I got my Sapphire RX 6900 XT Nitro+ SE last week - upgrading from 1080Ti. The last time I've used AMD GPU was 10y+ ago, so I'm not sure I understand the results this card gives me and I'm hoping you can give me some feedback. I'm using the following setup: i7 8700K @5Ghz 1.3V with NZXT AIO Z370 Aorus Gaming 7 16GB 3200Mhz RAM PSU from Gigabyte 1000W RX 6900 XT Nitro+ SE 1440p 144 monitor The game I play the most is World of Warcraft, so my observations are mostly based on this experience. Using a default GPU profile, I'm getting a 21174 TimeSpy Graphics score Monitoring from running benchmark looks as follows: While running the test, GPU usage keeps up nicely ~ 90-99%. When playing WoW on Default GPU settings, metrics from AMD software looks like this. The screenshot was taken in a moment where not much happened on the screen, what makes me wonder is why I'm only at 128 fps while GPU is at only 63% usage - seems there's a huge amount of headroom, and frames should be way higher. Also the clock sped is only at 1587 - also a lot of headroom to ~ 2200. Now to the part, I don't fully understand. I played around with some OC of the GPU. I was able to get a 22140 Graphics Score in TimeSpy with those settings: Monitoring from running the benchmark looks as follows: In Benchmarks, everything looks good, but when playing WoW I'm seeing even weirder results than those from the default profile - unfortunately, I didn't take a screenshot. In WoW, while idling I was getting even up to 260 fps, but when some action started (those who know the game - while fighting a raid boss) my fps drops to 70-80. What worries me is the usage of the card - I could see the GPU clocks ~ 600 mhz and usage ~ 60% and temps ~ 60C. Another not usual thing (not to me) I'm observing is weird noises - in some cases it's coil whine - my old 1080Ti also had some, it way worse with 6900XT but I'm good with it, but in other cases it's a noise comparable like there would be a small piece of paper between the fan blades - I know that might sounds stupid but it's the closes I can compere it with - and it changes while playing the game depending on what I currently have on the screen. I've tried recording it - I'm starting up WoW in this clip, but youtube made it very quiet - I'm also able to hear that sound in the last test that Time Spy runs - with bad graphics and a lot of particles. Phew, that's come out to be a long post so if you got up to this part - thanks! Looking for some feedback and sugestions!
Disable ULPS in the registry for the GPU then use MPT to disable the power save features. Set a min and max clock for the GPU in the Radeon settings to 100-200mhz apart from each other i have a 6800XT, non high demand / low GPU usage or mostly CPU bound games will send the card into power saving/2D mode hence the low clock rates
You can also disable Zero rpm so your card never does the RPM spin up and spin down sound for the fans. I set mine to run at a min of 30% Fan speed, quite but fast enough to not have the vibration hum
Do not leave the minimum frequency at 500 otherwise you will lose performance in the specific photo it should be at 2450, always remember first you increase the minimum and then automatically the driver follows with an additional 100hz at the maximum frequency.
Core count matters much much less than IPC and frequency rating when the fact is most games still rarely saturate more than 4 cores
I'd look at CPU individual core load primarily. Thing is, RPGs, and MMOs tend to hit the CPU much harder than other games and with something like a WoW raid you can also be limited on what the sever communication allows. In my personal experience it's rare to be limited by a high-end GPU in the situation you describe. Not saying the other things mentioned in the thread won't help, just that I wouldn't expect a 6900XT to ever be the bottleneck in a WoW raid setting. Don't expect 100% utilization there.