Sapphire Radeon RX 6900 XT Toxic

[HEXUS]

These go to eleven.

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[Kanoe]

looks like the tubes are a bit short for it, look a bit strained in the photo.

Any reason you mounted it that way round instead of having the tubes go on the left side which is less distance?

[Luke7]

looks like the tubes are a bit short for it, look a bit strained in the photo.

Any reason you mounted it that way round instead of having the tubes go on the left side which is less distance?

I think the exhaust fan is in the way of the tubes mounted the other way around

[Cooe]

TL;DR = It's the undisputed fastest GPU in the entire world at 1080p & 1440p, but falls right behind the RTX 3090 at 4K. Basically, there's no surprises here at all. Thus if you have the choice of hardware & want the absolute MAXIMUM possible performance, 1080p or 1440p/high refresh rate = RX 6900 XT; whereas >=4K/anything = RTX 3090.

[SteK]

Those tubes are from the CPU cooler

[Spud1]

TL;DR = It's the undisputed fastest GPU in the entire world at 1080p & 1440p.

*in some games, depending on the test setup and review site.

I'd rather say that it's pretty much equivalent to the 3090 at 1080p/1440p, but for £300 less. If you only game at those resolutions, have no interest in raytracing, and have the space & noise tolerance, it seems a good option.

For most others in the same situation, the regular 6900XT seems to be a better option...if you could find one of course Tend to agree with your summary of no surprises here though, the Radeons still work out a better option if you have no interest in Ray tracing (and that's a huge percentage of people), and the nvidia options work out better if you do, or really want 4K gaming (which isn't many people!).

[Terbinator]

TL;DR = It's the undisputed fastest GPU in the entire world at 1080p & 1440p, but falls right behind the RTX 3090 at 4K. Basically, there's no surprises here at all. Thus if you have the choice of hardware & want the absolute MAXIMUM possible performance, 1080p or 1440p/high refresh rate = RX 6900 XT; whereas >=4K/anything = RTX 3090.

RT performance (or lack of) kills these cards at the asking price. You'd be mad to buy one, if there was such a luxury, over a 3080.

[Cooe]

RT performance (or lack of) kills these cards at the asking price. You'd be mad to buy one, if there was such a luxury, over a 3080.

Nonsense. Sure, RT performance is better on Nvidia sure (though only dramatically so in fully path-traced games like Minecraft & Quake II. For hybrid RT, it's only roughly a tier slower than Nvidia [RX 6800 XT ≈ RTX 2080 Ti/3070]), but still WAAAAAY too trash to be legitimately usable unless <=60fps at best gaming is acceptable for you on a enthusiast class GPU. And current RT implementations still largely suck & in most cases are entirely down to personal preference whether they actually look "better".

This also COMPLETELY ignores the fact that almost every single existing game with an RT implementation so far has been designed explicitly on, with, & for Nvidia's unique RTX hardware & software. Going forward though, thanks to the consoles, RDNA 2 will become the development default for both general game/engine development AND the RT pipeline. Just look what Insomniac was able to pull off with a ground up RDNA 2 RT implementation in Miles Morales with just HALF the Ray Accelerators as the RX 6800 XT! (36x vs 72x).

*in some games, depending on the test setup and review site.

I'd rather say that it's pretty much equivalent to the 3090 at 1080p/1440p, but for £300 less. If you only game at those resolutions, have no interest in raytracing, and have the space & noise tolerance, it seems a good option.

For most others in the same situation, the regular 6900XT seems to be a better option...if you could find one of course Tend to agree with your summary of no surprises here though, the Radeons still work out a better option if you have no interest in Ray tracing (and that's a huge percentage of people), and the nvidia options work out better if you do, or really want 4K gaming (which isn't many people!).

Are you kidding me here? -_- ... When I said "fastest" I of course meant "fastest on average", NOT "the fastest in every game in existence". This reply is nonsensical. I can find games where the RX 6800 crushes the RTX 3090 like im Assassin's Creed Valhalla, but that doesn't make the RX 6800 faster than the 3090 does it? That's the logic you are trying to use here...

[whiterabbit]

I don't see what all the fuss is about, I've got a pair of Sapphire Radeon 6950's (2GB) in the machine under my desk...

oh, what's that? You've got f'in stupid naming conventions AMD? You're not wrong!

[Terbinator]

Nonsense.

How?

Sure, RT performance is better on Nvidia sure (though only dramatically so in fully path-traced games like Minecraft & Quake II. For hybrid RT, it's only roughly a tier slower than Nvidia [RX 6800 XT ≈ RTX 2080 Ti/3070]), but still WAAAAAY too trash to be legitimately usable unless <=60fps at best gaming is acceptable for you on a enthusiast class GPU. And current RT implementations still largely suck & in most cases are entirely down to personal preference whether they actually look "better".

I'm not a RT expert by any means, but I believe the only two RTX-specific built titles are Q2 and Minecraft (which will be getting a release on Xbox too). Everything else in running through DXR which is vendor agnostic.

There is going to be limited full RT games going ahead (new Metro release looks to go close) and so hybrid is going to be what we end up with and as far as I can see, a 3080 is pretty good for 60FPS RT gaming.

And aren't all effects down to personal preference of whether or not they look better? Lol.

This also COMPLETELY ignores the fact that almost every single existing game with an RT implementation so far has been designed explicitly on, with, & for Nvidia's unique RTX hardware & software.

See above, there is only two titles built specifically for Nvidia hardware currently that I know of, everything else is using DXR.

Going forward though, thanks to the consoles, RDNA 2 will become the development default for both general game/engine development AND the RT pipeline.

If this was the case game engine development would already be there given we've come off a generation of AMD GPUs already. There isn't a free lunch on AMD GPUs for RT in the same way there isn't free silicon on Nvidia's side, and given we'll be getting hybrid going ahead on consoles, it will be eating in to AMDs raster performance.

Just look what Insomniac was able to pull off with a ground up RDNA 2 RT implementation in Miles Morales with just HALF the Ray Accelerators as the RX 6800 XT! (36x vs 72x).

Yeah spiderman looks great, but you're also getting 1/4 res RT (and other lowered effects) in up to 60FPS mode at 1080p-1440p or 30FPS/4K with RT at the quality setting.

So yeah, for twice the price of a FE 3080 it is nonsense.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

WoW even with RT on seems to be faster on the RDNA2 GPUs than the Nvidia equivalents,especially in actual gameplay.



The only time Nvidia is quicker is when you are flying from one area to another(not actually on the ground).



We also saw how Nvidia used tessellation,which was universal to DX11 onwards. People have to appreciate AMD RT is developed specifically with DXR1.1 inline raytracing in mind. Almost all games currently are not really designed with this in mind,and also remember the games are using denoisers which are developed for Nvidia hardware,ie,not AMD hardware so the performance hit is going to be greater on AMD hardware.Nvidia sponsored games will no doubt be targetting effects and RT implementations which work best on Nvidia hardware,just like they did with tessellation.

Nvidia has had a headstart of 2 years so far,so whereas Nvidia still has the edge overall in pure RT grunt,some of the results we are seeing look more like issues with developers/games not really effectively using the AMD hardware.

We saw the same with tessellation,and despite the "huge" Nvidia theoretical tessellation advantage, in normal gameplay it never ended up being that different either. Even then it tended to be some gameworks effects where Nvidia specifically pushed massive tessellation use,which ended up making their previous generation GPUs look even worse than the AMD ones. Remember how Kepler fared worse than the AMD GPUs in W3??

Edit!!

Also another thing DF did some tests,and they basically thought the same,ie,desktop RDNA RT performance is not very optmised. For the most part they showed the PS5 RT performance was very close to a desktop RX6800 IIRC,which makes no sense as the RX6800 has far more resources to hand and is a newer uarch.