Today AMD formally revealed the next-generation Radeon GPUs powered by the RDNA 2 architecture and it looks like they’re going to thoroughly give NVIDIA a run for your money.
What was announced: Radeon RX 6900 XT, Radeon RX 6800 XT, Radeon 6800 with the Radeon RX 6800 XT looking like a very capable GPU that sits right next to NVIDIA's 3080 while seeming to use less power. All three of them will support Ray Tracing as expected with AMD adding a "high performance, fixed-function Ray Accelerator engine to each compute unit". However, we're still waiting on The Khronos Group to formally announce the proper release of the vendor-neutral Ray Tracing extensions for Vulkan which still aren't finished (provisional since March 2020) so for now DirectX RT was all they mentioned.
Part of the big improvement in RDNA 2 comes from what they learned with Zen 3 and their new "Infinity Cache", which is a high-performance, last-level data cache they say "dramatically" reduces latency and power consumption while delivering higher performance than previous designs. You can see some of the benchmarks they showed in the image below:
As always, it's worth waiting on independent benchmarks for the full picture as both AMD and NVIDIA like to cherry-pick what makes them look good of course.
Here's the key highlight specifications:
| RX 6900 XT | RX 6800 XT | RX 6800 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compute Units | 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 |
| Price (USD) | $999 | $649 | $579 |
| Available | 08/12/2020 | 18/11/2020 | 18/11/2020 |
You shouldn't need to go buying a new case either, as AMD say they had easy upgrades in mind as they built these new GPUs for "standard chassis" with a length of 267mm and 2x8 standard 8-pin power connectors, and designed to operate with existing enthusiast-class 650W-750W power supplies.
There was a big portion of the event dedicated to DirectX which doesn’t mean much for us, but what we’ve been able to learn from the benchmarks shown is that they’re powerful cards and they appear to fight even NVIDIA’s latest high end consumer GPUs like the GeForce 3080. So not only are AMD leaping over Intel with the Ryzen 5000, they’re also now shutting NVIDIA out in the cold too. Incredible to see how far AMD has surged in the last few years. This is what NVIDIA and Intel have needed, some strong competition.
How will their Linux support be? You're probably looking at around the likes of Ubuntu 21.04 next April (or comparable distro updates) to see reasonable out-of-the-box support, thanks to newer Mesa drivers and an updated Linux Kernel but we will know a lot more once they actually release and can be tested.
As for what’s next? AMD confirmed that RDNA3 is well into the design stage, with a release expected before the end of 2022 for GPUs powered by RDNA3.
You can view the full event video in our YouTube embed below:
Direct Link
Feel free to comment as you watch as if you have JavaScript enabled it won't refresh the page.
Additionally if you missed it, AMD also recently announced (October 27) that they will be acquiring chip designer Xilinx.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: Avehicle7887Time for some GPU Porn: https://phonemantra.com/gigabyte-and-sapphire-unveil-reference-radeon-rx-6800-and-rx-6800-xt/
Looks like I'm going with the Sapphire 6800XT all the way.
I wonder how custom designs from Sapphire will look like. Reference design is already on the level of what they used to make as custom before.
Last edited by Shmerl on 30 October 2020 at 6:17 pm UTC
mawhrin-skel Oct 30, 2020
Quoting: illwieckzQuoting: GuestI never had to write xorg.conf to make my hardware work, nvidia-settings takes care of the settings.
You said it: “nvidia-settings takes care of the settings”. You're experiencing Linux graphics like if you still lived in year 2004. That's not normal you have to use nvidia-settings. That's wrong you have to use it. Neither Intel or AMD hardware requires similar things. This has stopped on AMD side many year ago. The thing is: Nvidia is decade late in the race.
To defend lunix (as someone who recently defected from green to red, so pls no bully), the nvidia-settings control panel *is* pretty nice. It offers what few Linux config options exist in a nice GUI, with a multimonitor positioning/resolution/Hz section to boot (something some DEs' settings panels may fall short of). With AMD, I have no control panel. :c
Also, and brace yourselves, but G-SYNC works out of the box in Linux. FreeSync doesn't, and it can barely be said to work *at all* with its "only-up-to-90 Hz" limitation. (The downside is that G-SYNC monitor wouldn't work at all without Nvidia proprietary drivers, or an AMD card, so I ditched it along with my 1080 Ti. Hehe.)
It's hard to know what the facts are. (Nature is like this. No, Nature is actually like this.) Past arguments about the facts, it's all philosophy. (If Nature is unjust, change Nature! No, I'm not interested in justice; only efficacy.) But then choice of philosophy can circle back around to fact problems. (Can Nature be changed at all? Will such changes result in a juster world?) But then those can be addressed again by philosophy. (I don't care; it's worth it to die trying; an unjust world is not worth living in. I do care; to struggle in futility is folly.)
What I'm trying to say is BIG NAVIIII HYPE WOOOOOO!!!!!!11
Quoting: TuxeeQuoting: subCongrats AMD!
I got myself a 5700XT in early January.
Experience was (still is) absolutely flawless.
Worked out-of-the-box.
Performance is great for playing games in FHD and WQHD high settings.
I can't tell anything about release time but, indeed, I heard it was *rough*. :)
Indeed it was. My 5700 has been chugging along for the past few months without any problems and hiccups. And everything was good - until my 5500XT (in a second machine) met kernel 5.8.13 and later. It will disable a second display with any kernel > 5.8.12. No way to activate the second display.
The recipe for problem seems to be the mixture of 2+ displays (resolutions don't matter, one display won't cut it), RDNA and amdgpu. The bugtracker on freedesktop.org is still being fed with rather bizarre bugs.
Hmm. I have a WQHD monitor attached along with a UHD TV.
No issues at all. Never had.
Quoting: mawhrin-skelAlso, and brace yourselves, but G-SYNC works out of the box in Linux. FreeSync doesn't, and it can barely be said to work *at all* with its "only-up-to-90 Hz" limitation.
Never had any problems with adaptive sync. I'm using LG 27GL850. Adaptive sync is fine up to 144 Hz and LFC works fine as well.
Gsync can't work out of the box unless your monitor has some proprietary module in it. That's an instant no go for me.
Last edited by Shmerl on 31 October 2020 at 11:42 pm UTC
Quoting: 14If Cyberpunk 2077 was coming to Linux, I would be looking at that RX 6800 instead of a PS5.
If it's not, it will work with vkd3d-proton eventually. But I'll probably wait until it's discounted. RX 6800 or RX 6800XT will still be quite useful for it.
Last edited by Shmerl on 1 November 2020 at 12:09 am UTC
Quoting: ShmerlI had the same thoughts, but that's a lot of money to put toward something that will probably work. Cyberpunk is a special game to me. If there are launch issues, I want to be on a majority platform and not a niche one. Since I'm buying the disc, I can always sell and buy the Steam version later on.Quoting: 14If Cyberpunk 2077 was coming to Linux, I would be looking at that RX 6800 instead of a PS5.
If it's not, it will work with vkd3d-proton eventually. But I'll probably wait until it's discounted. RX 6800 or RX 6800XT will still be quite useful for it.
Quoting: 14I had the same thoughts, but that's a lot of money to put toward something that will probably work. Cyberpunk is a special game to me. If there are launch issues, I want to be on a majority platform and not a niche one. Since I'm buying the disc, I can always sell and buy the Steam version later on.
On one hand I don't mind waiting until it's confirmed to be working. On the other hand I don't mind reporting bugs to vkd3d and Wine about what's not working. The only annoying thing would be paying full price when CDPR are ignoring Linux gamers. That's why I'd rather wait until it's discounted or someone gives me a key.
mawhrin-skel Nov 1, 2020
Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: mawhrin-skelAlso, and brace yourselves, but G-SYNC works out of the box in Linux. FreeSync doesn't, and it can barely be said to work *at all* with its "only-up-to-90 Hz" limitation.
Never had any problems with adaptive sync. I'm using LG 27GL850. Adaptive sync is fine up to 144 Hz and LFC works fine as well.
MSI MAG272CQR (165 Hz) here, and I haven't gotten it to work. I still see tearing with v-sync off, and I never did with my G-SYNC monitor.
From the Arch wiki,
QuoteFreesync monitors usually have a limited range for VRR that are much lower than their max refresh rate.
...
Although tearing is much less noticeable at higher refresh rates, FreeSync monitors often have a limited range for their VRR of 90Hz, which can be much lower than their max refresh rate.
Supposedly, it only works at 90 Hz? Few Linux games are demanding enough to run that low, though, so I haven't been able to test.
And, from amd.com:
QuoteFor FreeSync to work in OpenGL applications, V-Sync must be turned ON.(lol! In this case, my "testing" is moot since, beyond no tearing with v-sync off, I have no idea what adaptive sync is or does, sorry.)
QuoteFreeSync enable setting does not retain after display hotplug or system restart (e.g., need to manually re-enable FreeSync via terminal command)(Err...
DISPLAY=:0 xrandr --output DisplayPort-# --set "freesync" 1Ok, lemme just add that to my startup script--)
QuoteIn multi-display configurations, FreeSync will NOT be engaged (even if both FreeSync displays are identical)(--oh, nevermind. Maybe this is why I can't get it to work? I have multiple monitors.)
Quoting: mawhrin-skelMSI MAG272CQR (165 Hz) here, and I haven't gotten it to work. I still see tearing with v-sync off, and I never did with my G-SYNC monitor.
Did you enable it for Xorg? Make sure that option is enabled. On Debian it's in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-amdgpu.conf
Option "VariableRefresh" "true"Quoting: mawhrin-skelFor FreeSync to work in OpenGL applications, V-Sync must be turned ON.
I don't think that's right. You need to always keep vsync off.
Multiple monitors is always a mess under X. Try first with one.
Last edited by Shmerl on 1 November 2020 at 8:35 pm UTC
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