Review: Sapphire Radeon RX 6800 XT NITRO+

Thanks Hilbert for the top notch reviews.
Some efforts are barely noticed, we know how under pressure one is. We appreciate your work, it's always a joy to have reviews to read. Kudos.
On a different subject.
Another GPU which I'll not buy.
Seriously, these prices are insanely expensive.
Yes, I am not forced to buy one. That I know.
Not that this will make it cheaper.
But I digress.

 

Considering the wide boost clock range I would imagine that many of the 6800's and the 6800XT's are pretty variable in what they can achieve and what users would be able to fine tune through a combination of increasing the power limit but without bios modding it seems the default is now 15% not 20% and not 50% plus how quickly the power draw and temps would increase and how much headroom is actually left especially for a factory overclock model like what these are.

Somewhat curious what a triple 8-pin can do but I'm going to expect not much and 2500 Mhz is about the best these do and with a good binning on the card at that.
Guessing that's why both the Red Devil and Nitro+ utilize double 8-pin connectors and no more this time around too same as Pulse and I expect the Red Dragon would too.


Wonder what bios or soft modding can eventually do here, probably also limited returns but someone's going to try for 2600 ha ha.

EDIT: There are words for the availability situation but eh plenty of time for display driver and the settings software to mature further at least and what reviews for additional 6800's the XT variant of these and the later 6900 XT will show these capable of and how it compares to NVIDIA.
(Same with their GPU's though but newer NVIDIA drivers could also bring some surprises.)

 

The page for DXR benchmark, there is a single score for the 6800XT, not a seperate score for the reference 6800XT and another one for the Sapphire card, does the RT cores in the 6800/6900 have there own clocks and they are not OCed when the Core is OCed?

 

Yea, overclocking is really over. I´ve never bothered to oc my 1080ti and it´s going to be the same with my next CPU because Intel, Nvidia and AMD already overclock their parts out of the box...

But something that´s making me worry is that suddenly every card seems to suffers from coil whine. How is this possible???

 

Hey Hilbert I get this is your day job but these cards ARE NOT AVAILABLE TO BUY. You need to call this out and don't review vapour ware products otherwise both Nvidia and AMD will continue supplying cards none of us can buy, making you a shill. TBH I don't even read the reviews for these non existent cards anymore it's a waste of my time as I can't buy them. You make them a recommended buy when there is no stock availability. Stand up for us PC Gamers and say enough is enough.

 

How do we know what the availability would be if these cards were purchased by Gamers instead of scalpers.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sapphire-N...620959?hash=item217ee1631f:g:oIsAAOSw5XVfvrXD

 

Way too few available period. Don't buy in to the "Scalpers got them all" bullshit.

 

considering the ethereum total mining hashrate has increased by 90% this year from 147(january) to 280 th/s, I wouldn't be-surprised if they are being poached before they make it to retail. same goes for the nvidia 3000 series.

 

We have no baseline. It would be more helpful if seller provided this kind of info for the prior release so we could compare/see what is normal.

 

Honestly, I'm disappointed by AMD results overall. Man, I was really looking forward going all Red soon but unless the 6900xt (I'm doubtful) crushes the RTX 3090 in EVERYTHING, I will pass up on both these series from AMD and NVIDIA and wait for RDNA 3/Hopper.

AMD had two-years to work on a DLSS-like alternative before launch. Failed out the gate. Two-years not just to match or come close but PASS NVIDIA by a lot when it comes to RT. Failed out the gate.

Sadly, NVIDIA's 30 series are more future proof than AMD's offerings, especially when it comes to features like Broadcasting, NATIVE tensor cores for its ML/AI sampling, etc.

The future is ray-tracing, not rasterization going forward over RT. Just look at the line up for future games. Why upgrade to a next-gen RT gpus just to play games that a 5700xt/1080ti can handle easily @ 1440p/120?

 

Which new game can 1080ti run at 120 fps at 1440p? Hell, let it be 1080 . Stop smoking what ever you are smoking. Rt may be future just not right now, not current gen.

 

Great review, cannot buy ANY 6800 in my region so thanks AMD and scalpers for helping me save money until the next shipment at RRP.

 

I didn't say NEW games, smokey.

 

And you buy new gpu to play old games. Cool stro. Go on with that bubbles

 

i went on newegg U.S this morning EVERY 6800xt was priced over 1000 dollars (sold out). then a couple hours later they changed them back to normal prices...that is what i call bullshit

 

I think you need to slow down a minute. That was my point. Why would anyone purchase one of these next-gen gpu just to play rasterization games.

There are a lot of RT haters here and they cheer for rasterization games but they are looking at these NEXT-GEN CARDS to play their old DX9 to DX11 (some DX12) games.

I game at 4K before I sold my 2080ti NVLink cards.

 

That's another thing that bothers me with AMD's 6000 series cards. The shady price hike. $120 premium? For what, though? Because they think they can?!

We'll see about how that arrogant stance worked out for AMD around February-April 2021.

 

Rather play high fps 1080p max graphics, than supose playable 4k with low fps . It's not about RT hate ,it's about what it is in current from , a gimmick , nothing else. Which huge performance impact.
This generation won't have anything meaningfull regarding RT , thats why AMD bet on raster performance, because it matters , high fps gaming matters .
Also keep in mind both currrent consoles use AMD GPU/CPU combo , you really think nvidia gpu will be that futureproof ? Especially 3070 with 8 gb vram , that one will sure be future proof as hell.

I rather have 100 fps at 1080p then 50 fps at 4k. But i guess everyone is different, for some 50fps is gaming , for other it is not.

 

No, he is buying them to play old MMO games.

Last time I checked, MMO games been made in way that most of existing PCs can run them.

 

The thing is, you people don't have to enabled RT at all. Just leave RT off. Simple.

But, you can't and you'll never speak for those that wants it and for those gamers that DEMAND THE LATEST AND GREATEST IN TECH. Is one of the great benefits for gaming on computers is for visual fidelity, right?!

Someone's chart is not my rig performance and it DOES NOT VALIDDATE MY PURCHASING DECISION ONLY. One chart would differ from another's chart. It happens all the time (like the big lie Dirt 5 NVIDIA vs AMD benchmark that favored AMD but many reviewers failed to mention that they were using a BETA CODE FOR D5 THAT WAS SUPPLIED BY AMD), so, every wise consumer should take all reviewers results with a grain of salt and wait for consumer benchmarks / feedback reach online before they decide on a final decision.

Edit: And if that consumer just has to pull the trigger early before any reviews (I'm definitely guilty to that), hold on tight to that receipt!