Question 6800 vs 6800XT vs N32

[biostud]

I'm planning to upgrade my system feb/march when the 7800X3D is released so I can decide which 8-core CPU makes most sense to me. I have an Odyssey G9, but I mostly play older games, and world of tanks and no interest in raytracing (at current pricing and performance). The 6800 series seems to offer bester price/performance atm, an N32 arrival is unknown. So what would you do? Buy now before stock is gone, wait and maybe miss out, or something else? I really dont want to spend much more than $800 in Danish prices for a video card.


(Prices for comparison)
3080 10GB ($999)
7900XT ($1142)
4080 ($1570)

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Based on rumours N32 will be faster than 6900XT, and then 2nd Gen ray tracing it would actually be an obvious decision for me to buy N32 (if I’d be buying this gen).

-If it's faster than the 6900 then it's going to be nearly the same speed as the 7900xt with 20 less CUs with less bandwidth, which I seriously doubt.

Only place for 7800xt to go is ~6900xt performance, which means basically +10% 6800xt performance.

RDNA3 shows similar performance loss off raster for RT as well, so I suspect RT performance will be the same too.

 

[blckgrffn]

-If it's faster than the 6900 then it's going to be nearly the same speed as the 7900xt with 20 less CUs with less bandwidth, which I seriously doubt.

Only place for 7800xt to go is ~6900xt performance, which means basically +10% 6800xt performance.

RDNA3 shows similar performance loss off raster for RT as well, so I suspect RT performance will be the same too.

If it can do that at $500 (dreaming!!!!) and cut some 20-30% of the power overhead (maybe?) I think it would be a solid card. 6900xt performance (plus maybe slightly better RT, whatever that’s worth) at 6800 levels of power usage? As long as the price isn’t terrible, getting last Gen pushed to the edge performance on the top tier “mainstream” part seems like at least a little progress, and it seems like availability should be solid.

That said, I am not optimistic on the pricing side. $700 seems way more likely at $200 less than the cut down 9 series part :/. That’s essentially an Lovelace equivalent where we get the same performance at the same price but better perf per watt.

Yaaaaaaaaay. :/

 

[Khanan]

If it can do that at $500 (dreaming!!!!) and cut some 20-30% of the power overhead (maybe?) I think it would be a solid card. 6900xt performance (plus maybe slightly better RT, whatever that’s worth) at 6800 levels of power usage? As long as the price isn’t terrible, getting last Gen pushed to the edge performance on the top tier “mainstream” part seems like at least a little progress, and it seems like availability should be solid.

That said, I am not optimistic on the pricing side. $700 seems way more likely at $200 less than the cut down 9 series part :/. That’s essentially an Lovelace equivalent where we get the same performance at the same price but better perf per watt.

Yaaaaaaaaay. :/

Yea I wouldn’t count on it. AMD seems to be matching Nvidias pricing and slightly undercutting it, expect more like 600-700$ for it.

 

[Aapje]

I expect $650 for the 7800 XT.

 

[Khanan]

Question is also will it be the same Die with even less bandwidth (1 less mcd) or a new chip? Navi32 is what I expect for this , a unknown chip up to this point

 

[Aapje]

I expect that N32 will go into the 7800 XT and 7700 XT (with 3 MCD's).

 

[Khanan]

I expect that N32 will go into the 7800 XT and 7700 XT (with 3 MCD's).

192bit? I don’t know about that.

 

[biostud]

192bit? I don’t know about that.

The latest rumor is full N32, 7800XT, cut down N32, 7800 and further cut down + 192 bit 7700XT.

 

[Khanan]

The latest rumor is full N32, 7800XT, cut down N32, 7800 and further cut down + 192 bit 7700XT.

So it sounds like 7800XT will have 256 bit which means 4mcds. Cut down possibly 192bit, 7700 or 7600 is already known from mobile which is 128bit and monolithic. After that it’s speculative again, could be cut down variant same bit or 96, or whole new chip with 64-96 bit, more likely 96 bit and 6gb vram. Not to repeat the 6500xt hassle.

 

[biostud]

Does anyone have any experience undervolting a 6800XT?

It seems you can save quite a lot of power and only losing very little performance

 

[Gideon]

Does anyone have any experience undervolting a 6800XT?

It seems you can save quite a lot of power and only losing very little performance

You don't even have to undervolt (though the gains will be better if you do and get it to be stable). You can just drag the power-limit slider around, and unless you go crazy, the performance hit isn't very big.

 

[Chicken76]

I voted for 6800XT also as most people before me.

Firstly, I upgraded to a 6750XT a few weeks before and am quite pleased with the doubling+ of performance compared to my old RX580 4GB. I don't game in 4K like you but if I did, I would have gotten the 6800XT. The 6750XT is simply not a 4K card. It can run games at that resolution but you'll have to turn down the details and you'll still feel the card is struggling. That's why I recommend you its bigger brother, the 6800XT.

Secondly, Navi 32 is an unknown at this point. It may take another 6 months to have it on shelves, or more, we just don't know. RDNA3 is pretty new and complex, it's the first time they've done a chiplet based GPU and there seems to be some hardware bugs in Navi 31 and the drivers also seem to need some work (as all drivers do in the first couple of months after the launch of a major architecture).

Thirdly, RDNA2 is mature and also deployed in PS5, XBOX S/X, Teslas. Bugs have probably been worked out by now. Developers target it's capabilities. So it's much safer to go with it, compared to the new RDNA3.

Regarding power consumption, I was pleasantly surprised that my system used less power in games than my old setup with games running on RX580 4GB and an RX560 2GB driving 2 additional monitors and encoding while I streamed. For the past 10 years or more I've only had AMD GPUs and I've used the power limiter in the driver with noticeable difference in fan noise during hot summer days and negligible if any loss in performance. Just set a -10% power target and forget about it.

And after you do make a purchase, come back to this thread and tell us about it.

 

[biostud]

I have ordered a PowerColor 6800XT Red Dragon @ $747, but it should first be available in Februrary, so if anything, interesting happens, I will just cancel the order.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I have ordered a PowerColor 6800XT Red Dragon @ $747, but it should first be available in Februrary, so if anything, interesting happens, I will just cancel the order.

Congrats. Doubt you'll regret once you get your hands on it. Those PowerColor are very nice.

 

[Kaluan]

You game on (super) ultra wide? Be sure to check this newcomer channe on YTl:

Has a 7900XT and 4080 and goes pretty deep into some things, he benches at all kinds of UW resolutions (including yours from what I can tell), even tho it's mostly just modern games. I still think it's pretty good work.

 

[biostud]

You game on (super) ultra wide? Be sure to check this newcomer channe on YTl:

Has a 7900XT and 4080 and goes pretty deep into some things, he benches at all kinds of UW resolutions (including yours from what I can tell), even tho it's mostly just modern games. I still think it's pretty good work.

Thx. From what I’ve read and a quick calculation, I know that I’m not going to enter raytracing land as most of the the games I play don’t suppport it, and even if they did the frame rate would tank, without that much better visuals, so I’m pretty agnostick towards AMD/nvidia. And with the price limit I was willing to spend I don’t see anything close to the 6800/6800XT prices currently from either company.

 

[IEC]

Does anyone have any experience undervolting a 6800XT?

It seems you can save quite a lot of power and only losing very little performance

You can achieve your goal easily without losing stability via AMD's OC tool.

For my particular 6800XT it has spent the vast majority of its life running between 80%-90% max GPU clock slider in AMD Adrenaline OC tool (Performance tab --> Tuning --> Custom).



At the higher end this caps my voltage to 975mV where I still get boost clocks around 2200MHz. At the lower range it is nice for running in the summer at below 900mV for maximum efficiency as my ambient temps in the summer routinely exceed 27°C.

Because it is using the stock voltage curve it is not technically an undervolt, but by capping the max frequency at a reasonable level you lose very little performance while gaining a lot in efficiency. Bonus points for less heat = less noise. And less power use = less coil whine at very high FPS (e.g. in game menus).

 

[In2Photos]

Does anyone have any experience undervolting a 6800XT?

It seems you can save quite a lot of power and only losing very little performance

I just recently spent some time undervolting my daughter's 6800XT (ASRock Taichi model) in her new build. This was my first time tuning an AMD card so I followed some tutorials I found on YouTube from JayzTwoCents, Optimum Tech, and a few others. I used AMD's Adrenaline software to apply the changes and Heaven to stress test the changes and also to have some tangible score to compare. Here are the results of that testing.

Stock
Score - 8383, 332 FPS
Freq - 2400MHz
VRAM - 1988MHz
Voltage - 1150mV
Power - 253W
Fan Speed - 1620RPM
Temps - 61C GPU, 74C Junction

One click undervolt
Score - 8275, 329 FPS
Freq - 2350MHz
VRAM - 1988MHz
Voltage - 1106mV
Power - 230W
Fan Speed - 1405RPM
Temps - 64C GPU, 77C Junction

One click overclock
Score - 8473, 336 FPS
Freq - 2423MHz
VRAM - 1988MHz
Voltage - 1150mV
Power - 260W
Fan Speed - 1711RPM
Temps - 65C GPU, 80C Junction

One click VRAM overclock
Score - 8463, 336 FPS
Freq - 2395MHz
VRAM - 2088MHz
Voltage - 1150mV
Power - 256W
Fan Speed - 1700RPM
Temps - 65C GPU, 80C Junction

I then played around with various overclocking and undervolt settings before settling on the following:

Final Settings
Score - 8487, 338 FPS
Freq - 2450MHz
VRAM - 2048MHz
Voltage - 1062mV
Power - 225W
Fan Speed - 1300RPM
Temps - 66C GPU, 78C Junction

I noticed a few things during my testing. First is that my card does not undervolt anywhere near as well as some of the other cards I saw online unless I do some downclocking. I saw that several people were getting their cards to operate around 900mV and below 200W with very little loss in performance, if any. I decided to try and squeeze as much out of the card as I can while still getting slightly lower power consumption and temperatures. The fan speeds were hard to pin down. It seems like a few degrees would cause several hundred RPM differences. The stock run had higher fan speeds so lower temps than my final settings, but they were pretty close. I debated on messing with the fan curve, but the fan speeds and temps seem to be lower during gaming and they don't bother my daughter. If this were my PC I would probably have spent more time tuning, but she has been happy with it and so far everything is running smoothly. I wish I had bought one of these cards for me when they were at $530!!!

 

[Khanan]

First is that my card does not undervolt anywhere near as well as some of the other cards I saw online unless I do some downclocking.

Yea if all cards were golden samples like that AMD would ship them like that as well, unfortunately a lot of cards aren’t that good. Reason why they run like that stock

 

[coercitiv]

Does anyone have any experience undervolting a 6800XT?

Undervolting the 6800XT is a very "complicated" process with 3 steps:

• shave 50-150Mhz from the max clocks slider, depending on how much "factory OC" you have on your card
• lower voltage by 25mV increments while having the card under load, until a crash happens. There's a high chance the driver will recover and you won't have to reboot.
• dial in a new voltage value that is 50mV higher than the one that produced the driver crash.

After that configure your fan speed curve and save the settings in a profile. If you ever get a system crash (no matter the cause), the driver will revert to default settings, so having a saved profile is a good idea.

I saw that several people were getting their cards to operate around 900mV and below 200W with very little loss in performance, if any.

This is the problem with bragging about overclocking/undervolting. Some people are fast to post their excellent results on forums and social media, but slow to realize their systems are no longer stable. There's also the golden samples, but user "error" is more common.

 

[beginner99]

Undervolting the 6800XT is a very "complicated" process with 3 steps:

thanks. do you know if the 6800 xt has high power spikes? considering getting one with my existing 700w psu but everyone recommends at least 750w. So an undervolt (with some performance) loss seems the way to go unless it can have large spikes.

 

[Borealis7]

i wanted a 6800 (at least) to double the performance of my current card, the venerable GTX1080, but the price is just too damn high.
i will settle for a used Gigabyte RTX3060 TI for 1/3rd the price of a new 6800 and "only" 60% better performance than my current card. (according to TPU @ 1440p)
sadly, it will also come with a +20Watts increase in max power consumption...

 

[Shmee]

i wanted a 6800 (at least) to double the performance of my current card, the venerable GTX1080, but the price is just too damn high.
i will settle for a used Gigabyte RTX3060 TI for 1/3rd the price of a new 6800 and "only" 60% better performance than my current card. (according to TPU @ 1440p)
sadly, it will also come with a +20Watts increase in max power consumption...

Could you get a 6700XT instead? I believe these are generally faster and a better buy than the 3060 and 3060Ti. Of course may depend on deals in your local area.

 

[coercitiv]

thanks. do you know if the 6800 xt has high power spikes? considering getting one with my existing 700w psu but everyone recommends at least 750w. So an undervolt (with some performance) loss seems the way to go unless it can have large spikes.

I don't know unfortunately, since the spikes are not something one sees from software and my system does happen to have a 750W PSU already.

All I can tell you is the card scales well in power usage depending on what you do with it. IIRC the only time I had it pull 250-280W was in Cyberpunk 2077 with RT enabled. Here's some rough numbers from Titanfall 2, an older title that can put very different amounts of stress on the GPU depending on settings used @ 1440p and IQ almost maxed out:

• 80W with 75Hz Vsync enabled
• 120W with the internal 144 FPS cap
• almost 200W with Adaptive Supersampling enabled (renders at higher than 1440p as long as FPS does not drop bellow a configurable limit)

Depending on what CPU you're using and the brand of your PSU we might be in a similar situation actually. I'm running with 12700K @ 150W power limit and a Corsair SF750. If you're using a CPU with a lower power limit and a PSU you can trust, I think you'll be quite safe as long as you don't overclock the 6800XT.

 

[Borealis7]

Could you get a 6700XT instead? I believe these are generally faster and a better buy than the 3060 and 3060Ti. Of course may depend on deals in your local area.

sadly, no. the few 6700XTs on the market are far more expensive. and i'll get by with a 3060TI for the next few years until hopefully the GPU market calms down.
i will mostly play Diablo 4/PoE 2 and some RPGs. i don't need super high end hardware.