Radeon RX 6800
The Radeon RX 6800 is a graphics card designed and released by AMD in 2020. It was created to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards. In this article, we will look at the development history of the RX 6800, announcement and release dates, architecture, specifications, pricing, gaming performance at the time of release, and interesting facts about the video card.
Development and announcement date
The Radeon RX 6800 is based on the new RDNA 2 architecture introduced by AMD in 2020. This architecture is the successor to the original RDNA introduced in 2019. The development of RDNA 2 began immediately after the release of the first generation and was aimed at improving energy efficiency and performance compared to the previous generation.
The Radeon RX 6800 was announced on October 28, 2020 at AMD's special event, along with other RX 6000 series graphics cards such as the RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT.
Architecture
The RDNA 2 architecture includes a number of key technologies and improvements. One of the main innovations is support for hardware ray tracing, which allows you to create more realistic images in games using real-time ray tracing.
The Radeon RX 6800 uses the Navi 21 GPU, made using the 7nm process technology. The graphics card has 3840 stream processors, 240 ray tracing tensor cores, 60 ROPs and 240 texture units. It also uses a new type of 128MB Infinity Cache that increases effective memory bandwidth and reduces latency.
Characteristics
The Radeon RX 6800 has 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM with 512Gb/s bandwidth on a 256-bit bus. GPU frequencies are 1815 MHz in base mode and up to 2105 MHz in Boost mode. The video card consumes up to 250 watts of power, which makes it relatively energy efficient.
Prices
At the time of release, the Radeon RX 6800's official MSRP was $579. However, due to the high demand for video cards, as well as the shortage of chips and the shortage of components, the real cost in the market could be much higher.
Gaming performance at launch
The Radeon RX 6800 was designed for gamers who prefer 1440p resolution and high graphics settings. In most games, the graphics card showed high performance, comparable to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and surpassing the previous generation of AMD graphics cards.
Comparison with competitors
The Radeon RX 6800 successfully competed with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards, especially the RTX 3070, offering comparable gaming performance at a similar price point. However, as new ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS-enabled games come out, AMD has released its own answer, FidelityFX Super Resolution, which also improves performance in ray tracing games.
Interesting facts about the video card
-Radeon RX 6800 is the first AMD graphics card to support hardware ray tracing.
-As part of the RDNA 2 architecture, AMD has increased power efficiency by 54% over the previous generation of RDNA.
-Radeon RX 6800 was the first graphics card to use the new Infinity Cache technology, which greatly improved memory bandwidth.
The Radeon RX 6800 marks an important milestone in AMD's graphics card evolution, introducing the new RDNA 2 architecture and support for hardware ray tracing. It has been able to compete with NVIDIA graphics cards, especially the GeForce RTX 3070, and has become a popular choice among gamers who prefer 1440p resolution and high graphics settings. Despite some issues with availability and pricing in the market due to a shortage of components, the Radeon RX 6800 continues to be an attractive option for upgrading the video subsystem and enjoying modern games at high settings.