AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su had teased that the Radeon RX 6000 Series would comprise some of the most powerful graphics cards that red team had ever created, and it appears that she wasn’t kidding.
AMD officially unveiled the Radeon RX 6900 XT, Radeon RX 6800 XT, and Radeon RX 6800 today, and if the company’s benchmarks are to be believed, they annihilate the performance of their RDNA predecessors. The metrics also suggest that they can trade blows with NVIDIA’s flagship GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 GPUs, which indicates that GeForce and Radeon may be on equal footing again.
Here is the complete stack of Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards that were announced during today’s RDNA 2 event.
AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT
- 80 Compute Units
- 2,015 MHz Game Clock
- 2,250 MHz Boost Clock
- 128 MB Infinity Cache
- 16 GB GDDR6 Memory
- 300-Watt Total Board Power
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
- 72 Compute Units
- 2,015 MHz Game Clock
- 2,250 MHz Boost Clock
- 128 MB Infinity Cache
- 16 GB GDDR6 Memory
- 300-Watt Total Board Power
AMD Radeon RX 6800
- 60 Compute Units
- 1,815 MHz Game Clock
- 2,105 MHz Boost Clock
- 128 MB Infinity Cache
- 16 GB GDDR6 Memory
- 250-Watt Total Board Power
As noted in the specifications above, all of these graphics cards will flaunt a new, “revolutionary” feature dubbed Infinity Cache. According to AMD’s benchmarks, Infinity Cache delivers twice the bandwidth while maintaining a similar level of power efficiency on the memory interface, which explains why the Radeon RX 6000 Series can get away with a relatively smaller 256-bit bus.
AMD also confirmed that RDNA 2 supports many of the latest gaming features, such as DirectX ray tracing, variable rate shading, mesh shaders, and sampler feedback.
Additionally, Radeon users will be able to overclock their cards with a new one-click setting called “Rage Mode.” Another new feature, Smart Access Memory, grants Ryzen 5000 Series processors full access to the GPU memory of Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards. These features combine to provide performance increases of as much as 13 percent in hit games such as Forza Horizon 4.
AMD’s Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800 will be released on November 18 for $649 and $579, respectively, while the flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT will be released on December 8 for $99.
Original Press Release
AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today unveiled the AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series graphics cards, delivering powerhouse performance, incredibly life-like visuals, and must-have features that set a new standard for enthusiast-class PC gaming experiences. Representing the forefront of extreme engineering and design, the highly anticipated AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series includes the AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 and Radeon™ RX 6800 XT graphics cards, as well as the new flagship Radeon™ RX 6900 XT – the fastest AMD gaming graphics card ever developed.
AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series graphics cards are built upon groundbreaking AMD RDNA™ 2 gaming architecture, a new foundation for next-generation consoles, PCs, laptops and mobile devices, designed to deliver the optimal combination of performance and power efficiency. AMD RDNA™ 2 gaming architecture provides up to 2X higher performance in select titles with the AMD Radeon™ RX 6900 XT graphics card compared to the AMD Radeon™ RX 5700 XT graphics card built on AMD RDNA™ architecture, and up to 54 percent more performance-per-watt when comparing the AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 XT graphics card to the AMD Radeon™ RX 5700 XT graphics card using the same 7nm process technology.
AMD RDNA™ 2 offers a number of innovations, including applying advanced power saving techniques to high-performance compute units to improve energy efficiency by up to 30 percent per cycle per compute unit, and leveraging high-speed design methodologies to provide up to a 30 percent frequency boost at the same power level. It also includes new AMD Infinity Cache technology that offers up to 2.4X greater bandwidth-per-watt compared to GDDR6-only AMD RDNA™-based architectural designs.
“Today’s announcement is the culmination of years of R&D focused on bringing the best of AMD Radeon graphics to the enthusiast and ultra-enthusiast gaming markets, and represents a major evolution in PC gaming,” said Scott Herkelman, corporate vice president and general manager, Graphics Business Unit at AMD. “The new AMD Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT graphics cards deliver world class 4K and 1440p performance in major AAA titles, new levels of immersion with breathtaking life-like visuals, and must-have features that provide the ultimate gaming experiences. I can’t wait for gamers to get these incredible new graphics cards in their hands.”
Powerhouse Performance, Vivid Visuals & Incredible Gaming Experiences
AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series graphics cards support high-bandwidth PCIe® 4.0 technology and feature 16GB of GDDR6 memory to power the most demanding 4K workloads today and in the future. Key features and capabilities include:
Powerhouse Performance
- AMD Infinity Cache – A high-performance, last-level data cache suitable for 4K and 1440p gaming with the highest level of detail enabled. 128 MB of on-die cache dramatically reduces latency and power consumption, delivering higher overall gaming performance than traditional architectural designs.
- AMD Smart Access Memory – An exclusive feature of systems with AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series processors, AMD B550 and X570 motherboards and Radeon™ RX 6000 Series graphics cards. It gives AMD Ryzen™ processors greater access to the high-speed GDDR6 graphics memory, accelerating CPU processing and providing up to a 13-percent performance increase on a AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 XT graphics card in Forza Horizon™ 4 at 4K when combined with the new Rage Mode one-click overclocking setting.
- Built for Standard Chassis – With a length of 267mm and 2×8 standard 8-pin power connectors, and designed to operate with existing enthusiast-class 650W-750W power supplies, gamers can easily upgrade their existing large to small form factor PCs without additional cost.
True to Life, High-Fidelity Visuals
- DirectX® 12 Ultimate Support – Provides a powerful blend of raytracing, compute, and rasterized effects, such as DirectX® Raytracing (DXR) and Variable Rate Shading, to elevate games to a new level of realism.
- DirectX® Raytracing (DXR) – Adding a high performance, fixed-function Ray Accelerator engine to each compute unit, AMD RDNA™ 2-based graphics cards are optimized to deliver real-time lighting, shadow and reflection realism with DXR. When paired with AMD FidelityFX, which enables hybrid rendering, developers can combine rasterized and ray-traced effects to ensure an optimal combination of image quality and performance.
- AMD FidelityFX – An open-source toolkit for game developers available on AMD GPUOpen. It features a collection of lighting, shadow and reflection effects that make it easier for developers to add high-quality post-process effects that make games look beautiful while offering the optimal balance of visual fidelity and performance.
- Variable Rate Shading (VRS) – Dynamically reduces the shading rate for different areas of a frame that do not require a high level of visual detail, delivering higher levels of overall performance with little to no perceptible change in image quality.
Elevated Gaming Experience
- Microsoft® DirectStorage Support – Future support for the DirectStorage API enables lightning-fast load times and high-quality textures by eliminating storage API-related bottlenecks and limiting CPU involvement.
- Radeon™ Software Performance Tuning Presets – Simple one-click presets in Radeon™ Software help gamers easily extract the most from their graphics card. The presets include the new Rage Mode stable over clocking setting that takes advantage of extra available headroom to deliver higher gaming performance.
- Radeon™ Anti-Lag – Significantly decreases input-to-display response times and offers a competitive edge in gameplay.
AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series Product Family
| Model | Compute Units | GDDR6 | Game Clock (MHz) | Boost Clock13 (MHZ) | Memory Interface | Infinity Cache |
| AMD Radeon™ RX 6900 XT | 80 | 16GB | 2015 | Up to 2250 | 256 bit | 128 MB |
| AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 XT | 72 | 16GB | 2015 | Up to 2250 | 256 bit | 128 MB |
| AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 | 60 | 16GB | 1815 | Up to2105 | 256 bit | 128 MB |
Robust Gaming Ecosystem and Partnerships
In the coming weeks, AMD will release a series of videos from its ISV partners showcasing the incredible gaming experiences enabled by AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series graphics cards in some of this year’s most anticipated games. These videos can be viewed on the AMD website.
- DIRT 5 – October 29
- Godfall – November 2
- World of Warcraft: Shadowlands – November 10
- RiftBreaker – November 12
- FarCry 6 – November 17
Pricing and Availability
AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 and Radeon™ RX 6800 XT graphics cards are expected to be available from global etailers/retailers and on AMD.com beginning November 18, 2020, for $579 USD SEP and $649 USD SEP, respectively. The AMD Radeon™ RX 6900 XT is expected to be available December 8, 2020, for $999 USD SEP.
AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT graphics cards are also expected to be available from AMD board partners, including ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, PowerColor, SAPPHIRE and XFX, beginning in November 2020.