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AMD reveal RDNA 2 with Radeon RX 6900 XT, Radeon RX 6800 XT, Radeon RX 6800

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Today AMD formally revealed the next-generation Radeon GPUs powered by the RDNA 2 architecture and it looks like they’re going to thoroughly give NVIDIA a run for your money.

What was announced: Radeon RX 6900 XT, Radeon RX 6800 XT, Radeon 6800 with the Radeon RX 6800 XT looking like a very capable GPU that sits right next to NVIDIA's 3080 while seeming to use less power. All three of them will support Ray Tracing as expected with AMD adding a "high performance, fixed-function Ray Accelerator engine to each compute unit". However, we're still waiting on The Khronos Group to formally announce the proper release of the vendor-neutral Ray Tracing extensions for Vulkan which still aren't finished (provisional since March 2020) so for now DirectX RT was all they mentioned.

Part of the big improvement in RDNA 2 comes from what they learned with Zen 3 and their new "Infinity Cache", which is a high-performance, last-level data cache they say "dramatically" reduces latency and power consumption while delivering higher performance than previous designs. You can see some of the benchmarks they showed in the image below:

As always, it's worth waiting on independent benchmarks for the full picture as both AMD and NVIDIA like to cherry-pick what makes them look good of course.

Here's the key highlight specifications:

  RX 6900 XT RX 6800 XT RX 6800
Compute Units 80 72 60
Process TSMC 7nm TSMC 7nm TSMC 7nm
Game clock (MHz) 2,015 2,015 1,815
Boost clock (MHz) 2,250 2,250 2,105
Infinity Cache (MB) 128 128 128
Memory 16GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6
TDP (Watt) 300 300 250
Price (USD) $999 $649 $579
Available 08/12/2020 18/11/2020 18/11/2020

You shouldn't need to go buying a new case either, as AMD say they had easy upgrades in mind as they built these new GPUs for "standard chassis" with a length of 267mm and 2x8 standard 8-pin power connectors, and designed to operate with existing enthusiast-class 650W-750W power supplies.

There was a big portion of the event dedicated to DirectX which doesn’t mean much for us, but what we’ve been able to learn from the benchmarks shown is that they’re powerful cards and they appear to fight even NVIDIA’s latest high end consumer GPUs like the GeForce 3080. So not only are AMD leaping over Intel with the Ryzen 5000, they’re also now shutting NVIDIA out in the cold too. Incredible to see how far AMD has surged in the last few years. This is what NVIDIA and Intel have needed, some strong competition.

How will their Linux support be? You're probably looking at around the likes of Ubuntu 21.04 next April (or comparable distro updates) to see reasonable out-of-the-box support, thanks to newer Mesa drivers and an updated Linux Kernel but we will know a lot more once they actually release and can be tested.

As for what’s next? AMD confirmed that RDNA3 is well into the design stage, with a release expected before the end of 2022 for GPUs powered by RDNA3.

You can view the full event video in our YouTube embed below:

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Additionally if you missed it, AMD also recently announced (October 27) that they will be acquiring chip designer Xilinx.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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106 comments
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mos Oct 30, 2020
Quoting: Hori
Quoting: mos
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: subPlease consider supporting AMD.

I don't really mind proprietary games, but as a Linux user
I clearly want my computer infrastructure being as open as possible.
Hardware, drivers and libs.

This is where AMD shines, if you're smart enough to value this.

Or just be a conscious customer and evaluate products properly instead of relying on ideologies only.
As if AMD's GPU's clearly suck compared to NVIDIA's value-wise.
No they don't, and the diff between them is mostly ideological to begin with. The latter abhors public software model, the former at least partially supports it. So the ideology starts with the vendor in this case, rather than with the consumer.
Let's not forget that until this generation, AMD was miles behind Nvidia in terms of performance
Not to mention that you're basically beta (or sometimes it's better said alpha lol) testing their drivers for the first few months of use until they actually get to a point that they are ok.

Now don't get me wrong, I hope AMD does become a viable alternative and fierce opponent to Nvidia, but they cannot win my trust overnight. It will be a while until that. I can't trust them in the GPU space just as I cannot trust Intel in the CPU space. They have a long history of mistakes, bad products and laziness (including over-rebranding old products).
I do expect them to make it right and heal their reputation, but until then, I will wait.

And no, I'm not an Nvidia fanboy at all. I just want to go with the product that has the best chance of working well and offers the performance I need. Just as I used to choose Intel over AMD for CPUs in the past (for similar reasons) and eventually the situation made a complete switch to the point I'd avoid Intel like the plague, this could happen also in the GPU space but it's not yet the case.
Don't quite get what your gripe with ATI/AMD GPUs exactly is. They've announced themselves as a competitive GPU maker with the Radeon 7-thousand-something (or was it 9k-something?) back in the day. And been only getting better. Is it not enough to earn your 'trust' (whatever that means)?
As for the 'sins' you've mentioned, hasn't NVIDIA been up to roughly the same stuff?
Shmerl Oct 30, 2020
Quoting: x_wingIMO, going very high in PSU wattage is not always the best for efficiency as your computer will probably by idling more than 50% of the time (or more than 90% if you keep it always on... like me) and you will probably get better efficiency with a certificated PSU that has a wattage more in line with your total system consumption.

I got 750W one and so far it was enough. You can get good quality efficient PSU to reduce power wasting:

https://seasonic.com/prime-ultra-titanium
Avehicle7887 Oct 30, 2020
Time for some GPU Porn: https://phonemantra.com/gigabyte-and-sapphire-unveil-reference-radeon-rx-6800-and-rx-6800-xt/

Looks like I'm going with the Sapphire 6800XT all the way.
Koopacabras Oct 30, 2020
Quoting: subCongrats AMD!

I got myself a 5700XT in early January.
Experience was (still is) absolutely flawless.
Worked out-of-the-box.
Performance is great for playing games in FHD and WQHD high settings.
I got a 5600 xt on June and also had a flawless experience, except overclocking, which also was not perfect on Polaris, I think is normal that ocing will have some issues on every card.
But my desktop has been working like never before, also games work fantastic.... I tried wayland yesterday and it's soooo awesome no tearing everything feels so snappy. Thanks for the wonderful job AMD keep it up!!
Koopacabras Oct 30, 2020
Quoting: ShmerlI got 750W one and so far it was enough. You can get good quality efficient PSU to reduce power wasting:
I have a 600 watts thermaltake silver psu and my electricity bill went down, I suppose it's more noticeable, (even though it is not a platinum or a titanium PSU) since PSU efficiency increases if the power current is 220v and here it is.

Seasonic has really awesome PSUs btw.


Last edited by Koopacabras on 30 October 2020 at 5:30 pm UTC
Shmerl Oct 30, 2020
Quoting: Avehicle7887Time for some GPU Porn: https://phonemantra.com/gigabyte-and-sapphire-unveil-reference-radeon-rx-6800-and-rx-6800-xt/

Looks like I'm going with the Sapphire 6800XT all the way.

I wonder how custom designs from Sapphire will look like. Reference design is already on the level of what they used to make as custom before.


Last edited by Shmerl on 30 October 2020 at 6:17 pm UTC
mawhrin-skel Oct 30, 2020
Quoting: illwieckz
Quoting: GuestI never had to write xorg.conf to make my hardware work, nvidia-settings takes care of the settings.

You said it: “nvidia-settings takes care of the settings”. You're experiencing Linux graphics like if you still lived in year 2004. That's not normal you have to use nvidia-settings. That's wrong you have to use it. Neither Intel or AMD hardware requires similar things. This has stopped on AMD side many year ago. The thing is: Nvidia is decade late in the race.

To defend lunix (as someone who recently defected from green to red, so pls no bully), the nvidia-settings control panel *is* pretty nice. It offers what few Linux config options exist in a nice GUI, with a multimonitor positioning/resolution/Hz section to boot (something some DEs' settings panels may fall short of). With AMD, I have no control panel. :c

Also, and brace yourselves, but G-SYNC works out of the box in Linux. FreeSync doesn't, and it can barely be said to work *at all* with its "only-up-to-90 Hz" limitation. (The downside is that G-SYNC monitor wouldn't work at all without Nvidia proprietary drivers, or an AMD card, so I ditched it along with my 1080 Ti. Hehe.)

It's hard to know what the facts are. (Nature is like this. No, Nature is actually like this.) Past arguments about the facts, it's all philosophy. (If Nature is unjust, change Nature! No, I'm not interested in justice; only efficacy.) But then choice of philosophy can circle back around to fact problems. (Can Nature be changed at all? Will such changes result in a juster world?) But then those can be addressed again by philosophy. (I don't care; it's worth it to die trying; an unjust world is not worth living in. I do care; to struggle in futility is folly.)

What I'm trying to say is BIG NAVIIII HYPE WOOOOOO!!!!!!11

sub Oct 31, 2020
Quoting: Tuxee
Quoting: subCongrats AMD!

I got myself a 5700XT in early January.
Experience was (still is) absolutely flawless.
Worked out-of-the-box.
Performance is great for playing games in FHD and WQHD high settings.

I can't tell anything about release time but, indeed, I heard it was *rough*. :)

Indeed it was. My 5700 has been chugging along for the past few months without any problems and hiccups. And everything was good - until my 5500XT (in a second machine) met kernel 5.8.13 and later. It will disable a second display with any kernel > 5.8.12. No way to activate the second display.
The recipe for problem seems to be the mixture of 2+ displays (resolutions don't matter, one display won't cut it), RDNA and amdgpu. The bugtracker on freedesktop.org is still being fed with rather bizarre bugs.

Hmm. I have a WQHD monitor attached along with a UHD TV.
No issues at all. Never had.
Shmerl Oct 31, 2020
Quoting: mawhrin-skelAlso, and brace yourselves, but G-SYNC works out of the box in Linux. FreeSync doesn't, and it can barely be said to work *at all* with its "only-up-to-90 Hz" limitation.

Never had any problems with adaptive sync. I'm using LG 27GL850. Adaptive sync is fine up to 144 Hz and LFC works fine as well.

Gsync can't work out of the box unless your monitor has some proprietary module in it. That's an instant no go for me.


Last edited by Shmerl on 31 October 2020 at 11:42 pm UTC
14 Nov 1, 2020
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If Cyberpunk 2077 was coming to Linux, I would be looking at that RX 6800 instead of a PS5.
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