I don't think AMD will totally halt RX 6800 sales, but it has always been a GPU that only exists to take care of yields. If a Navi 21 isn't at least 90% functional on the CUs, and fully functional on the cache and memory controllers, it can't be sold as a 6800 XT. I do wonder if some Navi 21 chips end up as RX 6700 / RX 6750 XT, just because there will inevitably be flaws in the Infinity Cache or memory controllers. But perhaps AMD just doesn't bother with such chips. Starting with the 1080p fps average gaming data we see that for low resolution gamers targeting maximum fps – we imagine mostly competitive shooter type gamers – the Radeon RX 6950 XT is about as good as it gets for out of the box performance.

But that's the case even with the RTX 3090 Ti with DLSS on, which only just barely hits 60 fps (ocassionally) in Cyberpunk 2077's benchmark at 4K with the Ultra Ray Tracing graphics preset. And, even then, that's its max frame rate, its average is in the high 40s, while without any upscaling, the RTX 3090 Ti only hits 24 fps on those settings. Extreme performance graphics cards tend to be used at higher resolutions, and 4K ultra was the only resolution we tested where the RX 6950 XT couldn't beat the RTX 3090 Ti in standard gaming performance. It does come in second place overall, beating the RTX 3090, which is perhaps one reason why Nvidia released the 3090 Ti at the end of March. Either way, these are likely to be the two fastest cards from their respective companies until the next generation GPUs arrive this fall — and we also don't expect the top Intel Arc Alchemist GPU to be able to match either one in general gaming performance. So while the Nvidia RTX cards are definitely the reigning champs at ray tracing, in many cases you simply won't be using ray tracing, since even on the top-tier Nvidia GPUs, you're still looking at a 4K slideshow without upscaling tech like DLSS and FSR, and not every game has implemented those technologies yet. In the case of most games you will be playing for the next couple of years, you're much more likely to need to lean on rasterization performance as you always have.In this wishful scenario, AMD and Nvidia would have been evenly matched in terms of performance and value. Looking at the Radeon RX 6800 XT and GeForce RTX 3080 10GB, a slight premium for the RTX 3080 can be seen, but that product probably does command a slight premium. Where the value goes out the window is with the AMD and Nvidia refresh products, and of course, the "halo" products. For rasterization performance, the 6900 XT is much better value than the RTX 3090, saving you around 28% per frame, but for high resolution gaming the RTX 3090 is the faster halo product with better features. Chances are you won't really see it though, but that's ok because Gigabyte's Aorus Fusion 2.0 will let you program 16.7 million different color options into the Gigabyte logo along the visible edge, including several different patterns like color wave, color pulse, and more, that adds some additional RGB flair to your build.

Increasing the resolution to 1440p sees the RTX 3080 Ti close in on the 6950 XT though the margin to the RTX 3090 remains much the same while the 3090 Ti was 8% faster. We're also looking at a 12% increase for the 6950 XT over the 6900 XT, or about as good as you could hope for. In terms of memory, the VRAM on the RX 6950 XT is also a bit faster at 2,250MHz, compared to the RX 6900 XT's 2,000MHz. With the amount of VRAM and the same 256-bit memory bus, this extra speed might not seem like a lot, but it does mean that the card has almost 13% more memory bandwidth than the RX 6900 XT, 576GB/s to 512GB/s, respectively.In nearly all of our benchmarks, the RX 6950 XT falls short of the RTX 3090 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, and even the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, depending on the test. But where the RX 6950 XT falters, it's not completely bowled over, and its greatest weakness is when ray tracing is being pushed to the max. VforV said:I did not contradict you on the appeal of the RX 6800, I just said you mostly never found this GPU available compared to others and from now on it will be even less available to non-existent... That's all that I said. As for the Steam Survey. I mentioned this in the news report where the 6900XT finally appeared in it. I've had it for a good while now and I've never seen the Steam Survey pop. Same with my laptop and its 6800M. I've swapped my CPU 3 times now and I've only been survey'd once; before I even got my Vega64 to replace my RX480. All of this to just point out and reinforce the point that the Steam Survey is weird.