Radeon RX 6800 & RX 6800 XT Review: AMD’s Back With Big Navi

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards represented in this article on a pair of systems. One featured an ASUS Prime X299 Deluxe motherboard powered by a Core i9-10980XE 18-core / 36-thread processor and 32GB of HyperX DDR4 RAM clocked at 2,933MHz. The other was built-around an MSI X570 Godlike motherboard, equipped with a Ryzen 9 5950X and 16GB of G.SKILL DDR4 RAM clocked at 3,200MHz. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" defaults, then we disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's clock was dialed in to its optimal performance settings using its XMP profile and the solid state drive was then formatted and Windows 10 Professional x64 was installed and fully updated. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, games, applications and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.

For all of the standard tests, the Radeon RX 6000 series cards were tested using their "Balanced" performance profile. "Rage" mode was enabled for a sampling of tests present in the overclocking section of this article, however. The new Radeons were also tested with and without Smart Access Memory enabled in an attempt to paint the most complete picture of performance.

HotHardware's Test System Intel Core i9 Powered

Hardware Used: Intel Core i9-10980XE (3GHz - 4.4GHz, 18-Core) ASUS X299 Prime (Intel X299 Chipset) 32GB Corsair DDR4-2933 AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (3.4GHz - 4.9GHz, 16-Core) MSI X570 Godlike (AMD X570 Chipset) 16GB G.SKILL DDR4-3200 Samsung SSD 970 EVO Integrated Audio Integrated Network NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT AMD Radeon RX 6800 AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

Relevant Software: Windows 10 Pro x64 (v2004) AMD Radeon Software v20.8.3 NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v457.30 Benchmarks Used: IndigoBench v4 LuxMark v4_alpha0 SiSoft SANDRA 2020 VRMark 3DMark (Time Spy, Fire Strike, Port Royal, DXR) Unigine Superposition Crytek Neon Noir Metro Exodus Red Dead Redemption 2 Gears Tactics F1 2020 FarCry: New Dawn

SiSoft SANDRA 2020 Cryptography And Image Processing OpenCL Performance Tests

SANDRA's GPGPU Image Processing benchmark runs through an array of filters on its reference data and offers up an aggregate score, derived from a number of individual results. CUDA and OpenCL code paths are available in these tests, but we used OpenCL on all cards to keep the playing field level. Previously, using the CUDA path with NVIDIA GPUs resulted in better performance, but OpenCL actually outperforms CUDA in these tests now...

The new Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT put up some monster numbers in SANDRA's image processing benchmark, besting NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3080 by a wide margin, to finish at the top of the charts.

IndigoBench GPU Rendering Performance

The Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT finish right in the middle of the pack here, according to the results with the "Supercar" model at least. With the more taxing "Bedroom" model, the Radeon RX 6800 XT scores a first place finish, with the RX 6800 trailing only the GeForce RTX 3080.

Unigine Superposition Pseudo-DirectX / OpenGL Gaming

Superposition is a relatively new benchmark from Unigine, powered by the UNIGINE 2 Engine. It offers an array of benchmark modes, targeting gaming workloads as well as VR, with both DirectX and OpenGL code paths. There is an extreme hardware stability test built-in as well. Unigine Superposition uses the developer’s unique SSRTGI (Screen-Space Ray-Traced Global Illumination) dynamic lighting technology, along with high quality textures and models, to produce some stunning visuals. We ran Superposition in two modes using the DirectX code path – 1080p Extreme and VR Future -- to compare the performance of all of the graphics cards featured here.

Unigine Superposition

Unigine Superposition's 1080P Extreme test has the new Radeon RX 6800 XT trailing the GeForce RTX 3080 by a few percentage points. The Radeon RX 6800 also trails its NVIDIA-built GeForce RTX contemporaries, but the delta separating the cards are much smaller. Enabling Smart Access Memory (SAM) has a minimal impact on performance here.


Enabling SAM in Superposition's VR Future test is a wash. In terms of the overall performance trend though, the Radeon RX 6800 XT once again trails the GeForce RTX 3080, but the Radeon RX 6800 pulls ahead of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 3070.

UL VRMark Testing Rift And Vive Readiness

UL's VRMark is designed to test a PC’s readiness for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets. The benchmark does not, however, require that one of the headsets is attached to the PC to run and it uses an in-house graphics engine and content to ensure comparable results between different platforms. We ran the "Blue Room" VRMark test at defaults settings here, which is currently the most taxing test offered by the tool.


VR Mark tells essentially the same story as Unigine's VR Future benchmark. SAM has virtually no impact on performance (yes, the score was identical from run to run with the 6800 with and without SAM -- that's not a typo), and the new Radeon RX 6800 series cards outpace everything but the GeForce RTX 3080.
 

UL 3DMark Time Spy Direct X 12 Performance

In the DX12-based 3DMark Tme Spy benchmark, the Radeon RX 6800 XT pulls off a clear victory, outrunning every other card we tested, with or without SAM enabled. The Radeon RX 6800 puts up strong numbers here as well, trailing only its big brother and the more expensive GeForce RTX 3080.

UL 3DMark Fire Strike Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Fire Strike has multiple benchmark modes: Normal mode runs at 1920x1080, Extreme mode targets 2560x1440, and Ultra mode runs at a 4K resolution. GPU target frame buffer utilization for normal mode is 1GB and the benchmark uses tessellation, ambient occlusion, volume illumination, and a medium-quality depth of field filter. The more taxing Extreme mode targets 1.5GB of frame buffer memory and increases detail levels across the board. Ultra mode is explicitly designed for high-end and CrossFire / SLI systems and cranks up the quality even further. GT 1 focuses on geometry and illumination, with over 100 shadow casting spot lights, 140 non-shadow casting point lights, and 3.9 million vertices calculated for tessellation per frame. GT2 emphasizes particles and GPU simulations.

3DMark Fire Strike


Radeon RX 6800 XT Fire Strike Ultra Details

Our results in the DX11-based Fire Strike benchmark somewhat mirror those of Time Spy. The Radeon RX 6800 XT scores another decisive victory here, to finish at the top of the charts. The Radeon RX 6800 also performs well and significantly outpaces the GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 2080 Ti.

UL 3DMark Port Royal DXR Ray Tracing Benchmark

Port Royal was released earlier this year as an update to UL’s popular 3DMark suite. It is designed to test real-time ray tracing performance of graphics cards that support Microsoft DirectX Raytracing, or DXR. Although DXR is technically compatible with all DX12-class GPUs, the graphics card must have drivers that enable DXR, and NVIDIA is the only company to have done so at this point, hence the lack of Radeons in the chart.

3DMark's Port Royal ray tracing benchmark reveals the first chink in the Radeon RX 6800 series' armor. The Radeon RX 6800 XT is able to beat NVIDIA's previous-gen flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, but the 3080 smashes the 6800 XT here. The Radeon RX 6800 ends up trailing the 2080 Ti and 3070 here as well, but it's not too far behind.

We also experimented with the recently released 3DMark DirectX Ray Tracing Feature test, but the results were less kind to AMD...

The Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 bring up the rear in this test, falling behind all of the GeForce cards. The GeForce RTX 3080 puts up particularly strong numbers in this test, that more than double the Radeon RX 6800's performance.