Graphics AMD 6xxx Series (RDNA 2)

I didn't realise today was launch day until I tried to visit Scan.co.uk this afternoon.

I'm like, wtf is wrong with Scan's websi... oh, aw ffs - not this **** again.

 

well still think grabbing my 3070 for £469 was a good deal if the 6800 is coming in closer to £600!

At this point I think we need to stop describing either AMD or NVIDIA launces as "Paper launches" when there is clearly unprecedented demand for new cards.

I can't think of any previous hardware which just disappeared in the first 5 minutes of launch - obviously the 3080 launch has made consumers nervy about getting one which only exacerbates the speed at which stuff sells out.

 

You got lucky there... most 3070s that people are allowed to preorder now are well over £500 as well.

 

Apparently very lucky! Whilst I got mine from Scan - OCUK are now listing it as £569 for pre-order.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/MSI-...medium=referral&utm_campaign=affiliategateway

That's quite a large gouge they've got there!

 

If it didn't sell out immediately, how many people would be crowing 'no-one wants one, it must be ****'

 

Yup £100 over RRP for a base level entry card. Wouldn't mind if their supposed high end ones were any better, but plastic seems to be the new alu when it comes to back plates. So there have been plenty of cases of this happening lately on the high end MSIs.

 

Not sure the demand for the 6800 not at £600 for what is a mid high end chip. I am hoping it’s some day 1 price gouging but at a £140 above the 3070 it’s an expensive proposition for 15% faster card.

6800xt is £80 more and 25% quicker on average across the benches I have saw.

save your money and get the better card

 

That can happen to metal too, infact looking round the screw it looks like metal.

 

Yeah based on performance in general it feels like £499 would have been a better starting point for the 6800 non XT. The performance delta to the full XT is quite large yet the price is, at least from a marketing perspective, not that big a jump.

 

The 6800XT looks like a great card for 1080p/1440p, seems a bit mixed at 4k vs RTX3080 but as that is so close to a 3090 it bodes well for the 6900XT.

Unsure if the poor high res is a hardware limitation due to bandwidth or just early drivers, the SAM performance bump is interesting, particularly as it has been suggested that Nvidia can implement it and support older hard ware, perhaps AMD will open it up too if Nvidias implementation works.

 

HEXUS has the cards struggling in civ and far cry at 1080p https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/146812-amd-radeon-rx-6800-xt-radeon-rx-6800/?page=8

 

LTT's video summary is basically how I think. Not good value for the price because Nvidia's AI aspects and video encoding are added features which push the needle agaisnt it. DLSS alone is enough of a reason to choose green over red!

 

I think Linus was a bit harsh, most of the kids watching his videos aren't going to notice the difference of the features he was giving Nvidia credit for imo. That's not to say I wouldn't go for the 3080 if I had the budget and shops had the stock, but I think it's closer than the let on. The rumoured price bump the 6800 received prior to launch puts it in a slightly awkward spot perhaps as the next step is so close. Will be interesting to see where the 6700 slots in.

 

I don't agree. Most of the kids watching him are going to want star glittered Youtube and Twitch careers (note my sarcasm, but it's truth) and will want good streaming capabilities. Which you don't get on AMD without spending more money on a device.

I can see why these AMD cards cost what they do. TSMC, 16gb VRAM etc. However, feature wise they are sorely lacking. AMD's brushing off of DLSS yesterday (stating that it's not full render res and thus worse) was a stupid move. I can understand why they would not want to promise something they can not give, but yeah going the opposite and stupidly slagging it off won't help them, given it's (IMO) the best feature on RTX.

So it all seems a bit hit and miss to me. At 4k they are not as impressive as the 30 series, and they lack all of the features. Which to me wouldn't matter so much (apart from DLSS of course) but to kids gaming and streaming? where's RTX voice? where's NVenc? and so on.

 

It's for sure 100% of your finest plastic. Three cases have been reported on OCUK. Seems if you pick it up there it just snaps off.

 

I think you're assuming a lot from AMD. Their version of DLSS will lag far far behind Nvidia's. Nvidia is the world leader in AI tech and has been for most of the last decade. AMD doesn't even do anything AI related. AMD's version will be worse than the previous Nvidia version. On top of that AMD's GPU's don't have any AI cores, so it will impact performance when they do impliment it, it won't be an added bonus like Nvidia's one.

 

These features aren't really ones most will benefit from, serious streamers, particularly gamers wouldn't waste main machine power for encoding, that's always going to be seperate box, DLSS is an upscaler, wouldn't you rather have the power to perform native, though I admit it is interesting for scenarios where then hardware can't keep up

As for the AI stuff, will it come in useful on a gaming card, for people playing games, probably not, great if your hobby is machine learning and Nvidia don't lock you out on the gaming card.

 

But AMD doesn't offer that either. It offers more or less the same performance but with no additional features. And DLSS is a major thing, its 3x the performance in some situations for basically the same output quality!!!