AMD RX 6000 Series Launch Tomorrow - 28th Oct 2020

[Dos_Box]

Just in case you have been living under a stone for the past few weeks (or given the events this year, it's highly likely we all have!) AMD are to be launching their new RX 6000 series tomorrow.

As with their third gen Ryzen, they are rumoured to be giving their competitors a bloody nose.

The laucnh is at 12pm EST or 4pm in the UK. No links as of yet, but you should be able to view it on both AMD's sit and their YouTube channel.

Now all we need is the independant Ryzen reviews to come out now (come on AMD, it's been three weeks since your Zen 3 'launch', lift that embargo!).

Edited October 27, 2020 by Dos_Box

[CHiLL]

I haven't used a non-Nvidia GPU for such a long time; back then ATI Catalyst or whatever it was called was garbage. Are the AMD drivers/tools still bad, compared with what Nvidia offers? I'm currently in the market for a 4K-60FPS/2K 165FPS card and was planning on getting a 3080. If AMD can pull a Ryzen with these cards, I'm wondering if it's worth switching, or is Nvidia still the better bet for stability/driver support? Edited October 27, 2020 by CHiLL

[3s-gtech]

Ugghhh drivers. How many times has that been trotted out?

 

I haven’t had an Nvidia GPU since my Geforce 3 Ti. I haven’t had any more issues with drivers on AMD hardware, and we have hundred of AMD cards at work.

 

The drivers are fine.

[Dos_Box]

Ugghhh drivers. How many times has that been trotted out?

 

I haven’t had an Nvidia GPU since my Geforce 3 Ti. I haven’t had any more issues with drivers on AMD hardware, and we have hundred of AMD cards at work.

 

The drivers are fine.

 

Agreed, the last gen GPU's (5xxx series) GPU's did have an initial driver problem, apparently due to it's new architecture, but this has long been resolved now. I have an 8GB RX 580 and there are absolutely no problems at all with them.

[Dos_Box]

BTW, just had to amend my first post. The launch is tomorrow (the 28th), not today. Thought today was the 28th!

And I'm a dumbass.

[bald_pig]

I presume that the stream will be available here:

https://www.amd.com/en/events/gaming-2020

[CHiLL]

BTW, just had to amend my first post. The launch is tomorrow (the 28th), not today. Thought today was the 28th!

And I'm a dumbass.

I did see that and though you were just pre-empting the post for tomorrow! I wish it was the 28th today. 28th = pay day!

[sonofsanta]

Here's where I start to regret not having the willpower and patience 5 months ago to wait for all these new GPUs when I was in the market for a new 1440p card, isn't it? Got a 5700XT for £370, which tbf is handling absolutely everything I throw at it, and is certainly a step up from the 2GB GTX680 I had beforehand! It's still not terrible value-wise either: the 3070 looks to be better bang-for-the-buck, but is still £100 more outright, and objectively speaking ~£500 is a silly amount of money to spend on a mid-range graphics card, certainly when there's, y'know, kids and stuff I'm financially responsible for too.

 

And I have to say I don't think my mental health would have survived without being able to sink into The Witcher 3 each evening through these last few hectic months. Waited four years to have a good enough GPU to play it, and finally finished it last night after 120 hours running everywhere on the map to solve every last little problem the peasantry had.

 

Anyway, I can't stop myself reading 3070 reviews now, like poking a missing tooth with my tongue till I make it sore, so I'm looking forward to seeing what AMD have cooked up too.

 

(The drivers are fine, btw. The Radeon software is really good now)

[caffrey]

Meh, why are these events always on at hometime...

[bald_pig]

I presume that the stream will be available here:

https://www.amd.com/en/events/gaming-2020

 

And I was correct!

 

[bald_pig]

So, what did everyone think?

 

If the performance is accurate, they can keep to that pricing, and they can actually supply the chips, then AMD are on to a winner in my opinion!

[Dos_Box]

Well, that was interesting. Not much detail on head-to-head ray tracing benchmarks with compared to Nvidia and I can't help but think that they could have been a smidgoen better in pricing, but I await the real world reviews eagerly.

It's nice to have competition back in the market again

[sted]

it looks good but im waiting to see real world benchmarks/reviews though at least one of the games they used was one i play s(forza horizon 4)o know my 2060 super gets ~70 fps at 4k ultra and they were showing 138fps (they dont show the rest of the system specs though as far as i could see)

[bald_pig]

Looks like the ray tracing performance may not be as good on the 6000 cards:

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ray-accelerator-appear-to-be-slower-than-nvidia-rt-core-in-this-dxr-ray-tracing-benchmark

[CHiLL]

It certainly was interesting. It's impressive that they can match the performance and pricing of the 30xx series (at least in their cherry picked benchmarks). It looks like they're pulling the same moves on Nvidia that they did with Intel.

 

I'd be tempted by the 6800XT, if it wasn't for my Dell S2417DG 165Hz G-Sync monitor. I can't seem to find anywhere that says it's FreeSync compatible or even if it is, what it's performance would be like compared to G-Sync.

 

As for ray tracing, I think it's expected that they'd be lagging behind Nvidia in terms of performance. Don't forget, this is AMD's first foray into ray tracing and Nvidia's first attempt (RTX 20xx series) didn't offer amazing performance either. I think AMD are set up well for ray tracing in future games and certainly the 7xxx series of cards. With the new consoles also using AMD's ray tracing and the fact that they are basically PC architecture...I think there will be a lot more wide spread development as time goes on for non-Nvidia ray tracing.

[bald_pig]

I'd be tempted by the 6800XT, if it wasn't for my Dell S2417DG 165Hz G-Sync monitor. I can't seem to find anywhere that says it's FreeSync compatible or even if it is, what it's performance would be like compared to G-Sync.

 

According to the Dell forum, the monitor is actually designed to lock to 60Hz on an AMD card!

[psydii]

I find it suspicious that both AMD and NVIDIA have both had similar performance jumps this year, the likes of which haven't been seen for over a decade.

 

Also I wonder if the lack of availability of the 3000 series cards is not accidental, but in fact done to allow them to make a response to the 6000's without upsetting too many customers. (if only 5% of orders are fulfilled, 95% of customers can be shipped the '3000+' cards)

 

/cynical.

Edited October 29, 2020 by psydii
SPAG

[sonofsanta]

Well it's not the first time AMD have promised a performance boost if everything inside your case is AMD, but this Smart Access thing could be very interesting, especially combined with the new DirectStorage API the new hotness supports. Could be a good few bottlenecks out the way that mean these cards keep getting faster over the next couple of years: Could AMD's Smart Access Memory be the secret sauce of Big Navi? | RPS

[Dos_Box]

Looks like the ray tracing performance may not be as good on the 6000 cards:

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ray-accelerator-appear-to-be-slower-than-nvidia-rt-core-in-this-dxr-ray-tracing-benchmark

 

Touched on in this (NSFW!):

 

 

TBH, I kinda agree with the sentiment that gamers want better framerates first then the fancy additionals second.

I imagine the RX 7000 series will have much better ray tracing, but to my mind it's currently in the 'nice-to-have' catagory rather than a main selling point for me.

[bald_pig]

Touched on in this (NSFW!):

 

 

TBH, I kinda agree with the sentiment that gamers want better framerates first then the fancy additionals second.

I imagine the RX 7000 series will have much better ray tracing, but to my mind it's currently in the 'nice-to-have' catagory rather than a main selling point for me.

 

For me, seeing as both cards are more or less level on pricing and performance (under normal conditions) then ray tracing is a feature that sets the RTX cards apart right now.

 

To be honest, I fully expect 3rd party benchmarks to show the 6000 cards to be below the RTX cards in performance in most games though...

[sonofsanta]

It's a future-proofing conundrum, isn't it? Better ray-tracing vs. double the VRAM...

[bald_pig]

It's a future-proofing conundrum, isn't it? Better ray-tracing vs. double the VRAM...

 

On the 6800 vs the 3070, sure, but 6800xt vs 3080 is 16 to 10, and 6900xt vs 3090 is 16 to 24.

[Dos_Box]

I find it suspicious that both AMD and NVIDIA have both had similar performance jumps this year, the likes of which haven't been seen for over a decade.

 

Also I wonder if the lack of availability of the 3000 series cards is not accidental, but in fact done to allow them to make a response to the 6000's without upsetting too many customers. (if only 5% of orders are fulfilled, 95% of customers can be shipped the '3000+' cards)

 

/cynical.

 

I think it more comes down to the fact that AMD have, under Lisa Su, refocussed their efforts and worked really hard with all new designs and technologies to make much better chips whilst Intel and Nvidia have largely been stuck in their complacent 'This is the new release, now hand over your cash!' mindset.

AMD also had the advantage of not being caught up in years long development cycles which is where they manged to gain ground on Intel who is currently busy just ramming in more cores and upping the power requirements to try and gain an advantage over AMD.

With technologies such as infinity cache, AMD have shown they are really thinking out of the box in regards to how to get more power without having to rely on traditional GPU methods such as more/faster RAM.

It's not that this year has seen performance parity between all the vendors, just that AMD has finally caught up. This will make next years releases very interesting indeed.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

I find it suspicious that both AMD and NVIDIA have both had similar performance jumps this year, the likes of which haven't been seen for over a decade.

 

Also I wonder if the lack of availability of the 3000 series cards is not accidental, but in fact done to allow them to make a response to the 6000's without upsetting too many customers. (if only 5% of orders are fulfilled, 95% of customers can be shipped the '3000+' cards)

 

/cynical.

 

AMD have been heading in this direction for some time now as evidenced by Ryzen's rise. Getting their graphics division back on form has been a long-term target.

 

As for nVidia. They've been churning out some pretty massive generational jumps for a while now. The shift to Pascal from Maxwell was also massive. The jump to Turing was less so but, it did add ray tracing (and eyewatering prices).

This time around I think it's fair to say nVidia have been pushed both by an underwhelming 20xx generation AND by the supposed competition from AMD.

 

What will be interesting to see is how things pan out over the next couple of generations. Will AMD be able to keep this up and will nVidia, pushed like they haven't been for years, pull something spectacular out of the bag?

[Dos_Box]

Well, today is launch day and apparently you should be able to see reviews etc. from 2pm UK time today.

Can't wait