Today, AMD are bringing out the big guns with the formal release of their next generation desktop GPUs with the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and the RX 6800 XT. Announced back in late October, these cards are AMD's first to come with hardware accelerated Ray Tracing support. Although for Linux, we're still waiting on The Khronos Group to formalise the cross-vendor Ray Tracing Vulkan extensions for that.
Here's a reminder of the 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 |
For running them on Linux, the driver situation isn't the best. AMD have put out the Radeon Software for Linux version 20.45, which adds support for the Radeon RX 6800 Series but that driver only officially supports Ubuntu 20.04, RHEL/CentOS 7.9 and RHEL/CentOS 8.2. For Mesa drivers, you're going to need Linux Kernel 5.9, Mesa 20.2 (or newer) and also LLVM 11.0 which means most normal distributions will be missing out unless you're prepared to do major manual upgrades. So, unless you really know what you're doing with everything, you will likely want to hold off.
If you do manage to find one because, as expected, most places are sold out and you get everything it needs setup - expect to see some incredible performance. We don't get sent any hardware from AMD, so we're going by what others have been cooking up. It seems Level1Linux on YouTube are very happy with it, and the Phoronix benchmarks show them doing well too. From a price point of view, the performance does seem pretty amazing considering how close it appears to be with the NVIDIA 3080 and if you prefer the open source side of things it doesn't get better than this.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Finally i'm going to 6900 XT. Benchmarks for 6800 XT are amazing.
AMD beat the game this year with their GPU and CPU. Amazing.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 18 November 2020 at 5:11 pm UTC
AMD beat the game this year with their GPU and CPU. Amazing.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 18 November 2020 at 5:11 pm UTC
6 Likes, Who?
I'll start to put aside money for RX 6800 XT. By the way, how to switch from Nvidia to AMD? Do I have to uninstall the Nvidia driver first and then swap cards, or do something else?
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People were very worried about AMD and the out-of-the-box support for the new release, nice to see that even that part is doing quite well - albeit requiring the latest releases.
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I'll start to put aside money for RX 6800 XT. By the way, how to switch from Nvidia to AMD? Do I have to uninstall the Nvidia driver first and then swap cards, or do something else?
Normally yes, just uninstall Nvidia driver (some distros ship it as a package, so removing it can be enough) and make sure you have latest kernel and Mesa master. You'd also need amdgpu firmware.
4 Likes, Who?
Avehicle7887 Nov 18, 2020
I'll start to put aside money for RX 6800 XT. By the way, how to switch from Nvidia to AMD? Do I have to uninstall the Nvidia driver first and then swap cards, or do something else?
I went through that process for one of my systems. I first made sure I have all the updated packages ready at hand (Mesa, Kernel, LLVM and the firmware. Then as the last step I uninstalled the Nvidia driver (.run package from their site) and then installed Mesa.
Also you might want to make a backup of your xorg.conf file. In my case I also had to run "Xorg -configure" to create a new one to accomodate the AMD gpu.
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Good to see that we can have Linux benchs on release date! and really good to see that Mesa 20.2 already supports them :D
Last edited by x_wing on 18 November 2020 at 3:58 pm UTC
Last edited by x_wing on 18 November 2020 at 3:58 pm UTC
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Also you might want to make a backup of your xorg.conf file. In my case I also had to run "Xorg -configure" to create a new one to accomodate the AMD gpu.You should simply remove the old xorg.conf file. You don't need one for AMD or Intel.
In case you want to fiddle with options (e.g. to enable TearFree), it's better to just create a new file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ containing nothing but the device section for the driver.
5 Likes, Who?
These are looking pretty great! Hardware wise the results on Windows are very solid and consistently on the heels of the 3080 (except for RT, but that's really not important). The Phoronix test do show a lot of anomalies on Linux. In both directions. SOTR looks unreasonably bad while Superposition looks suspiciously good. Also quite a few differences between the different Linux drivers. Looks like there is still some work to do in getting the Linux drivers to be more consistent.
Happy to see AMD catch up though. That means I'll actually have a choice when I'm due for an upgrade.
Happy to see AMD catch up though. That means I'll actually have a choice when I'm due for an upgrade.
0 Likes
herrorange Nov 18, 2020
Custom models will come out on November 25th.
I don't see much value this time around (with RTX3000 and RX6000 series) in AOB versions of the cards. Probably with nVidia you get a normal power connectors and better cooling, but for AMD...I'm not sure, it looks like reference design is very efficient (read silent/cool (as in temp.)). But OC-wise, reference designs are running very close to the limits already, so...
As for me, I'm still a bit torn between 6800 and 6800XT, I'm not running 4K setup, only 2K, but I'd like some head room for a few years...my Ryzen 5900X is on a back order for God know how long, so I still have time to decide, I guess. I'm finally going AMD for Graphics, last time that happened it was Radeon 9550...
0 Likes
Avehicle7887 Nov 18, 2020
Also you might want to make a backup of your xorg.conf file. In my case I also had to run "Xorg -configure" to create a new one to accomodate the AMD gpu.You should simply remove the old xorg.conf file. You don't need one for AMD or Intel.
In case you want to fiddle with options (e.g. to enable TearFree), it's better to just create a new file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ containing nothing but the device section for the driver.
I didn't know that, thanks!
Custom models will come out on November 25th.
And so it seems I have been spamming the Amazon search button for nothing. Time to mark my calendar (again).
----------------------------------
I think AMD made a huge improvement with those new GPU's and that solid Mesa support on day 1 is a big plus. I'm not too bothered by the slower RT performance either or lack of DLSS.
0 Likes
Custom models will come out on November 25th.
I don't see much value this time around (with RTX3000 and RX6000 series) in AOB versions of the cards. Probably with nVidia you get a normal power connectors and better cooling, but for AMD...I'm not sure, it looks like reference design is very efficient (read silent/cool (as in temp.)). But OC-wise, reference designs are running very close to the limits already, so...
As for me, I'm still a bit torn between 6800 and 6800XT, I'm not running 4K setup, only 2K, but I'd like some head room for a few years...my Ryzen 5900X is on a back order for God know how long, so I still have time to decide, I guess. I'm finally going AMD for Graphics, last time that happened it was Radeon 9550...
Go with the 6800XT.
Has a better performance per dollar and the difference in price between then its not that big
1 Likes, Who?
Anyone here is also getting damn high temperatures on the 5700XT?
0 Likes
slaapliedje Nov 18, 2020
This is why I don't like getting an AMD. While nvidia has proprietary drivers, and that is annoying, they are generally packaged up in either back ports or updated in the distro itself.I'll start to put aside money for RX 6800 XT. By the way, how to switch from Nvidia to AMD? Do I have to uninstall the Nvidia driver first and then swap cards, or do something else?
Normally yes, just uninstall Nvidia driver (some distros ship it as a package, so removing it can be enough) and make sure you have latest kernel and Mesa master. You'd also need amdgpu firmware.
With AMD being kernel based and needing latest Mesa, hardly anyone really packages those unless you want to make your system less stable and are into the whole ppa things. or you start compiling things from source, which I'm not exactly keen on doing for just the graphics card to work. You almost need to be running a rolling release like Arch to be able to just pop the card in and have it go.
I may still dip my toes into the AMD pool this time around, but in general I don't have the time or patience for that crap anymore :P
1 Likes, Who?
With AMD being kernel based and needing latest Mesa, hardly anyone really packages those unless you want to make your system less stable and are into the whole ppa things. or you start compiling things from source, which I'm not exactly keen on doing for just the graphics card to work. You almost need to be running a rolling release like Arch to be able to just pop the card in and have it go.
I told you this before: you can install AMDGPU dkms using AMDGPU-PRO package release. You don't need a rolling release, having the driver in the kernel has nothing to do with the "problem" you mention. And if your point is that having a dkms driver makes your system less stable... well, that's exactly what happens with Nvidia.
5 Likes, Who?
I don't see much value this time around (with RTX3000 and RX6000 series) in AOB versions of the cards.
Sapphire makes good cooling designs in general, so I'll get their Pulse model. That's what they differentiate on.
As for me, I'm still a bit torn between 6800 and 6800XT, I'm not running 4K setup, only 2K, but I'd like some head room for a few years...my
Same here (I have 2.5K). I'm leaning towards Sapphre Pulse RX 6800 XT. With newer games becoming more demanding and taking in account overhead of Wine, dxvk and vkd3d on Linux, I think higher end card will be useful.
Last edited by Shmerl on 18 November 2020 at 4:56 pm UTC
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I may still dip my toes into the AMD pool this time around, but in general I don't have the time or patience for that crap anymore :P
There is an easy approach to that. Wait until all the bits are released and then get the GPU. By that time you also won't need to deal with "sold out" issue ;) These new GPUs go like hot cakes and are sold out in seconds. But later on they'll be easy to buy.
Last edited by Shmerl on 18 November 2020 at 4:58 pm UTC
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Oh, and by the way. Debian testing has kernel 5.9, Mesa 20.2.2 and llvm 11. So you basically don't need to compile anything if I understand correctly :) That's better for day 1 than RDNA 1 (Navi 1) release.
Unless you just want to benefit from even newer support in upstream versions, then it's compiling time anyway :)
Last edited by Shmerl on 18 November 2020 at 5:06 pm UTC
Unless you just want to benefit from even newer support in upstream versions, then it's compiling time anyway :)
Last edited by Shmerl on 18 November 2020 at 5:06 pm UTC
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Mohandevir Nov 18, 2020
Oh, and by the way. Debian testing has kernel 5.9, Mesa 20.2.2 and llvm 11. So you basically don't need to compile anything if I understand correctly :) That's better for day 1 than RDNA 1 (Navi 1) release.
Unless you just want to benefit from even newer support in upstream versions, then it's compiling time anyway :)
From what I heard from another user, couldn't Debian testing be considered a rolling release? Might give it a shot, eventually.
2 Likes, Who?
I will get an AMD this time - I was Nvidia since 2xvoodoo 2 sli. I had so bad experience with AMD on company hw and Linux 10-15 years ago that kept me off weird graphics bugs on x11... Now I am stuck in arch Linux unable to update my system for almost (or felt) two months, I really gave "them" enough time to open source their drivers....
Last edited by logge on 18 November 2020 at 5:59 pm UTC
Last edited by logge on 18 November 2020 at 5:59 pm UTC
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