Isn't it a greater question to ask where to buy one? The reason I don't have a 6800 XT is because it was easier to get my hands on a PS5!

I manage to grab one from Computeruniverse

PowerColor Radeon RX 6900XT Red Devil Product number 90824551 Available from stock. Reserved for you.

And that was the last one ... no more available...

Quoting: 14Isn't it a greater question to ask where to buy one? The reason I don't have a 6800 XT is because it was easier to get my hands on a PS5!

Nice I'm between a PC and a PS5 as well but both are unavailable (well for the PC everything is available except for the GPU)... whichever I find available first is what I'll get.
I sold my PC in September as I knew I was going to unable to game on it for months and wanted an upgrade anyway, but now those months have passed and I need something to game on :D

Hopefully I can get a GPU (hopefully 6800XT but anything near it will do) as I'd much prefer a PC due to it being a general purpose device.

It's a really sh***y situation we find ourselves in with those damn shortages.

PS: Technically there are GPUs available, sure, but they are 2x or 3x the MSRP, so there's no way I'm gonna pay that much

I also had a 1080Ti and now rock a Red Devil 6900XT. I guess we hate money or something...

It's a bloody whopper of a card, better make sure it fits beforehand! This mofo sure didn't leave much room to spare in my old case. You'll also need a beefy PSU, I wouldn't feel good with anything under 850W. Got a 1K unit here and haven't seen any issues, using all three power connectors on separate cables.

Linux support isn't perfect really, adjusting voltages/fans/clocks etc is said to improve with kernel 5.12. Nevertheless, it works great and runs hella fast. Gets a bit warm in my case as the airflow isn't optimized for this huge card that generates quite a lot of heat and dumps it right into the case air. It's below 60 C idle so the fans don't spin at all then.

FWIW, I run Siduction with Mesa git.

Good luck, I'm also waiting to buy a new AMD card. It's currently impossible due to severe shortages everywhere.

Last edited by Shmerl on 15 February 2021 at 9:51 pm UTC

hello! i just made the switch from nvidia to a 6900 xt recently. I use plain Arch linux with xfce. I have the following installed:

Quotemesa & lib32-mesa
xf86-video-amdgpu
vulkan-radeon & lib32-vulkan-radeon
lib32-libva-mesa-driver
lib32-mesa-vdpau
vulkan-tools
libva-utils
vdpauinfo
mesa-demos
vulkan-icd-loader & lib32-vulkan-icd-loader
vkd3d & lib32-vkd3d
opencl-mesa & lib32-opencl-mesa
ocl-icd & lib32-ocl-icd

I'm also using:

Quote5.10.16-arch1-1
linux-firmware 20210208.b79d239-1

i enabled early kms booting by adding amdgpu in the MODULES=() section in my /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and rebuilt my initramfs by doing mkinitcpio -P

to check if you have sam enabled, type the following into a terminal:

QuoteAMD_DEBUG=info glxinfo | grep vram

if vram_vis_size is equal to your vram_size then sam is enabled and working. i have sam running on my intel 10850k with my msi z490 unify working great.

if you use mpv, to enable gpu hardware acceleration, set the following in mpv.conf:

Quotevo=gpu
gpu-api=opengl OR vulkan
hwdec=vaapi

with my 6900 xt with opengl render, it can't run 4k 60fps. it lags way to bad and audio isn't in sync. switching to vulkan it plays 4k 60fps great, but it also has its own issues. opengl + software decoding 4k 60fps works the best and my 10850k has no issues running it at all. about 15% cpu total utilization. opengl 2k and below works great with gpu hardware acceleration and is overall more stable compared to vulkan. for me with my testing at least with opengl vs vulkan.
edit:

Quotei just tested hwdec on windows with mpv and it has no issues powering 4k 60fps off the 6900 xt as you can see here: https://i.imgur.com/7eNlb6c.png so it must be an issue with linux + vaapi + opengl.
 
C:\Users\#username#\AppData\Roaming\mpv\mpv.conf
vo=gpu
gpu-api=d3d11
gpu-context=d3d11
hwdec=d3d11va
volume=90
volume-max=100
loop-file=inf

if you use firefox, to have it use gpu hardware acceleration for its interface rendering, go to about:config:

Quotelayers.acceleration.force-enabled = true

this will enable opengl interface rendering. if it doesn't exists, then its hidden and you'll have to add it yourself. mozilla has been hiding some options lately. to get hardware video acceleration working do the following in about:config:

Quotemedia.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled = true
media.ffvpx.enabled = false
media.rdd-vpx.enabled = false
media.av1.enabled = true

you need layers.acceleration.force-enabled = true for hardware video acceleration to work.

a nifty program to check gpu usage, vram usage, etc, is radeontop. its kinda similar to nvidia's nvidia-smi.

xorg wise i haven't set anything in a config outside my mouse. my monitor and everything else was properly auto picked up and enabled. its funny as with my 6900 xt, my 2560x1440, 165hz, nano ips display was properly picked up as 2560x1440 165hz. even in the console its running at 165hz out of the box. with my nvidia gpu, it defaulted to some small resolution and 60hz.

re-run sensors-detect if you have lm_sensors installed. lm_sensors will show you basic information about your 6900 xt. like its fan speed, gpu and memory temperature, and power consumption.

to manually control the fan speed type the following:

Quotesudo echo "1" > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/hwmon/hwmon4/pwm1_enable

that activates manual control. hwmon4 might be different identity on your machine. it might be hwmon1, hwmon0, etc. same with card0. to set a fan speed type the following:

Quotesudo echo "#HERE" > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/hwmon/hwmon4/pwm1

the fans operate off of pwm. so it needs a pwm value. 100% fan speed is 255pwm value. to calcuate a value you times the percentage you want by 2.55. so 40%*2.55 = 102 pwm value for 40% fan speed. or 15%*2.55 = 38 pwm value. 70%*2.55 = 178 pwm value.

so since i hate fan stop, i set my fans to 15% at idle and when i game i set to 70% which looks like:

Quote#40%
sudo echo "40" > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/hwmon/hwmon4/pwm1
and
#70%
sudo echo "178" > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/hwmon/hwmon4/pwm1

modifying the fan control is volatile so it will reset on a reboot. so if you reboot, you will have to do it again. to set back to vbios control without rebooting, do the following:

Quoteecho "2" > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/hwmon/hwmon4/pwm1_enable

you can do everything via the terminal but the only downside to running amd gpu over nvidia has been the lack of any decent gui program. all the gui one's i have tried have been buggy or don't really work. for me its not to much of an issue since i enjoy using the terminal, but i will admit, sometimes it is nice having a nice gui program. nvidia-settings is not only nice, but its superior to its window's counterpart in my opinion. overall, nvidia-settings wasn't enough to keep me on nvidia as nearly all the functionality is there via the terminal. you're not limited.

edit:
another nifty thing to look at is mangohud and dxvk hud.

Quote#hud section
https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk
#mangohud
https://github.com/flightlessmango/MangoHud

Last edited by orlfman on 16 February 2021 at 10:45 pm UTC

Can't comment on 6900XT but I've recently sold my RTX 2060S in favor of an RX 6800 non-xt. Couldn't be happier with the choice, card is very stable and performance is great. Welcome to the red family!

Running Kernel 5.11 and Mesa 21.0.0rc4