AMD Radeon RDNA2 Navi (RX 6500, 6600, 6700, 6800, 6900 XT)

I've seen the AMD competitive sentiment being brought up a lot but personally I feel AMD was more competitive with respect to GCN "1.0/1.1" against Keplar (and significantly more so) versus now. But this might be a lengthy off topic matter.

 

Really good showing from AMD. We have competition on high end GPUs again. Now I’m really curious why AMD is so much faster at lower resolutions. Is it infinity cache or something else?

I’ve only seen the hardware unboxed review so far but it seems AMD wins in AMD sponsored titles and at lower resolutions but are a bit behind at 4K. In RT Nvidia still has a comfortable lead.

I really didn’t understand their subjective dismissal of RT based on perceived IQ benefits while promoting SAM which is arguably even more niche. Opinions are fine but I would’ve appreciated more raw data. He didn’t bench Control, Legion or Exodus which is quite silly as they are marquee RT titles. Instead he benched Dirt 5 and Tomb Raider which are two of the worst RT implementations.

 

Watch Gamers Nexus' review instead. Hardware Unboxed isn't exactly an unbiased source...

 

Regarding the resolution scaling I think this is a two sided issue at play affecting perception due to the comparison point against Ampere, and specifically 3080/3090. 3080/3090 also don't seem to scale as much upwards going down in resolution as well. So this behavior from both parties is compounding the impression that each is stronger/weaker as resolution moves up and down.

 

I honestly had no idea Dirt 5's RT shadows were released. I played on launch day and they were definitely not there at all.

 

Yes your right, hence i wrote 2012/2013, around 8th gen release. But indeed, going offtopic

 

RX 6800 Reviews Part 1

4Gamer AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Adrenaline AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800, [Video]
Benchmark AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
BPS Customs AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Bitwit AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
ComptoirHardware AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
ComputerBase AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Coreteks AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Cowcotland AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Eteknix AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800 [Video], SAM Review
GamerMeld AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
GamersNexus AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
GDM AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Gear Seekers AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
Geeknetic AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Greg Salazar AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Golem AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Guru3D AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Forbes AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
HardwareBattle AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
HardwareCanucks AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
HardwareLuxx AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
HardwareUnboxed AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
HardwareUpgrade AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Hot Hardware AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Hexus AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
igor’sLAB AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800, [Video]
JayzTwoCents AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Joker Productions AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800


Thanks to VideoCardz!

 

Ignore Ampere.

Look at performance relative to 5700XT. From as low as 30% faster to about 130%, averaging somewhere around 70% faster (50, 67, 86% faster at 1080p, 1440p, 4K respectively at Hardware Unboxed).

 

RX 6800 Reviews Part 2

KitGuru AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800, [Video]
Lab501 AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
LegitReviews AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Level1Techs AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
LinusTechTips AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Lowyat AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
Noticias3D AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
MyNavi AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Optimum Tech AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
Overclock3D AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Paul’s Hardware AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
PC Games Hardware AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800, [Video]
PCWatch AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
PCWorld AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Phoronix AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
PRO Hi-Tech AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
SweClockers AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Tech Critter AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
TechPowerUP AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800, SAM Review
Tech YES City AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Tek.no AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
The Verge AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
TweakTown AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
Tom’s Hardware AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
UNIKO’s hardware AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
WASD AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800
Wccftech AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800, [Video]
XFastest Taiwan AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800

Thanks to VideoCardz !

 

So the question is , will ray tracing performance improve with new drivers or is amd that far behind ?

 

It's more on the title. then drivers may help but it depends a lot about application optimization. In fact, titles that went on consoles behave a lot better than the RTX titles. But I think Nv has an advantage until next generation. About upscaling techniques, it depends. Watch Dogs DLSS implementation was outright bad. Other titles is OK and we know nothing about FFXSR.

 

Do we know if rdna2 can have the rt accelerators working at the same time that the other compute part of the CUs ?

 

AMD claims that their RTA can work concurrently with BVH travel and shading.

Sweclockers testet the 3DMark Raytracing test: https://www.sweclockers.com/test/30790-amd-radeon-rx-6800-och-rx-6800-xt/9

 

I suspect it's probably more about the settings there running at.

 

First thing I caught onto in Computerbase.de's review was AMD's best showcase for raytracing being the just released Watch Dogs Legion. Now onto catching up to the rest...

I'm hopeful for RDNA2, hoping it's going to turn out as long lived as GCN 1. And hesitant to bet on Nvidia exactly because I don't risking a repeat of how my Kepler GPUs aged.

 

From my developer conversations AMD is just behind - it is a hardware difference. Their RT implementation does not accelerate as much of the RT pipeline. It does not accelerate ray traversal, so an AMD GPU is spending normal compute on that in comparison to NV having a hw unit in the RT core doing that. It is also getting contention due to how it is mapped in hardware. I have been told AMD RT is decidedly slower at incoherent rays than NV RT implementation. So the more incoherent rays a game has, the more rays shot out, the more objects possibly hit... the greater the difference in relative performance in the architectures becomes. But I would like to test it to see where exactly the differences lie.

I hope I get a midrange AMD RX6000 series GPU soon enough as I would really love to do a deep dive into with different examples from Unreal Engine 4 or games that allow for more fine-grain tweaking of their effects.

Also seeing some interesting reports atm of AMD RT effects in the Boundary Demo and WDL missing aspects in the reflections. I wonder if that is a driver bug or something else.

I think WDL is not working correctly on AMD RT HW at the moment. It is rendering RT reflections - but it is missing a lot of surfaces and objects in the reflections in comparison to how it should look. Not a good comparison point for RT performance ATM.

 

Yes, DF confirmed the lower settings. Edit: Alex beat me to it

 

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/posts/34234514

So, quite a lot more than the low tens of 3080 cards. Later in the thread:

The site was dead at 14:00 though...

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/posts/34235310

The reference cards appear to be limited availability on an on-going basis. OcUK won't take pre-orders for these cards, because custom AIB cards will arrive sooner.