AMD isn't just set to compete at the very pinnacle of CPU performance any more. Its new range of RX 6000-series graphics cards look set to go blow for blow with the very best that Nvidia has to offer too. Planned for release throughout November and December, the new cards are allegedly just as fast, if not faster, than the RTX 3070, 3080, and 3090 in 4K. They even have hardware accelerated ray tracing support.
The RX 6800 will feature 60 Compute Units, 16GB of GDDR6, and an 1,815MHz game clock frequency. It leverages a new Infinity Cache to boost its memory performance to almost four times that of the RTX 3070's bandwidth however, so it could offer surprisingly impressive performance when it comes to the similarly priced card. At $580, it's the most affordable of the new GPUs.
The RX 6800 XT has the same memory configuration, but 72 Compute Units and a game clock frequency that's north of 2GHz. It should be able to go toe to toe with the RTX 3080 in 4K and 1440P, though it might need to use AMD's clever overclocking and Ryzen 5000-tie in technologies to do so. With its massive memory bandwidth and expansive memory capacity, its slightly cheaper $650 price tag could make it the killer high-end card of its generation.
The RX 6900 XT is the big daddy of the three. With 80 Compute Units, and the same clocks as the 6800 XT, it manages to nip at the heels of the RTX 3090, and it does so at just $1,000. That's $500 less.
The two 6800s will launch on November 18, with the RX 6900 XT launching in mid-December. If AMD can hold enough stock of these new cards for a little while at least, it stands a chance to dominate gaming PC upgrades.
