The 6000 series graphics cards by AMD released on 18th November. For all the people hoping it would be AMD blowing NVIDIA out of the water…it isn’t. Although, it is a win if you were expecting more options in the $500-700 range for GPUs. There is a caveat in that as well, unfortunately.
Nvidia GPUs will also get Smart Access Memory (SAM) down the line…
That’s right, Nvidia confirmed that they will also get SAM eventually. SAM is the nifty new feature by AMD that was initially available only for AMD CPUs and GPUs. It allows for the CPU to gain access to the entire GPU memory instead of certain areas of it. This allows for a 4-11% boost in performance and is only possible with AMD’s Zen 3 CPUs.
However, if you haven’t seen the bucket load of videos that have graced YouTube already, click here to check out a video talking about the AMD GPU benchmarks! The 6800XT and the RTX 3080 can be seen trading blows in most games.
However, due to Nvidia’s 2nd Generation RT cores, AMD is blown out of the water when it comes to Ray Tracing. A few games that do boast of their Ray Tracing options showed both 6800 & 6800XT faltering and failing to compete with their Nvidia counterparts.
The cards were also tested in Content Creator tests. The Nvidia Cards seemed to pull ahead for shorter renders due to their superior memory speed. Most of the test saw Nvidia cards taking less time than their AMD counterparts.
However, the AMD cards outperformed the Nvidia cards in longer renders. We might see further upgrades in performance as the AMD cards receive driver updates specifically for these functions.
So are the AMD GPUs worth it?
Well, yes but for now, no. AMD cards offer better cost per frame value but if you’re shelling out $649 for the 6800XT, then you might as well spend an extra $50 for the faster 3080. The same goes for the 6800 at $569.
You might as well buy the significantly faster 6800XT for just $80 more! If you’re extremely budget bound then the RTX 3070 would make more sense. For now, Nvidia proposes the more compelling deal, unfortunately.
Things will change for the better though, as we see AMD getting more driver stability as time passes by. If anything, AMD will still sell out due to the absolute draught of Nvidia Cards in the land. If you can wait a little longer, then we might even see a new card released by AMD as early as 2021!
