After the strong reign of Nvidia’s RTX 30 series, it was time that AMD took a chance at de-throning the green teams short stint. With its pricing, it aims to target the RTX 3070 range cards, but how does it fair up?

Comparing to the XT, both required a hefty 650W supply taking up 2 PCIe slots- You’re certainly not going to get the same sizing problems that come with the 30 range! The RX6800 includes 16GB GDDR6 VRAM clocked at 16Gbps. We welcome the additional VRAM with many new AAA titles demanding more and more these days, which adds a future proof peace of mind- Particularly when it comes to ray tracing.

The infinity cache stands as the most important hardware block addition in our opinion. But what does it do I hear you ask! Whilst the RX6800 Is bursting at the seams with 16GB GDDR6, it only comes with 256 bit memory bus to access it!! Thats limited to only 512GB/s.. alas, the infinity cache which enables 120mb- an innovative new cache inspired by AMD’s EPYC server chips. This compliments the RX6800, especially at 1440p as its more likely to store required data at lower resolutions, though if you can drop it down to 1080p you’re less likely to be limited by memory bandwidth… Findings the sweet spot between 4K and 1080p might be best!

That said, right now you’ll struggle to find a title that’ll come close to the computational limitations. When it comes down to 4K gaming at 60fps its more or less identical to the RTX 3070, but you can forget ray tracing at these values until AMD’s fidelityFX Super Resolution gets here.

At 1440p however, the RX6800 produces a gap between itself and the RTX 3070, capable of 60+fps on max settings. The gap however eventually disappears once you throw ray tracing in the mix.

Bench Test

I know we’ve been banging on about the RX6800 being most comfortable at 1440p, but as you’ll see from the bench test figures below, you’ll find it a great 4K gaming card too!

4K

4K

1440p

1440p

Price

The RX6800 is the more affordable 6800XT and 6900XT and that doesn’t necessarily mean that its inferior in performance! The RX6800 comes in at $579, which is over the stock RTX 3070 price at $499

Verdict

By our results, it’s only when you start pushing into 4K that the RX 6800’s limitations start to show through and Its lead over the RTX 3070 becomes a lot smaller as we mentioned above. If you’re after a card that will give you a bit of 4K future proof, then the RX6800 is for you. Its its class we’d give the RX6800 a score of 4.

4 / 5