On Wednesday AMD released its new generation of graphics cards in the RX 6000 series based on the RDNA 2 architecture. Thanks to many improvements, the performance would be so high that AMD can finally re-enter the high-end segment, where Nvidia had the empire for itself in recent generations.

The lack of true flagship- Radeon graphics have been a necessity rather than a choice for AMD in recent years. With the RX 400 and 500 – series it competed in the mainstream segment; only with the RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64, high-end cards from Nvidia got an alternative. Even then, the then GeForce flagship, the GTX 1080 Ti, was able to sit quietly. Also with the RX 5000 series, AMD was able to compete primarily with Nvidia’s RTX 2060 and 2070, which later got Super variants. The RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti again were not challenged by the red camp, even not by the already produced Radeon VII. Probably AMD has mainly looked to competitor Nvidia for the positioning of its new cards

With the RX 6000 – series should be different. AMD already claimed in its presentation of the RDNA 2 series to compete directly with the Ampere flagship, the RTX 3090. The manufacturer does this with its RX 6900 XT, which will be released on December 8 this year. In this review we look at the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 positioned directly below, which are also based on the RDNA 2 architecture where performance per watt is a major concern.

Comparing these two cards to a direct predecessor is tricky, both in terms of price and naming. The RX 5700 and 5700 XT were both a step lower at these points and the RX Vega cards were at the time of their introduction with a more favorable suggested retail price. Then the Radeon VII remains, which in terms of price is slightly above the RX 6800 XT and is also produced at 7nm. For the positioning of its new cards, AMD has probably mainly looked to competitor Nvidia, which with its Ampere GPUs in the RTX 30 series recently released all its high-end models.