Radeon Thread

[Sarex]

2:59

[Zoraptor]

There will be a decent number of cards available. The only stocking info I've seen was similar levels to RTX3000, with a week still to go which given market share should seem to be a lot more than the nVidia equivalent. It will probably be similar to Zen 3, there will be a fair bit of stock but they'll sell out quickly resulting in lots of people shouting 'paper launch'; and since they make less money the gpus will have less restocks than zen 3.

[Keyrock]

Anyone here have recent-ish experience with AMD reference cards? Last time I bou... I've actually never bought a discrete GPU from AMD since the last time I bought Team Red on the GPU side was well before AMD bought ATI. Anyway, I don't care about the cooling solution, given that I'm just going to remove it and put a waterblock on; I care about the quality of the components, the PCB, the MOSFETs, etc. I could always wait for AIBs to release cards with waterblocks already on them, but I'd be waiting a month and a half after launch or more.

In the meantime, I'm going to research some 5700XT teardowns. No guarantee that the same line of 6800XTs will have the best components as the 5700XTs, but it's a decent place to start.

Edit: After a bit of digging around, turns out the PCB and VRM on the 5700XT reference is actually quite good. The cooling solution is super garbage, but that's a moot point for my needs. No guarantee that the PCB and VRM will be equally as good on the 6800XT reference, but it's a good sign.

Edited November 15, 2020 by Keyrock

[Keyrock]

I think I'm going to take the chance and try to get a 6800XT reference Wednesday morning. If the quality of the PCB and VRM are in line with the 5700XT reference then that will be plenty good enough for my means. I mean, if I want the absolute best VRM I'd get something like the ROG Strix, but why pay an extra $80 or whatever when it won't make a difference? I'm not going to be doing liquid nitrogen extreme overclocking, I just need a VRM good enough that it won't hold enthusiast overclocking back, so as long as AMD don't use some ****ty cheap MOSFETs to cut costs (they didn't on the 5700XT) then a reference 6800XT should be great for my needs.

If I wait for a teardown to pop up, they'll be long gone by the time I watch the video. I mean, most likely what will happen is that I won't get a 6800XT on Wednesday because they will sell out in 14 seconds and I hit F5 at the wrong time, so I'll have all the time in the world to watch a teardown while I wait for restock. 

[Zoraptor]

Historically the stock AMD systems have used good components but had rubbish blower style coolers. If you do end up with an AIB I'd be cautious of ASUS, even Strix, until someone's done a decent in depth review. They tend to make sloppy copies of nVidia designs for AMD, albeit with nVidia cards being more power hungry that should be less of a problem this time around. Most of the problems are fixed if you're putting your own cooler on but it isn't a great look for people to have to add thermal pads to Vega64 Strix VRMs because yours are too short, or (iirc) having to tighten screws because you haven't tested which screw pressure works best for a 5700XT and just used AMD's rec pressure for the completely different stock cooler.

(Personally I've had two Strixes and they've both been fine including a Vega64 with proper length thermal pads that overclocks fine; the best AMD card and graphics card overall I've had is still the relative no name HIS 5770 ?IceQ? though. Default recommendation for AMD cards is almost always Sapphire)

 

[ComradeYellow]

I've watched several "unboxing" videos and they are beautiful looking cards, unlike the ugly ass Ampere cards.  Truly a great time to be an AMD fan, they've come a long way.  I do feel bad for their employees though, I can almost imagine their disgruntled workers being slave driven by Lisa Su to finally being top-tier hardware developers.  I really hope she's given them pay raises and added benefits for their ordeal.

[Keyrock]

^ Much better looking than AMD's old blower cards, that's for sure. It would almost be a shame to take that nice looking triple fan and heatsink off. I mean, I'm still going to do it, assuming I can actually get my hands on one.

[ComradeYellow]

18 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

^ Much better looking than AMD's old blower cards, that's for sure. It would almost be a shame to take that nice looking triple fan and heatsink off. I mean, I'm still going to do it, assuming I can actually get my hands on one.

You going all out liquid cooling or what

[Keyrock]

3 minutes ago, ComradeMaster said:

You going all out liquid cooling or what

Yes. I already have everything except the GPU waterblock and the coolant.

[Keyrock]

No luck for me. Predictably, the 6800XTs sold out instantly.

[Azdeus]

33 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

No luck for me. Predictably, the 6800XTs sold out instantly.

I checked in at my local store for funs sake, I'm not after a 6800XT, and they had 50 powercolor 6800XT and 50 6800s, they are waiting for 40 MSI 6800xt to come in in the next 1-3 weeks and 100 6800s.

[Humanoid]

I essentially come out of this launch none the wiser as to where the value is. The cards launched at $949AUD and $1049AUD here respectively - that's not MSRP, that's price-in-store since it looks like AMD never announced an official price. That does mean the XT gets a bit of a pricing advantage with the gap here ending up effectively smaller than it is in the US.

Where things get murky is pricing vs the nVidia cards. Against the nominal $809AUD MSRP of the 3070, the 6800 would look silly. But I don't believe anyone actually sold at that price, and against the market price of the "cheap" 3070s of $899AUD, the AMD card suddenly looks a whole lot better.

For the higher cards, I can't really say because I have no idea what the 3080s were actually selling for in real terms. The MSRP is $1139AUD, which is not unreasonable compared to the 6800XT's $1049, but did anyone actually sell any under $1200? I didn't bother checking it out at launch because it's so far out of my range, and finding out retrospectively is far too much bother.

 

Anyway, as tempting as it is to dive into building my new PC - my case arrived yesterday and is taunting me - I will continue to hang out for the 3060 vs 6700 series announcements.

[kirottu]

 

[AwesomeOcelot]

3080 destroys a 6800XT more than I even expected. It's not even a choice for anyone interested in single player AAA games released in the last year, and going into the future. There's a use case for multiplayer games, and people only interested in specific genres e.g. flight sims. Of course the supply issues are going to be even worse with AMD, Zen 3 and consoles are competing for the same fab capacity, and they will take priority.

[Keyrock]

Outside of Ray Tracing, where AMD gets crushed, the 6800XT holds up quite well against the 3080. It's a champ at 1080p, although that's mostly a moot point given that it's overkill at that resolution unless you are a MLG Pro Gamer at CS:GO using a 240 Hz monitor. The 6800XT does quite well at 1440p. At 4K it seems to fall behind a little more than I had hoped, though this is not unexpected, given that Nvidia's memory bandwith advantage counts for more and more as you increase resolution.

The biggest disappointment for me was how relatively poor the 6800 XT did on Vulkan. This is of particular importance to me since I'll be using Vulkan the vast majority of the time. Even in games without a Vulkan renderer, Steam Play's Proton translates DX to Vulkan, so I'd still be using it. I suppose that's something AMD (or the open source community, since AMD has an open source driver on Linux) could potentially address with driver optimizations, but I can't count on that.

This makes me condider a heel turn, smashing Lisa Su in the back with a steel folding chair and ripping off my red t-shirt to reveal a black leather jacket underneath. Anyway, I've got plenty of time to watch/read more reviews and teardowns. It's not like I could actually buy a current gen video card from either brand right now anyway. I don't have to make my mind up immediately.

[ComradeYellow]

Terrible RTX and no DLSS (currently).

To me, the 6900XT would be the only one worth considering because it's alleged 1440p rasterization dominance, but again terrible RTX and no DLSS equivalent so I guess waiting for the 3080TI sometime next year is the superior choice.  By then, Nvidia should have it 'SAM' feature locked and loaded.

[AwesomeOcelot]

For me it comes down to what you're buying a high end GPU for and that certainly is AAA games from 2020 onwards. If you're in the market for a 3070+/6800+ you're going be playing games that have RT and DLSS. If you're not playing these games, then your use case becomes more niche, which is fine and having the 6000 series as an option is great for everyone. There's about 30 games with DLSS/RT now where the 3080 is far ahead, not really a choice. It coul easily be 3 times as many in the next 2 years. For most people, it can't even be a question, even if they're only going to be playing a quarter of the available RT games, 3080 is the much higher performance GPU. The 6800 XT isn't even that much faster than the 3080 in rasterization, the difference won't put any doubt into people's minds, being able to play pre-2020 games at higher frame rates is not going to rank high.

Edited November 18, 2020 by AwesomeOcelot

[Keyrock]

What if Lisa Su pulls Jensen Huang and launches a 6800 SUPER with 16GB HBM2 in a few months? 

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

What if Lisa Su pulls Jensen Huang and launches a 6800 SUPER with 16GB HBM2 in a few months? 

I guess Jensen squared happens.

[ComradeYellow]

Jayz2Cents and Linus Tech Tips chime in (The holy Trinity of PC hardware Youtube are these 2 and GN).

[Zoraptor]

Still holding out for a 6969XTC SUPER DUPER 16GB HBM2e card with more than 80CUs. The new Instinct has 120CUs*, after all (and tensors, for anyone wondering if AMD was doing anything with them).

Vulkan performance isn't surprising. AMD cards used to be powerhouses there due to being powerhouse Compute cards, this time around with its core doubling nVidia is unbalanced towards compute instead. Plus all the development effort for RDNA has gone into DX12U for the Xbox and Sony's proprietary libraries, not Vulkan despite its history with AMD.

As for performance in general, let's be frank here. People** were saying that AMD would only be competing with the 3070 and have raytracing performance around a 2070- that was most of the internet, it seemed- don't have much scope to talk about bad performance when they're competing with 3080s and have better RT performance, yes mostly in theory at present, than a 2080Ti or 3070. It's notable though that they perform to theoretical expectations, or above, in both the games developed for console RT, WD:L and Dirt 5, and a 6800XT is even better than a 3080 (!) at Dirt 5. That is the model of the future, not games developed when nVidia was the only RT in town with for, all anyone knows, the RT equivalent of 64x tesselation enabled by default.

Stock levels are disappointing, but certainly better relatively speaking than 3000 series. By market share nVidia should have had 2-3 times the stock on hand, and didn't, they seem to have been near parity numbers wise. Just too much demand, in part due to nVidia still being nowhere near fulfilling orders even 2 months later. Neither were paper launches, both were just massively oversubscribed. The AIB release in a week and 6900XT in early Dec will also sell out, inevitably. OTOH, we got AMD reference cards here, and the whole of New Zealand got one (1) FE. And there's the small matter of 3080s (albeit AIBs) selling for 400$ more than the 6800XT here...

*Not a serious comparison since they're CDNA.

**I'm ready for the deluge of how DLSS is, lol, 'better quality than native' over the next few months. Who knew the writers for CSI: Miami enlarging and enhancing 2 pixels reflected in a dude's baldspot into a fully legible number plate, circus parade and a mafia dude burying Jimmy Hoffa were such visionaries?

[Keyrock]

Linus' segue into advertisement game is strong.

[ComradeYellow]

4 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

 

**I'm ready for the deluge of how DLSS is, lol, 'better quality than native' over the next few months.

Personally, I actually do think it's better quality than native and that's just my opinion.  I've already given AMD credit for looking better in quite a few titles with its rasterized performance (games that are very colorful can be intoxicating on AMD cards whilst Nvidia's compression can sober that up a bit).  It's.  All.  About.  Preference.  AMD delivered what they said and that was a generation of cards that finally caught up with Nvidia on pure rasterization, which is a huge leap from Vega 64 and Radeon VII.  The only drawback I see here is pricing on AMD's part, if they made these cards even $50 cheaper, it would have given them MUCH better credibility imo.

Here's an example of DLSS, which I think looks better:

 

[AwesomeOcelot]

I stopped watching Linus and unsubscribed because of those thumbnails and titles. Linus: "AMD did not disappoint me". Also Linus: "I can't recommend them at these prices" vs RTX because streaming, RT, DLSS, etc...

[Zoraptor]

8 minutes ago, ComradeMaster said:

Personally, I actually do think it's better quality than native and that's just my opinion.

And you're most certainly entitled to your own opinion of quality*. It can't objectively be better than native though unless there's something very odd going on in the native render, or a few odd situations eg multi image interferometry (which only gives an improved composite, the original images are still the same). And it being the internet most people don't couch it in subjective terms.

*since it is subjective no one can be wrong about it. I find motion blur on games when you're running and some of the over the top bloom/ hdr effects hilarious because they aren't what you actually see in real life. Others think they're great, and that's all good.