AMD Radeon R9 290X vs AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is a desktop graphics card that launched in Q4 2020 with a MSRP of $649. It is built on the RDNA 2.0 GPU microarchitecture (codename Navi 21) and is manufactured on a 7 nm process.

Memory

The RX 6800 XT has 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, with a 2,000 MHz memory clock and a 256 bit interface. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 512 Gb/s, which affects how fast it can transfer data to and from memory. GPU memory stores temporary data that helps the GPU with complex math and graphics operations. More memory is generally better, as not having enough can cause performance bottlenecks.

Cores and Clock Speeds

The RX 6800 XT includes 4,608 stream processors (SPs), the processing units for handling parallel computing tasks. The GPU operates at a core clock speed of 1,825 MHz and can dynamically boost its clock speed up to 2,250 MHz. It usually operates at 2,015 MHz during typical gaming workloads. Complementing the processing units are 288 texture mapping units (TMUs) for efficient texture filtering and 128 render output units (ROPs) for pixel processing. Additionally, the GPU features 72 ray accelerators dedicated to real-time ray tracing calculations.

Compatibility & Power Consumption

The RX 6800 XT occupies 2 PCIe expansion slots. It supports HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a, USB Type-C display connections. AMD recommends a power supply of at least 700 W to handle the GPU's thermal design power (TDP) of 300 W.

Benchmark Performance & Value

The RX 6800 XT has the 25th best 3DMark 11 Performance GPU score among the 543 benchmarked GPUs in our database. It achieves 49.76% of the performance of the best benchmarked GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Its 52,046 score and $649 launch price (MSRP) gives it a performance per dollar of 80.19. This is the 36th best in value for the 3DMark 11 Performance GPU benchmark.