[Hardware] SAPPHIRE Nitro+ Radeon RX 6800 XT Review – Light And Bright

[_Happy boy]

The flagship Navi based graphics cards have been highly anticipated ever since AMD introduced its first-generation RDNA lineup. While the first generation RDNA gave us a small glimpse of what we could expect from a flagship offering, the lineup never really introduced its own flagship variant & instead focused on the more mainstream performance-ended products. But two years later, the wait is finally over!

AMD has officially launched its Big Navi graphics card lineup and it's not just the biggest Navi GPU we have seen to date but also based on the 2nd Generation RDNA 2 architecture which delivers an impressive leap in performance per watt while offering a range of new features to put AMD Radeon ack in the high-end and enthusiast market segment.

The AMD RDNA 2 architecture for its Big Navi Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6900 series graphics cards has a lot to offer. In addition to architectural enhancements, you can expect hardware-accelerated ray tracing, smart access memory, Infinity Cache, and a lot more features on-deck which make the lineup one of the most competitive enthusiast families that AMD has ever positioned against NVIDIA.

Some of the main features for the AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards include:

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 an 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 2x8 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.
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT "Big Navi 21 XT" GPU Powered 16 GB Graphics Card Specifications
The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT will come packed with the Navi 21 XT GPU which is a cut-down SKU featuring 72 Compute Units or 4608 SPs. The card will also feature 16 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit bus interface, a 512 GB/s total bandwidth, and clock speeds of 2015 MHz base and 2250 MHz boost at reference specs. The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT also packs 72 Ray Accelerators which are dedicated to real-time raytracing workloads. The card will feature a based TBP of 300W with factory-overclocked models pushing it above 350W and will arrive at a later date.In addition to the standard memory, the Radeon RX 6800 series graphics cards will also feature 128 MB of Infinity Cache on the GPU die. The cache will help boost bandwidth for higher performance at resolutions beyond 1080p HD. The 128 MB Infinity Cache boosts the standard 512 GB/s bandwidth by 3.25x, delivering an effective bandwidth of up to 1.664 TB/s across all Big Navi GPU based graphics cards.

In terms of performance, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is shown to compete against the GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. The card features a 20W lower total board power & delivers better GPU performance in several AAA titles using the best API (Vulkan / DirectX 12). AMD is also bringing its Rage-mode back which is an automatic overclocking tool within its Radeon Software suite that delivers even higher performance along with a nifty new feature known as Smart Access. Gains of up to 13% were showcased with the said features as can be seen below.

So for this review, I will be taking a look at the SAPPHIRE Nitro+ Radeon RX 6800 XT. The SAPPHIRE Nitro+ Radeon RX 6800 XT comes is said to feature an MSRP of around $770 US so that's just over a $100 US premium over the 649 US reference MSRP. At this price, you get a triple-fan cooling solution and a factory overclock out of the box.