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AMD RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 graphics cards announced

RDNA 2 'big navi' cards are arriving on November 18, and will take on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 in the graphics cards arena.

Lady holding up a PC graphics card

AMD has announced a trio of new graphics cards based on its new RDNA 2 microarchitecture: the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT and RX 6800. Built on the same 7nm process as the company’s recent Zen 3 CPUs, the new cards are set to rival Nvidia’s RTX 3080 and 3090 for performance while consuming less power.

The release date of the two 6800 cards will be 18th November while the 6900 XT will arrive a little later, on the 8th December. Prices start at $579 for the 6800 and rise to $999 for the 6900 XT, the latter undercutting Nvidia’s flagship by a cool $500.

AMD has highlighted a 30 percent increase in clock speed for the same power consumption as a key improvement from the RDNA 1 to RDNA 2 architecture. Combined with a large, very fast on-die cache, called Inifinity Cache, this has allowed AMD to increase performance per watt by 54 percent.

Regarding the performance of the cards, AMD is pitting the RX 6800 XT against the GeForce RTX 3080, and its test results showed the two to be very close. The company also claims it provides this performance at a lower power rating, with the 6800 XT consuming 300W compared to the RTX 3080’s 320W.

As for the RX 6900 XT, AMD is again bullish about its performance, showing performance figures at 4K resolution that rival the RTX 3090. This time the power saving is even greater as the RX 6900 XT is rated again at 300W while the RTX 3090 is rated at 350W.

Bottom of the initial stack is the Radeon RX 6800, which AMD showed comfortably outperforming an RTX 2080 Ti, though here the card is again rated at 300W, so power saving isn’t quite such a highlight.

AMD hasn’t employed a particularly new or innovative cooler for its cards, in the same vain as Nvidia’s Founders Edition RTX 3000 series cards. Here you get a standard triple-fan cooler. Likewise, the cards use standard eight-pin power supply connectors.

Full specs, prices and release dates are as follows:

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

  • 80 compute units, 2015MHz base clock, 2250MHz boost clock, 128MB infinity cache, 16GB GDDR6, 300W total board power
  • $999 US (~£769 inc VAT)
  • Release date: 18th November

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

  • 72 compute units, 2015MHz base clock, 2250MHz boost clock, 128MB infinity cache, 16GB GDDR6, 300W total board power
  • $649 US (~£499 inc VAT)
  • Release date: 18th November

AMD Radeon RX 6800

  • 60 compute units, 2015MHz base clock, 2250MHz boost clock, 128MB infinity cache, 16GB GDDR6, 300W total board power
  • $579 US (~£446 inc VAT)
  • Release date: 8th December