looked at the review on Techspot and the Phoronix review, but the 6800XT performance seems to be up and down.  In 1440p it edges a 3080 in some games, but then loses in 4k.  In Linux it's all over the place.  With the open source drivers it comes close to a 3080 in some games, but then in others it's being beaten by a 2080ti....and then it's killing the 3080 in Superposition and Heaven benckmarks.

The Phoronix results were very confusing to me too as a Linux user.   It's more likely they haven't completely optimized the Pro driver. 

[Sir Beregond]

10 hours ago, Darkpriest667 said:

What good is a product that you can't purchase folks? This was an abysmal failure by AMD. They had the opportunity to earn real marketshare and ruined it.

Yeah the launch was bad. That said, the AIBs haven't launched yet and from the rumor mill they got the bulk of the chips. I also don't think you'd be able to call it fully an abysmal failure yet until we see how the AIB launch goes, and how the restock game goes. If 2 months later it is still non-existent like the 3080 than yeah, I agree.

[ENTERPRISE]

If I were to go AMD this time round, for me it would be the 6900XT only. Though while RT is not a huge factor (though nice to have) I have to also think about the other media type implications where Nvidia does excel at...and very well. I do not think the pricing is too bad, though to make it more attractive for those to whom RT is more important, a reduction in price may have won more people over. With the 6900XT coming in at an estimated $999, we will see how it performs against the $1500+ Nvidia counterpart (3090)

[J7SC_Orion]

1 hour ago, ENTERPRISE said:

If I were to go AMD this time round, for me it would be the 6900XT only. Though while RT is not a huge factor (though nice to have) I have to also think about the other media type implications where Nvidia does excel at...and very well. I do not think the pricing is too bad, though to make it more attractive for those to whom RT is more important, a reduction in price may have won more people over. With the 6900XT coming in at an estimated $999, we will see how it performs against the $1500+ Nvidia counterpart (3090)

 

Judging by 6800 XT test results so far, IMO 6090 XT performance will be very close to if not exceed 3090, at least at below 4K. I still wonder though why AMD didn't do a $1,299 6900 XT w/ HBM2 and its memory bandwidth to oppose the $1,500 3090

[ENTERPRISE]

37 minutes ago, J7SC_Orion said:

 

Judging by 6800 XT test results so far, IMO 6090 XT performance will be very close to if not exceed 3090, at least at below 4K. I still wonder though why AMD didn't do a $1,299 6900 XT w/ HBM2 and its memory bandwidth to oppose the $1,500 3090

 

Im not sure. AMD's goal was to maximize on the Performance Per Watt goal. Another reason they went lower bandwidth and implemented the infinity cache to basically cover shortfall.

 

Now im unsure as to HBM power requirements compared to standard GDDR6, but im willing to bet its higher. I feel that is why AMD ditched it this round for the gaming line just to remain competitive in the PPW. Another consideration is competitive pricing. HBM is expensive compared to GDDR6. So if AMD wanted to be in line or undercut Nvidia prices, HBM would likely be prohibitive to that goal.

 

If it were my wish then HBM and infinity cache would be rocking...and frankly I think it would sell like hot cakes.

[J7SC_Orion]

58 minutes ago, ENTERPRISE said:

 

Im not sure. AMD's goal was to maximize on the Performance Per Watt goal. Another reason they went lower bandwidth and implemented the infinity cache to basically cover shortfall.

 

Now im unsure as to HBM power requirements compared to standard GDDR6, but im willing to bet its higher. I feel that is why AMD ditched it this round for the gaming line just to remain competitive in the PPW. Another consideration is competitive pricing. HBM is expensive compared to GDDR6. So if AMD wanted to be in line or undercut Nvidia prices, HBM would likely be prohibitive to that goal.

 

If it were my wish then HBM and infinity cache would be rocking...and frankly I think it would sell like hot cakes.

  

...agree that it would sell well. Apart from a memory bus bandwidth advantage, HBM2 uses less power than GDDR6(+X), but is more expensive..yet with an extra $300 to play with while undercutting the 3090 (for now...), it would have been my dream-card for 4K etc...a regular GDDR6 equipped-card could have been sold as is as the RX 6900, while the RX 6900 'XT' would have offered HBM2 (and perhaps Infinity Cache on top)

 

But who knows, may be there will be a workstation / enterprise version coming out with HBM2...either way, a good time for upgrades in 2021 with this suddenly more competitive market.

[Diffident]

7 hours ago, mouacyk said:

The Phoronix results were very confusing to me too as a Linux user.   It's more likely they haven't completely optimized the Pro driver. 

The Pro driver doesn't get game optimizations, the Mesa driver does, which is why it's so crazy that the Pro driver does so much better in some games. 

[Mistio]

While the performance speaks for itself, we need to be realistic and acknowledge that the NVIDIA eco system is used by everyone. CUDA and NVENC are just a few that are de facto today. AMD as always has good hardware but little support in terms of software. Plenty of influencers tried to blow out of proportion these improvements to minimize the real cons of this: 

 

1. BSODs galore when performing their reviews

2. Video encoding quality and performance extremely poor

3. Ray tracing, almost as bad as the first NVIDIA iteration of the feature, if not worse.

4. SAM is not big whoop in many cases

 

 

This is sad because the hardware is amazing. 

The price of the product reflects clearly that at this point in time the AMD solutions do less. 

 

Edited November 20, 2020 by Mistio

[ENTERPRISE]

13 hours ago, Mistio said:

While the performance speaks for itself, we need to be realistic and acknowledge that the NVIDIA eco system is used by everyone. CUDA and NVENC are just a few that are de facto today. AMD as always has good hardware but little support in terms of software. Plenty of influencers tried to blow out of proportion these improvements to minimize the real cons of this: 

 

1. BSODs galore when performing their reviews

2. Video encoding quality and performance extremely poor

3. Ray tracing, almost as bad as the first NVIDIA iteration of the feature, if not worse.

4. SAM is not big whoop in many cases

 

 

This is sad because the hardware is amazing. 

The price of the product reflects clearly that at this point in time the AMD solutions do less. 

 

 

Ultimately this is it. Its why I hesitate to go AMD. They have made some great strides with RDNA2 no doubt but as you succinctly put, the AMD ecosystem is still lacking, it is that ecosystem I need as well as just gaming power

[tictoc]

If gaming (or a number of other workloads) is the #1 priority, then an NVIDIA GPU is really the only option that makes sense.  In addition to the outright stellar performance, the ecosystem has many more bells and whistles than the bare-bones offerings from AMD. ¢¢

[J7SC_Orion]

The NVidia ecosystem is the big one for AMD, IMO, re. productivity software. On the hardware side, I already mentioned potential memory bandwidth questions at 4K with the latest Radeon, which is otherwise very impressive (and priced right, comparatively speaking that is). 

 

I used a Radeon 79xx CrossFire system for years for both gaming and some 'light' productivity w/o any BSOD or other issues, and I know programmers who still swear by their Radeon Vega Frontier Edition on Ubuntu and custom video compression software. At the same time, the NVidia ecosystem is just far superior, at least for now, which is why most of our current systems are NVidia-based.

 

It should be interesting to watch what happens with AMD Radeon on the 3rd-party software support side over the next few months, and also with NVidia Ampere 2.0 (TSMC 7nm) on the hardware side.

[ENTERPRISE]

8 hours ago, J7SC_Orion said:

The NVidia ecosystem is the big one for AMD, IMO, re. productivity software. On the hardware side, I already mentioned potential memory bandwidth questions at 4K with the latest Radeon, which is otherwise very impressive (and priced right, comparatively speaking that is). 

 

I used a Radeon 79xx CrossFire system for years for both gaming and some 'light' productivity w/o any BSOD or other issues, and I know programmers who still swear by their Radeon Vega Frontier Edition on Ubuntu and custom video compression software. At the same time, the NVidia ecosystem is just far superior, at least for now, which is why most of our current systems are NVidia-based.

 

It should be interesting to watch what happens with AMD Radeon on the 3rd-party software support side over the next few months, and also with NVidia Ampere 2.0 (TSMC 7nm) on the hardware side.

Plus something else to mention going for Nvidia is their own implementation of SAM in the future.

[W95CIH]

On 11/20/2020 at 5:39 AM, Mistio said:

While the performance speaks for itself, we need to be realistic and acknowledge that the NVIDIA eco system is used by everyone. CUDA and NVENC are just a few that are de facto today. AMD as always has good hardware but little support in terms of software. Plenty of influencers tried to blow out of proportion these improvements to minimize the real cons of this: 

 

1. BSODs galore when performing their reviews

2. Video encoding quality and performance extremely poor

3. Ray tracing, almost as bad as the first NVIDIA iteration of the feature, if not worse.

4. SAM is not big whoop in many cases

 

 

This is sad because the hardware is amazing. 

The price of the product reflects clearly that at this point in time the AMD solutions do less. 

 

While some of your post is accurate, some sounds suspect.

 

Can you provide links or proof about BSODs? Ive not seen anything about that. (are you talking about big navi, or some old usless previous gpu review?)

 

Edited November 21, 2020 by W95CIH

[J7SC_Orion]

...noticed that a 6800 XT (w/ 5950X, both on LN2) took 1st place at Firestrike / Hwbot. While Firestrike is lower rez, still a big achievement, especially when considering the margin over 3090 (also LN2).

 

HWBot is not office 'productivity software', but still...the basic design of RDNA2 seems to have a lot of headroom (at lower rez, at least).