AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Review: Best GPU for 1440p Gaming

AMD is back again with its new beast AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT GPU one of the fastest and powerful GPU. Nvidia and is a direct competitor of AMD GPU’s in the market and after its last performance with its Zen 3 CPU’s against Intel CPU’s, AMD clearly shows there is no one to steal the performance crown from their head.

AMD’s new Radeon RX 6800 XT costs around $649 which is $50 less than the price of Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU which is a direct competitor in the market for AMD. AMD also promises that RX 6800 XT will provide the same performance or over-performance as that of RTX 3080 at both 4K and 1440p level gaming.

Hardware of new AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

If we talk about the hardware design of the new GPU from AMD then we can conclude that AMD stuck with the previous basic style only for its new GPU there is no dual fan setup nor a fancy new PCB or a 12-pin connector. It just contains a typical 2.5 slot card with two regular PCIe eight-pin power connectors and a triple-fan system for cooling.

This time instead of the extremely loud blower-style used before by AMD they tried a new axial cooling solution for the cooling system of their new GPU which also means that the three fans installed here are used to pull air in to cool down RX 6800 XT and exhaust it to the other side of the system. During the test of this new GPU, I found it more silent than the previous one by AMD which is a good sign for the company.

At the rear, the 6800 XT includes two DisplayPort 1.4 connectors, a single HDMI 2.1 port, and a USB-C port for VR headsets. The USB-C port is also monitor-capable and even supports 27W charging. On the side of the GPU, we can find a big red Radeon logo that glows Red when turning on.

Just like Nvidia RTX 3080 AMD also recommending using a PSU of 750W. However, AMD draws up to 300 watts, compared to the 320 watts that the RTX 3080 can draw. Which is a very little difference but every single and little step to conserve the environment and save electricity is necessary.

1440p Gaming Testing

While testing this new AMD RX 6800 XT I put direct competitor RTX 3080 in front of this and play a variety of games and some new titles also like Watch Dogs: Legion and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. And what we found is that most of the time RX 6800 XT overperforms Nvidia RTX 3080 at 1440p gaming.

But also in some titles like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla where RTX 3080 manages to perform 10 fps and 20 fps respectively better than that of AMD’s card. But at last, we can conclude that in most of the titles AMD is far better than that of the Nvidia RTX 3080.

The performance of AMD RX 6800 XT at 1440p gaming is stated below:

Benchmark	RX 6800 XT	RTX 3080 Founders Edition
Microsoft Flight Simulator	44fps	40fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	144fps	132fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DLSS)	N/A	144fps
CoD: Warzone	144fps	133fps
CoD: Warzone (RT)	142fps	132fps
Fortnite	156fps	160fps
Fortnite (DLSS quality)	N/A	212fps
Fortnite (DLSS perf)	N/A	225fps
Gears 5	121fps	120fps
CS: GO	283fps	325fps
Death Stranding	179fps	170fps
Death Stranding (DLSS quality)	N/A	188fps
Death Stranding (DLSS perf)	N/A	193fps
Control	109fps	126fps
Control (DLSS quality + RT)	N/A	125fps
Control (RT)	58fps	78fps
Control (DLSS quality)	N/A	174fps
Metro Exodus	56fps	56fps
Metro Exodus (RT)	28fps	37fps
Metro Exodus (DLSS+RT)	N/A	65fps
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla	92fps	73fps
Watch Dogs: Legion	81fps	78fps
Watch Dogs: Legion (RT)	N/A	49fps

So from the above benchmarks, we can conclude that just like RTX 3080 AMD RX 6800 XT is also a great choice for 1440p gaming. As most of the times RX 6800 XT scores more than 60 fps at max settings and even more than 100 fps in competitive titles like Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone.

The above all performance makes a great position for AMD in the market until you hit ray tracing. Nvidia has been pushing ray tracing for years, but this is AMD’s first card to enable real-time ray tracing. Unfortunately, the 6800 XT fails to match the RTX 3080’s frames per second when using ray tracing performance in both Control and Metro Exodus.

4K Gaming Testing

If we talk about the performance of AMD GPU in 4K gaming then it is a disappointment for you all as 6800 XT delivers 60fps or more in games like Fortnite, Gears 5, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but it falls behind the RTX 3080 in Control, Watch Dogs: Legion, and Metro Exodus.

But on the other hand, there are some titles in which AMD clearly beat RTX 3080 like in Call of Duty: Warzone by more than 10fps.

The performance of AMD RX 6800 XT at 4K gaming is stated below:

Benchmark	RX 6800 XT	RTX 3080 Founders Edition
Microsoft Flight Simulator	33fps	36fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	77fps	76fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DLSS)	N/A	93fps
CoD: Warzone	106fps	93fps
CoD: Warzone (RT)	100fps	84fps
Fortnite	85fps	93fps
Fortnite (DLSS quality)	N/A	133fps
Fortnite (DLSS perf)	N/A	162fps
Gears 5	69fps	76fps
CS: GO	205fps	267fps
Death Stranding	105fps	101fps
Death Stranding (DLSS quality)	N/A	135fps
Death Stranding (DLSS perf)	N/A	164fps
Control	56fps	68fps
Control (DLSS quality + RT)	N/A	78fps
Control (RT)	29fps	49fps
Control (DLSS quality)	N/A	112fps
Metro Exodus	30fps	34fps
Metro Exodus (RT)	14fps	19fps
Metro Exodus (DLSS+RT)	N/A	48fps
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla	66fps	61fps
Watch Dogs: Legion	47fps	51fps
Watch Dogs: Legion (RT)	N/A	26fps

Just like in 1440p ray tracing is the main lack for AMD in 4K also, Control and Metro Exodus are both unplayable in most areas with full ray tracing enabled at 4K. The performance can’t be improved more than this by AMD or can match like of Nvidia not yet, as the company doesn’t have an equivalent to Nvidia’s DLSS.

AMD says that the goal it’s is for improving ray tracing for 1440p or 1080p resolutions instead of 4K. This means that the 6800 XT will probably always be behind Nvidia when you turn ray tracing on, but become competitive when it’s off.

Software and Drivers of new AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

In Driver Support AMD always struggles and this is the area in which Nvidia always took advantage and therefore performs far better than AMD. Ray-traced reflections are missing in Watch Dogs: Legion and some textures in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla don’t always render correctly or have black texture corruption. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare also crashes sometimes with ray tracing enabled.

These issues with drivers really drive us a little nervous as AMD has to work on it but there are also some areas in which AMD steps forward than Nvidia. The AMD Radeon software includes a neat dashboard with access to all the settings and game optimizations you could want. 

The Software work in AMD is really better and great there is quick access to overclocking tools as well. On the other hand, Nvidia splits its tools and driver settings into two sections in its GeForce Experience app and Control Panel. Which is like an ancient texture design and not at all user-friendly which is a major drawback with software.

Nvidia’s RTX features make it better than that of AMD as it offers many features to the users which AMD can’t offer like RTX Voice that makes background sounds magically disappear on voice and video calls or even RTX Broadcast that includes virtual backgrounds and auto framing.

It is really surprising that AMD ables to catchup Nvidia at premium gaming experience that of 1440p but can’t handle to narrow the gap of gaming experience in 4K and Nvidia ables to still takes the edge and a clear advantage for ray tracing and supersampling.

The fact that AMD has managed to narrow this gap is impressive. It has done so with architectural improvements, while still delivering a graphics card that works as we’d expect with a healthy amount of VRAM (16GB). There’s no fancy cooling or a clunky power adaptor, and it’s on par with the RTX 3080 at a lower price point and using less power.

And the conclusion is that AMD RX 6800 XT is a better competitor of Nvidia RTX 3080 and provides a great gaming experience with a less budget as compared to RTX 3080 the only improvement AMD has to make is ray tracing.

If you’re still struggling to pick up an RTX 3080, AMD might just have you covered here. AMD has made 4K gaming just a little bit more affordable than even Nvidia was able to. Let’s just hope there are more than a handful of cards available.

Buy Links

• To buy it for $649.99 from Amazon click here.

• To buy it for $649.99 from Best Buy click here.

• To buy it for $649.99 from Newegg click here

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