Over at AMD's Radeon live stream today, Dr. Lisa Su took the stage to announce three brand new RX 6000-series graphics cards. And while we're certainly intrigued by the RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT, the cheapest of the three, the $579 RX 6800, is likely to be the graphics card that garners the most interest from willing customers.
You can check out the specs of this card in the table below, and how it shapes up next to its RDNA 2 compadres.
| RX 6900 XT | RX 6800 XT | RX 6800 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CUs | 80 | 72 | 60 |
| Process | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 7nm |
| Game clock (MHz) | 2,015 | 2,015 | 1,815 |
| Boost clock (MHz) | 2,250 | 2,250 | 2,105 |
| Infinity Cache (MB) | 128 | 128 | 128 |
| Memory | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 |
| TDP (Watt) | 300 | 300 | 250 |
| Available from | December 8 | November 18 | November 18 |
| Price (USD) | $999 | $649 | $579 |
How it shapes up body part-to-body part with Nvidia's RTX 30-series graphics card in-waiting, the RTX 3070, AMD has not said exactly. What it will offer is a heap of gaming benchmarks showing the RX 6800 toppling the RTX 2080 Ti in a handful of games (with Smart Access Memory on, by the way), and that should put it roughly in line with the RTX 3070.
AMD can claim victory in VRAM capacity, at least. Both cards offer GDDR6 memory, but whereas the RTX 3070 offers 8GB, the RX 6800 will deliver 16GB. I suppose it has to make up for the slight bump in price somehow: the RX 6800 will set you back $579 to the RTX 3070's $499.
The RX 6800 will be available from November 18, alongside the RX 6800 XT. The RX 6900 XT will follow afterwards on December 8.