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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Feel free to comment as you watch as if you have JavaScript enabled it won't refresh the page.
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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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: GuestMy rtx 2080 delivers more performance with less watts than the average 5700xt.wait.. you've just compared a $1k product with a 400 bucks one? please check what pound for pound means.
I don't contest that the green cards are probably better right now. I'm just saying that at the same price AMD brings proper drivers and Nvidia doesn't. And that could be a defining factor for quite some people - without resorting to pure "ideology".
Example: I'm in the market for a mid-to-higher priced GPU with hassle-free out-of-the box Linux distro support. I know or at least heard of most of the things you've mentioned but my prerequisites for a purchase is general competitiveness of the product AND open-source support. And here is where AMD wins outright. Even though an Nvidia card could be marginally better at the same price (or not...)
2 Likes, Who?
I do think:
- Performance difference between AMD and Nvidia is most of the time not relevant unless you go to high end graphic card, and if you do so, you have probably a good reason do to this, and you probably don't expect perfect support on Gnu/Linux.
- If you only do gaming with an Mid end GPU, Go for a previous generation AMD GPU those are most of the time the best supported graphic card, linux driver take time to be available, don't expect day one support on Gnu/Linux.
- AMD opensource GPU driver are great on linux but they do lack some features (opencl support out of the box is poor and of course no CUDA).
I personally go from Nvidia to AMD, i do buy my last 2 graphic card mostly to have a better driver support. I also wanted to ditch the nvidia proprietary driver, which is a pain to maintain in some distro.
The time i do use Nvidia graphic card was not great for gaming on linux, so i don't have much information about really playing on it, but my experience was not really great for a simple usage. I do have some graphic issues with it
The AMD old driver was amazing to me as i can play game like tropico 5 on it, it's really impressive for someone like me that have more or less but game aside because i don't really want to maintain dualboot.
The AMDGPU is another step better. I do tested both RX560 and RX580 on it and it work really really well. I don't push the game to the limit and i don't really care about fps (just want to be able to play normally with normal setting).
So i do expect the nvidia driver has improved from the time i used it, but it's seems to me that part of the success the amdgpu driver is that it don't care about the past and just do the thing in a more linux-friendly way.
- Performance difference between AMD and Nvidia is most of the time not relevant unless you go to high end graphic card, and if you do so, you have probably a good reason do to this, and you probably don't expect perfect support on Gnu/Linux.
- If you only do gaming with an Mid end GPU, Go for a previous generation AMD GPU those are most of the time the best supported graphic card, linux driver take time to be available, don't expect day one support on Gnu/Linux.
- AMD opensource GPU driver are great on linux but they do lack some features (opencl support out of the box is poor and of course no CUDA).
I personally go from Nvidia to AMD, i do buy my last 2 graphic card mostly to have a better driver support. I also wanted to ditch the nvidia proprietary driver, which is a pain to maintain in some distro.
The time i do use Nvidia graphic card was not great for gaming on linux, so i don't have much information about really playing on it, but my experience was not really great for a simple usage. I do have some graphic issues with it
The AMD old driver was amazing to me as i can play game like tropico 5 on it, it's really impressive for someone like me that have more or less but game aside because i don't really want to maintain dualboot.
The AMDGPU is another step better. I do tested both RX560 and RX580 on it and it work really really well. I don't push the game to the limit and i don't really care about fps (just want to be able to play normally with normal setting).
So i do expect the nvidia driver has improved from the time i used it, but it's seems to me that part of the success the amdgpu driver is that it don't care about the past and just do the thing in a more linux-friendly way.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: GuestMy RTX 2080 is (barely) mid-tier 1440p card.
Cmon people, you guys are seriously giving attention to someone who says things like that?
It's a guy saying that you should not buy something because of your ideologies and is defending Nvidia at every possible chance
8 Likes, Who?
Quoting: GuestAsync reprojection is a hack to hide the lack of GPU power.
Well, the same can be said about DLSS.
5 Likes, Who?
Quoting: GuestQuoting: WJMazepasQuoting: GuestMy RTX 2080 is (barely) mid-tier 1440p card.
Cmon people, you guys are seriously giving attention to someone who says things like that?
It's a guy saying that you should not buy something because of your ideologies and is defending Nvidia at every possible chance
Do you have that card? Have you seen any benchmark for it? Do you even know how to choose a GPU? Probably no to all.
Wow, Lunix. You're a real piece of work. Please lighten the tone. Please. Please don't call people liars directly or indirectly. Please stop generalising everything into "for you" and "against you". Please.
6 Likes, Who?
Quoting: GuestOh so I'm the only one who is not allowed to talk backWell you do so and a lot. The proof is in the pudding.
4 Likes, Who?
Arehandoro Oct 28, 2020
Quoting: GuestQuoting: GuestQuoting: GuestQuoting: scaineQuoting: GuestEvery product is different and the ideology is the least important difference between them.
For you. Not for me. The ethos of a company, its ethical stance, and its impact on fostering a cultural shift to open methodologies is the single most important aspect of choosing my hardware. Then it's performance, then it's heat/noise/efficiency. Finally, its price comes into consideration.
It's weird to me that you're commenting on a Linux site and don't understand this, or somewhat buy into it. But I suppose as Linux increases in popularity, there will be more and more people like yourself who don't care about open standards (or least, care as much as others do).
If your number-1 metric is vanity then you're destined to make bad decisions. I can see that you have a 4k display but you use an 5700xt which is not good for 4k at all, it's just an entry-level 1440p card. I don't know how up-to-date your profile is, but you only have one display and you use x11 - wayland and its better multi-display support is the key selling point of AMD.
For most people(>99%) the driver stability, price/performance, performance/watts, warranty programs and supported bonus feae linux and its desktops because of its features(and the lack of some "features"). Developers choosetures will matter the most because they will be the ones delivering value. 3rd party coolers can solve the heat and noise issues.
What is really weird is that linux users supposed to be conscious customers who know that there is more to software and hardware than popularity and other superficial metrics and yet here you are only considering open-sourceness which alone is not real value. Letting a single company be your sole supplier also sounds bad - this is how you get monopolies. Linux will never get really popular if it won't get with the times and deliver actual value instead of advertizing ideologies.
It's not about vanity, it's about control over your own hardware.
And wanting open source seems to have been a good business choice for AMD. Open drivers that don't need external proprietary blobs was a business choice - many data centres or internal company networks wanted precisely that. It was the driving factor behind AMD's decision.
Also, what's the loss in keeping with the ideologies that GNU/Linux is founded upon? Why feel the need to make it more popular if those values are lost? All you end up with is basically Apple or Microsoft, which will defeat the entire point of GNU/Linux. Popularity for its own sake is pointless in my opinion - make it open, make it well, and it will be used on its own merrits. There's a reason that GNU/Linux won the server space.
Linux won the server-space because of its features and performance, and because of companies like redhat and canonical which provide support. GNU/Linux is not a thing for the companies which pay for linux development, they only care about the linux kernel and what runs on it. Healthy competition is the key, not source availability.
Apple and ms are not related because linux is not a company, it's more like an investment between companies against those companies who just want to control the market. If linux gaming and the linux desktop wants to stay alive then it needs to concentrate on value: gaming and desktop UX, not just on open-sourceness. ms also has lots of OSS but they're only doing it to popularize themselves between developers who think OSS = perfect. They're still just a shady company.
We might as well wait for open-source games but we all know that would deliver little to no value for us but it would definitely hurt game developers.
Remember that the main goal of Free Software is being pro-customer - that's the ideology worth to pursue. OSS doesn't always mean that something is pro-customer but it's a good start. Open-source is more relevant if we have an active community which provides extra support - but it is still just one aspect. I use linux and its desktops because of its features(and the lack of some "features"). Most developers also chose linux because of its features and a lot more developers avoid it because of missing features. Linux is just a tool - it is used to get stuff done.
I, for a change, rather not have those mercantilistic (adding continuous value) views on my OS. I appreciate the effort from companies like Valve, Red Hat or Collabora, but they are companies anyway and while they support us, because it benefits them, they will turn the door on us at the very moment it's convenient for them.
I like Linux because with its openness creates an ecosystem that protects itself against that kind of practices, and monopolies, end of life support, etc. As long as there are people interested in a feature, independently of companies support, we will Linux thrive.
Linux won the server race way before RedHat or Canonical were powerful enough to gain the credit. Linux won the server race because people were allowed to make changes, publish them and everyone that used Linux benefited from it. It's a resemblance of human kind. We are able to thrive as a civilization because we can write down our findings and let people develop and learn upon those ideas, passing and expanding the knowledge.
4 Likes, Who?
Quoting: GuestI think you just simply don't know what nvidia-settings can do(more than your average DE's display settings) and think that amd and intel does everything perfectly out-of-the-box. They don't. Linux display configuration is decades behind windows and nvidia-settings is just a small consolation.lol
no one should have to depend on obscure tweaks for broken stuff. THATS how community driven, free-as-in-freedom, and colloquially developed software works.
unfortunately 3d games are known to be plagued by this, but hey citing it as a clear competitive advantage... jeez
0 Likes
Koopacabras Oct 28, 2020
it's ironic what's been discussed as an ideology here. Proprietary Apple banning Epic from their store for not fullfilling their rules, how that can be any different from this?? You got all wrong Open Source is not some hippie ideology... Kernel developers are exercising their legit right, it's their kernel their rules, how can that be any different? no ideology here... it's just being pragmatic, like Apple dropping 64 bit support, or Microsoft phasing out Windows XP or any other example. Nvidia drivers are holding back Wayland development and other graphical advancements on the linux desktop.
kernel development is not a democracy like it or not. Development of proprietary software might have some marketing PR, or a board director driving the code instead this is a pure technological decision done by programmers.
Kernel developers cannot profit from nvidia drivers same thing as Apple not taking what they consider their fair cut with Epic.
Also what are we talking about here? We need to judge the recent events in it's context... let's not forget that nvidia did all sort of GPL violations (remember the recent GPL "condom"?), the response of kernel developers seems accordingly, they are protecting their code.
It's funny nvidia developers tried several times to boycott kernel development and the nouveau driver, but when people openly call to boycott nvidia on linux, hmmm how is it that called? uncommercial?
Last edited by Koopacabras on 28 October 2020 at 9:19 pm UTC
kernel development is not a democracy like it or not. Development of proprietary software might have some marketing PR, or a board director driving the code instead this is a pure technological decision done by programmers.
Kernel developers cannot profit from nvidia drivers same thing as Apple not taking what they consider their fair cut with Epic.
Also what are we talking about here? We need to judge the recent events in it's context... let's not forget that nvidia did all sort of GPL violations (remember the recent GPL "condom"?), the response of kernel developers seems accordingly, they are protecting their code.
It's funny nvidia developers tried several times to boycott kernel development and the nouveau driver, but when people openly call to boycott nvidia on linux, hmmm how is it that called? uncommercial?
Last edited by Koopacabras on 28 October 2020 at 9:19 pm UTC
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