Mobile processors from AMD’s upcoming Ryzen notebook family 5000 U can be found in Geekbench’s online benchmark database. The top model Ryzen 7 5800 U (code name Cezanne) is there with 16 MByte level 3 cache noted – twice as much as in the previous Ryzen 7 4800 U. The specification of a single L3 cache pool confirms that it is the first mobile Zen 3 offshoot. In Zen 2, the cache is divided by two CPU core clusters.
Combining them into one large core complex helps with single-threading performance, because a single CPU core can access the entire L3 cache. Further architecture improvements and higher clock frequencies (stable 4.4 GHz) bring the Ryzen 7 5800 U in Geekbench a single threading result of 1421 Points – about 23 Percent more than the Ryzen 7 4800 U manages in a Lenovo IdeaPad 5. The 5000 he test system ran with DDR4 – 2666 – instead of DDR4 – 3200 – memory or even faster LPDDR4X-RAM, so that there would still be potential for more performance.
6450 Points in the multithreading benchmark are meanwhile below the result of a good Ryzen-7 – 4800 U notebooks, which could be due to insufficient cooling or reduced power consumption.
Ryzen 7 5700 with Zen 2 architecture An entry for Ryzen 7 5700 U in Geekbench coincides with rumors that AMD is in the 5000 U series Zen 3 processors (Cezanne) with a Zen-2-Refresh (Lucienne). According to the data, the Ryzen 7 5700 U corresponds to a higher clocked Ryzen 7 4800 U with a good 4.3 instead of 4.2 GHz boost, but still 2 × 4 MB L3 cache. The single threading result increases accordingly (1192 points); However, the multithreading rating is too low here (6284 points).
The final mobile processors from the Cezanne family would have to run a bit faster in order to be able to compete with Intel’s current Tiger Lake CPUs in terms of single threading performance. The Core i7 – 1185 G7 almost manages 1421 Points in Geekbench – but lags behind in multitheading benchmarks because of its four processing cores (just 5000 Points in Geekbench at 15 Watt TDP). Apple’s M1 processor from the new ARM MacBook sets itself apart at least in the Geekbench from AMD and Intel: A performance core creates 1740 Points, all eight together just under 7700.
The Ryzen 7 5800U (via Leakbench) is the first Ryzen 5000 (Cezanne) mobile APU to appear in the wild. The Ryzen 5000 branding will cause a bit of chaos in the mobile space.
The current rumor is that are two different families of APUs under the Ryzen 5000 umbrella. First, there is Lucienne, which is believed to be a refresh of Renoir with improved clocked speeds. Therefore, it should still use the common recipe of Zen 2 cores with Vega graphics. Then there’s Cezanne, which is rumored to wield Zen 3 cores finally. However, Cezanne would likely still employ the Vega graphics engine.
The Geekbench 5 submission for the Ryzen 7 5800U mentions “AMD Celadon-CZN,” and if you recall, Celadon was the codename for Renoir motherboards. That means the CZN should be the designator for Cezanne. The model name alone is enough to deduce that the Ryzen 7 5800U is the direct successor to the Ryzen 7 4800U, the flagship of the current Ryzen 4000 (Renoir) U-series lineup.
AMD Ryzen 5000 Cezanne Specifications
Processor
Cores / Threads
Base Clock (GHz)
Boost Clock (GHz)
L2 Cache (MB)
L3 Cache (MB)
Compute Units
Graphics Frequency
Ryzen 7 5800U*
8 / 16
1.9
4.4
4
16
?
?
Ryzen 7 4800U
8 / 16
1.8
4.2
4
8
8
1,750
*Specifications are unconfirmed.
The Ryzen 7 5800U is reportedly configured with eight cores and 16 threads. Even though Cezanne could be on the Zen 3 microarchitecture, the maximum configuration seems to persist. The U-series competes in the 15W segment, so there isn’t really much headroom for more cores. If AMD were to add more cores, the chipmaker might have to reduce the clock speeds drastically.
The Ryzen 7 5800U isn’t much faster from a clock speed perspective than the Ryzen 7 4800U. The unannounced chip seemingly operates with a 1.9 GHz base clock and a 4.4 GHz boost clock. That represents a mere 5.6% and 5.7% uplift for the base and boost clocks, respectively, compared to the Ryzen 7 4800U. We have to bear in mind that Zen 3’s forte lies in the vastly improved IPC (instruction per cycle) over Zen 2.
The most interesting tidbit about the Ryzen 7 5800U is the processor’s cache configuration. While Ryzen 7 4800U is restricted to 8MB of L3 cache, the Ryzen 7 5800U comes with twice the amount, which should help boost performance quite a bit. The L2 cache, however, remains the same at 4MB.
The Ryzen 7 5800U had single-and multi-core scores of 1,421 points and 6,450 points, respectively. As a side (but important) note, the octa-core chip was paired with DDR4-2666, so the memory speed probably held the processor back a little. Like its predecessor, Zen 3 natively supports DDR4-3200 memory.
The Ryzen 7 4800U has an average single-score of 1,031 points and a multi-core score of 5,845 points in Geekbench 5. If the data is accurate, the Ryzen 7 5800U was up to 37.8% faster than the Ryzen 7 4800U in single-core performance. In terms of multi-core performance, the Ryzen 7 5800U outperformed the Ryzen 7 4800U by 10.4%. Again, this is Geekbench 5, so it’s not the most precise benchmark for comparing processors, but for the moment, it’s what’s available.
AMD effectively delivered on its promise of an IPC improvement up to 19% with Zen 3 on the company’s Ryzen 5000 (Vermeer) desktop processors. The preliminary Geekbench 5 results look promising, and Zen 3 could well be an absolute gamechanger.
Asus’s new beta BIOS updates for B450 and X470 motherboards with AGESA code 1.1.8.0 have arrived, which enables full performance and support of AMD’s latest Ryzen 5000 series processor on the older chipsets, as well as the new Precision Boost Overdrive 2 functionality, which includes the Curve Optimizer.
The BIOS update applies to Asus’ entire B450 lineup and X470 lineup, which means if you have any Asus 400-series chipset board, you can grab the new beta BIOS now. But please only apply this BIOS if you have a Ryzen 5000-series CPU, as it is designed specifically for Zen 3 and should not benefit an older CPU like a Zen 2 or Zen+ processor. Plus, you cannot downgrade to an older BIOS like you could in the past, so it’s a one-way trip. If you install this BIOS and it doesn’t work with an older processor, you’ll have to purchase a new motherboard.
With the AGESA 1.1.8.0 update, you should gain access to AMD’s new Curve Optimizer, a new undervolting utility that can improve efficiency vai undervolting. Plus, there’s a chance you might have access to AMD’s Smart Access Memory technology, though we aren’t sure if it’s enabled on Asus’s beta BIOS.
It’s great to see this BIOS update in time for the holidays; if you have one of these Asus motherboards and were looking to purchase a Ryzen 5000 CPU, now is probably a good time to do so, provided you can find one at retail amidst the ongoing shortages.
Yesterday we informed about upcoming notebooks with the new generation of NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards 3060, RTX 3070 and RTX 3080. Thanks to NVIDIA’s documentation, we’ve been confirmed that this time top graphics can be combined not only with Intel processors but also with AMD. Until now, AMD Ryzen units 4000 have been paired at most with the GeForce RTX card 2060. We are also approaching the debut of the next generation APU from AMD. In January, two APU series will be presented as part of the Ryzen line 5000. The first is Lucienne which is actually a slightly powdered version of Renoir with Zen 2 cores. The second is Cezanne and this one is much more interesting for us due to the use of new Zen 3 cores. The first AMD Ryzen 7 APU test appeared in the GeekBench database 5800 U, which belongs precisely to the Cezanne-U family. How does the new APU fall out?
The AMD Ryzen 7 APU processor 5800 appeared in the GeekBench database. . It is a unit based on Zen 3 cores and belonging to the Cezanne series.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 Mobile – new information about cards
AMD Ryzen 7 5800 U will be the most efficient Cezanne-U APU, prepared for 2021 year. It is equipped with 8 cores and 16 threads. According to GeekBench, the base clock is 1.9 GHz. According to earlier reports, the clock was to reach 2 GHz. We do not know if the manufacturer changed the specification or the program misread the data. However, the clock speed in the Boost mode is correct, reaching 4.4 GHz. The new APU will also receive twice as much L3 cache memory – instead of 8 MB we will get 16 MB . How did the new APU do in the GeekBench test?
In the test single-threaded Ryzen 7 5800 U got 1421 points, which is a result of approx. 20% better compared to Ryzen 7 5700AT. Recall that Ryzen 7 5700 U also has 8 cores and 16 of threads, but the APU itself belongs to the Lucienne-U series, i.e. systems using Zen 2 cores. Comparing both units directly, we can see a solid increase in single-threaded performance. In the multithreaded test, Ryzen 7 5800 U scored 6450 points, which is the result of only a few percent better than Ryzen 7 5700 U. The premiere of APU AMD Cezanne and Lucienne will take place in January during the CES 2021.
In mid-January, NVIDIA will officially unveil GeForce RTX mobile graphics cards 3000 for laptops. This will be the first time in over 4 years that a manufacturer will release a mobile GPU in a lower technological process – Pascal used 16 nm TSMC lithography, while Turing it was 12 nm, i.e. de facto powdered 16 nm. Along with the new graphics cards, the Intel Tiger Lake-H processors will also be presented (10 nm SuperFin) and AMD APU Cezanne (7 nm, Zen 3). Such a large accumulation of premieres at one time will primarily cause a large flood of completely new notebooks for players and for work. NVIDIA materials have entered the network, discussing individual configurations of graphics cards with selected processors. This clearly confirms that the top GeForce RTX cards 3070 and RTX 3080 will be combined not only with Intel systems, but also AMD.
New information about NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards has got to the network 3060, GeForce RTX 3070 and GeForce RTX 3080 for laptop versions.
ASUS TUF Gaming A 17 with AMD Ryzen 7 5800 H and RTX 3070 Max-Q
The graphics disclosed by WCCFTech show that laptops with top cards will be available for sale in January NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and GeForce RTX 3080. Thus, a more powerful RTX based on the Ampere GA core 102 will also come to notebooks. There will be one change for sure – instead of GDDR6X memory with higher bandwidth, slightly slower GDDR6 modules with unknown clock speed will be used. In the case of RTX 3070, these will be GDDR6 14000 MHz. In the case of the top RTX 3080, NVIDIA can use either the same modules or faster ones with an effective clock 16000 MHz .
The graphics also show that the debut of the mobile version of GeForce RTX 3060 will occur at a later date, but still in the first quarter 2021 of the year, i.e. in March at the latest. Laptops with GeForce RTX cards 2000 will be retired, but models with GeForce GTX cards will remain 1650, GTX 1650 Ti and GTX 1660 Ti. If the above chart is genuine, there will be no plans for further increases in laptop prices. These should remain close to the current GeForce RTX devices 2000. Another important piece of information is the GeForce RTX 3060, RTX 3070 and RTX cards 3080 can be combined with both Intel and AMD processors. For GeForce RTX 3060 Intel Core i5 / AMD Ryzen 5 are recommended, while for two top graphics – Intel Core i7 and AMD Ryzen 7.
Recently, AMD Ryzen processors 5000 have made their debut, which turned out to be another successful unit in the manufacturer’s portfolio. The new Ryzens are doing very well not only in programs, but also in games, they will be a successful competition to Intel Comet Lake chips. Thanks to many improvements in construction, the company managed to noticeably increase the efficiency of a single core. Despite its debut, AMD continues to work on improving individual elements of the processors, so that in the long run they are as attractive as possible for current and future users. Work on the new version of the voltage change tool for Ryzen processors 5000 has been confirmed. I’m talking about AMD Precision Boost Overdrive 2.
AMD announced an improved voltage manipulation tool in Ryzen processors 5000. I’m talking about AMD Precision Boost Overdrive 2.
Multiple users Instead of overclocking Ryzen processors, he prefers to undervolute them through effective voltage control. The manufacturer confirmed that soon a tool for manipulating the voltages of new Ryzen processors 5000, based on the Zen 3 architecture, will be available. with AGESA firmware update 1180 for motherboards with chipsets 400 and 500.
AMD Precision Boost Overdrive 2 will allow users to track and adjust voltage for Ryzen processors 5000. It will be able to automatically lower the voltage where possible – this applies to both heavy loads and everyday use, where the processor usually works with a much lower voltage. Rather than relying on a constant offset across the entire range, the optimizer will read data from internal sensors, i.e. temperatures or socket limits, to adjust the voltage if necessary. According to AMD’s declaration, such voltage control should take place every millisecond. The Precision Boost Overdrive 2 will therefore perform a bit differently than typical undervolting, as instead of constantly changing voltages, it will be lowered and adjusted depending on the scenario.
If you live in Ohio, Maryland, or Texas, you might be able to buy the Ryzen 5900X right now, with other Zen 3 processors being even easier to find. There is a catch, though: you’ll have to go outside. While online stock on Zen 3 CPUs is still as hard to find as ever, some Micro Center stores are reporting that they have Ryzen 5000 units ready for in-store pickup. Obviously, this is limited to certain locations and requires adventuring into the wasteland, but it’s a good reminder not to give up on finding the latest tech quite yet.
Right now, Microcenter’s AMD Ryzen 9 5900X online store listing is showing three locations with stock on the units. These are the Columbus, Houston, and Rockville stores. The processors are selling new at their usual $549 price, and they are not available for reservation. So start your engines: it’s first come, first serve.
However, you can check how many units are in stock at your local store before heading out. For instance, the Houston Microcenter has 23 units in stock as of writing, while the Columbus store only has one. You can only buy one unit per household, so this is mostly just to check your competition.
Meanwhile, more than 5 locations had the 5600X in stock, and even more have the 5800X for sale. The 5950X is still not in any of Micro Center’s stores. Sales here also appear to be first-come, first-serve.
This stock obviously won’t be available to everyone, whether it’s due to location or health concerns, but even in the pandemic, Micro Center’s determined to keep it’s brick and mortar business model alive. This makes it a great place to check for rare gear like Zen 3 CPUs if everywhere else is sold out. Assuming you can safely and easily get to a nearby Micro Center location.
This year saw a very intense battle between Intel and AMD in the mobile laptop processor sector. At CES in Las Vegas, AMD unveiled the APU Renoir, which is equipped with up to 8 cores and 16 threads in both the low-voltage U series and the full-voltage H series. While AMD introduced quite a lot of cool laptops on the market of slim laptops, the situation was worse in the case of gaming constructions. If there were already models with AMD Ryzen processors 4000, they were paired at most with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX card 2060. We could not count on any more efficient construction. This will change next year, because we have received confirmation that next year there will be laptops with AMD Cezanne APUs and NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards 3070 and above .
Information about ASUS TUF Gaming A laptops has appeared on the network 15 and A 17 with AMD Ryzen 7 processors 5800 H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070.
ASUS TUF Gaming A Test 15 with AMD Ryzen 7 processor 4800 H
People disappointed with this year’s laptops with AMD processors and GeForce RTX graphics cards 2000, they should look forward to next year’s proposals for the next-generation Ampere chips. One of the foreign stores revealed the specification of the ASUS TUF Gaming A laptop 17 (FA 706 QR-HX 004) which will come with 8-core and 16 – AMD Ryzen 7 threaded processor 5800 H, NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics card 3070 Max-Q and 17, 3 “IPS screen with Full HD resolution and 144 Hz refresh rate. In this case, however, the matrix announces better compared to 15 – inch variants. The APU itself belongs to AMD Cezanne-H family and uses the new Zen 3 cores. For cards, in addition to GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q, we also expect RTX 3060 and RTX 3080 Max-Q (here the information was confirmed by our source ).
Like the producer ent intends to thoroughly refresh the TUF Gaming line, the ROG Zephyrus models will also be updated. In another foreign store, the ROG Zephyrus GA model 502 with the AMD Ryzen 7 APU processor 5800 H and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. Here it looks like a slight refreshment of this year’s version (although this particular laptop is to appear with an IPS matrix 240 Hz) , but there will also be more powerful designs based on GeForce RTX cards 3000. The official presentation of the AMD Cezanne APU and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 Mobile will take place in January during the CES .
AMD is preparing to introduce Precision Boost Overdrive 2 (PBO2), automatic overclocking functionality dedicated to Ryzen processors 5000. This technology, compared to the previous generation, is now able to return higher single-thread performance and gains undervolting.
by Manolo De Agostini published 24 November 2020 , at 08: 18 in the Processors channel AMD RyZen Zen
AMD not only does not leave, but doubles . After having favorably surprised us that the Ryzen series CPUs 5000 presented so far ( Ryzen 9 5950 X, 5900 X, Ryzen 7 5800 X and Ryzen 5 5600 X), the company is ready to relaunch with Precision Boost Overdrive 2 , second generation of the overclocking functionality of Ryzen CPUs that will arrive thanks to new BIOS in distribution in December based on the A GESA 1.1.8.0 on motherboards with series chipset 500 is 400 – some models, such as MSI X 570 Godlike and Gigabyte X 570 Aorus Master, already offer firmware with this functionality.
Prev ision Boost Overdrive 2 (PBO2): what it is and what it does
Precision Boost Overdrive 2 is, as the name implies, an evolution of Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) , an automatic overclocking feature that the company introduced with Ryzen processors Second generation threadripper and later also offered on Ryzen 600. The first generation of the technology was meant to increase performance with multi-threaded loads , increasing the power supply to the socket and VRM, substantially going to “overwrite” the maximum boost frequency to bring it to a new level.
PBO was therefore not effective on single-thread loads , which is the subject of great attention with CPUs Ryzen 5000 Zen 3 as we have seen in our reviews. Precision Boost Overdrive 2 (PBO2) corrects this behavior, and not only that, because it also introduces undervolt , that is the operation of the CPU with a voltage lower than the standard one.
PBO2 therefore increases the single-thread performance, keeping at the same time the guaranteed improvements in multi-thread and indeed, guaranteeing even more performance in such a scenario. PBO2 is an algorithm that only works on Ryzen CPUs 5000 , extracting even more power from the already excellent single-thread capabilities of these CPUs. For example, as shown in the following graphs, with PBO2 a Ryzen 7 5800 X comes to deliver higher single-thread performance than a Ryzen 9 5900 X in traditional operation.
It is however important to know that like manual overclocking, the performance improvements are variable , because each chip has a different “silicon” quality. Indeed, everything is based on a new automatic technology called “ Curve Optimizer ” which opportunistically adjusts the voltage based on the operating conditions , operating an undervolt based on the capacity of the single chip and the temperature (linked , obviously, to the cooling system).
As we have seen over the years, there are scenarios and situations in which the reduction of operating voltage compared to the standard allows the CPU to work without problems, and indeed due to the lower temperatures of guarantee greater performance, as it is capable of operating at a higher frequency. And this is exactly what Precision Boost Overdrive 2 and more specifically Curve Optimizer does.
Compared to the previous generation that intervened on individual milliwatts, the renewed mechanism works in blocks (AMD calls them count) of approximately 3mV-5mW each. This interval, according to the company, leads to have a lower undervolt when the load is higher, and a higher voltage reduction when the load is lower.
Users have control over the “number of blocks”, with the possibility of set up to 30, therefore an undervolt interval of 90 – 150 mV . Furthermore, Curve Optimizer can be used on both a single core and all cores of the CCX . “The algorithm is adaptive, it knows when to remove voltage and when not to”, explained AMD, reminding us that all the variables involved are monitored once every millisecond thanks to the sensors that communicate via Infinity Fabric Fast Interconnect.
PBO2 with Curve Optimizer will also arrive in Ryzen Master early next year , but there is one though: activate it invalidates the warranty , but the same can be said for overclocking in general and for the previous generation PBO. However, it must be considered that since it is an automatic function, it is difficult to set voltages or other parameters that are dangerous for the life of the CPU.
The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800 have arrived, joining the ranks of the best graphics cards and making some headway into the top positions in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. Nvidia has had a virtual stranglehold on the GPU market for cards priced $500 or more, going back to at least the GTX 700-series in 2013. That’s left AMD to mostly compete in the high-end, mid-range, and budget GPU markets. “No longer!” says Team Red.
Big Navi, aka Navi 21, aka RDNA2, has arrived, bringing some impressive performance gains. AMD also finally joins the ray tracing fray, both with its PC desktop graphics cards and the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles. How do AMD’s latest GPUs stack up to the competition, and could this be AMD’s GPU equivalent of the Ryzen debut of 2017? That’s what we’re here to find out.
We’ve previously discussed many aspects of today’s launch, including details of the RDNA2 architecture, the GPU specifications, features, and more. Now, it’s time to take all the theoretical aspects and lay some rubber on the track. If you want to know more about the finer details of RDNA2, we’ll cover that as well. If you’re just here for the benchmarks, skip down a few screens because, hell yeah, do we have some benchmarks. We’ve got our standard testbed using an ‘ancient’ Core i9-9900K CPU, but we wanted something a bit more for the fastest graphics cards on the planet. We’ve added more benchmarks on both Core i9-10900K and Ryzen 9 5900X. With the arrival of Zen 3, running AMD GPUs with AMD CPUs finally means no compromises.
Update: We’ve added additional results to the CPU scaling charts. This review was originally published on November 18, 2020, but we’ll continue to update related details as needed.
AMD Radeon RX 6800 Series: Specifications and Architecture
Let’s start with a quick look at the specifications, which have been mostly known for at least a month. We’ve also included the previous generation RX 5700 XT as a reference point.
Graphics Card
RX 6800 XT
RX 6800
RX 5700 XT
GPU
Navi 21 (XT)
Navi 21 (XL)
Navi 10 (XT)
Process (nm)
7
7
7
Transistors (billion)
26.8
26.8
10.3
Die size (mm^2)
519
519
251
CUs
72
60
40
GPU cores
4608
3840
2560
Ray Accelerators
72
60
N/A
Game Clock (MHz)
2015
1815
1755
Boost Clock (MHz)
2250
2105
1905
VRAM Speed (MT/s)
16000
16000
14000
VRAM (GB)
16
16
8
Bus width
256
256
256
Infinity Cache (MB)
128
128
N/A
ROPs
128
96
64
TMUs
288
240
160
TFLOPS (boost)
20.7
16.2
9.7
Bandwidth (GB/s)
512
512
448
TBP (watts)
300
250
225
Launch Date
Nov. 2020
Nov. 2020
Jul-19
Launch Price
$649
$579
$399
When AMD fans started talking about “Big Navi” as far back as last year, this is pretty much what they hoped to see. AMD has just about doubled down on every important aspect of its architecture, plus adding in a huge amount of L3 cache and Ray Accelerators to handle ray tracing ray/triangle intersection calculations. Clock speeds are also higher, and — spoiler alert! — the 6800 series cards actually exceed the Game Clock and can even go past the Boost Clock in some cases. Memory capacity has doubled, ROPs have doubled, TFLOPS has more than doubled, and the die size is also more than double.
Support for ray tracing is probably the most visible new feature, but RDNA2 also supports Variable Rate Shading (VRS), mesh shaders, and everything else that’s part of the DirectX 12 Ultimate spec. There are other tweaks to the architecture, like support for 8K AV1 decode and 8K HEVC encode. But a lot of the underlying changes don’t show up as an easily digestible number.
For example, AMD says it reworked much of the architecture to focus on a high speed design. That’s where the greater than 2GHz clocks come from, but those aren’t just fantasy numbers. Playing around with overclocking a bit — and the software to do this is still missing, so we had to stick with AMD’s built-in overclocking tools — we actually hit clocks of over 2.5GHz. Yeah. I saw the supposed leaks before the launch claiming 2.4GHz and 2.5GHz and thought, “There’s no way.” I was wrong.
AMD’s cache hierarchy is arguably one of the biggest changes. Besides a shared 1MB L1 cache for each cluster of 20 dual-CUs, there’s a 4MB L2 cache and a whopping 128MB L3 cache that AMD calls the Infinity Cache. It also ties into the Infinity Fabric, but fundamentally, it helps optimize memory access latency and improve the effective bandwidth. Thanks to the 128MB cache, the framebuffer mostly ends up being cached, which drastically cuts down memory access. AMD says the effective bandwidth of the GDDR6 memory ends up being 119 percent higher than what the raw bandwidth would suggest.
The large cache also helps to reduce power consumption, which all ties into AMD’s targeted 50 percent performance per Watt improvements. This doesn’t mean power requirements stayed the same — RX 6800 has a slightly higher TBP (Total Board Power) than the RX 5700 XT, and the 6800 XT and upcoming 6900 XT are back at 300W (like the Vega 64). However, AMD still comes in at a lower power level than Nvidia’s competing GPUs, which is a bit of a change of pace from previous generation architectures.
It’s not entirely clear how AMD’s Ray Accelerators stack up against Nvidia’s RT cores. Much like Nvidia, AMD is putting one Ray Accelerator into each CU. (It seems we’re missing an acronym. Should we call the ray accelerators RA? The sun god, casting down rays! Sorry, been up all night, getting a bit loopy here…) The thing is, Nvidia is on its second-gen RT cores that are supposed to be around 1.7X as fast as its first-gen RT cores. AMD’s Ray Accelerators are supposedly 10 times as fast as doing the RT calculations via shader hardware, which is similar to what Nvidia said with its Turing RT cores. In practice, it looks as though Nvidia will maintain a lead in ray tracing performance.
That doesn’t even get into the whole DLSS and Tensor core discussion. AMD’s RDNA2 chips can do FP16 via shaders, but they’re still a far cry from the computational throughput of Tensor cores. That may or may not matter, as perhaps the FP16 throughput is enough for real-time inference to do something akin to DLSS. AMD has talked about FidelityFX Super Resolution, which it’s working on with Microsoft, but it’s not available yet, and of course, no games are shipping with it yet either. Meanwhile, DLSS is in a couple of dozen games now, and it’s also in Unreal Engine, which means uptake of DLSS could explode over the coming year.
Anyway, that’s enough of the architectural talk for now. Let’s meet the actual cards.
Meet the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 Reference Cards
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We’ve already posted an unboxing of the RX 6800 cards, which you can see in the above video. The design is pretty traditional, building on previous cards like the Radeon VII. There’s no blower this round, which is probably for the best if you’re worried about noise levels. Otherwise, you get a similar industrial design and aesthetic with both the reference 6800 and 6800 XT. The only real change is that the 6800 XT has a fatter heatsink and weighs 115g more, which helps it cope with the higher TBP.
Both cards are triple fan designs, using custom 77mm fans that have an integrated rim. We saw the same style of fan on many of the RTX 30-series GPUs, and it looks like the engineers have discovered a better way to direct airflow. Both cards have a Radeon logo that lights up in red, but it looks like the 6800 XT might have an RGB logo — it’s not exposed in software yet, but maybe that will come.
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Otherwise, you get dual 8-pin PEG power connections, which might seem a bit overkill on the 6800 — it’s a 250W card, after all, why should it need the potential for up to 375W of power? But we’ll get into the power stuff later. If you’re into collecting hardware boxes, the 6800 XT box is also larger and a bit nicer, but there’s no real benefit otherwise.
The one potential concern with AMD’s reference design is the video ports. There are two DisplayPort outputs, a single HDMI 2.1 connector, and a USB Type-C port. It’s possible to use four displays with the cards, but the most popular gaming displays still use DisplayPort, and very few options exist for the Type-C connector. There also aren’t any HDMI 2.1 monitors that I’m aware of, unless you want to use a TV for your monitor. But those will eventually come. Anyway, if you want a different port selection, keep an eye on the third party cards, as I’m sure they’ll cover other configurations.
And now, on to the benchmarks.
Radeon RX 6800 Series Test Systems
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It seems AMD is having a microprocessor renaissance of sorts right now. First, it has Zen 3 coming out and basically demolishing Intel in every meaningful way in the CPU realm. Sure, Intel can compete on a per-core basis … but only up to 10-core chips without moving into HEDT territory. The new RX 6800 cards might just be the equivalent of AMD’s Ryzen CPU launch. This time, AMD isn’t making any apologies. It intends to go up against Nvidia’s best. And of course, if we’re going to test the best GPUs, maybe we ought to look at the best CPUs as well?
For this launch, we have three test systems. First is our old and reliable Core i9-9900K setup, which we still use as the baseline and for power testing. We’re adding both AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and Intel Core i9-10900K builds to flesh things out. In retrospect, trying to do two new testbeds may have been a bit too ambitious, as we have to test each GPU on each testbed. We had to cut a bunch of previous-gen cards from our testing, and the hardware varies a bit among the PCs.
For the AMD build, we’ve got an MSI X570 Godlike motherboard, which is one of only a handful that supports AMD’s new Smart Memory Access technology. Patriot supplied us with two kits of single bank DDR4-4000 memory, which means we have 4x8GB instead of our normal 2x16GB configuration. We also have the Patriot Viper VP4100 2TB SSD holding all of our games. Remember when 1TB used to feel like a huge amount of SSD storage? And then Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) happened, sucking down over 200GB. Which is why we need 2TB drives.
Meanwhile, the Intel LGA1200 PC has an Asus Maximum XII Extreme motherboard, 2x16GB DDR4-3600 HyperX memory, and a 2TB XPG SX8200 Pro SSD. (I’m not sure if it’s the old ‘fast’ version or the revised ‘slow’ variant, but it shouldn’t matter for these GPU tests.) Full specs are in the table below.
Anyway, the slightly slower RAM might be a bit of a handicap on the Intel PCs, but this isn’t a CPU review — we just wanted to use the two fastest CPUs, and time constraints and lack of duplicate hardware prevented us from going full apples-to-apples. The internal comparisons among GPUs on each testbed will still be consistent. Frankly, there’s not a huge difference between the CPUs when it comes to gaming performance, especially at 1440p and 4K.
Besides the testbeds, I’ve also got a bunch of additional gaming tests. First is the suite of nine games we’ve used on recent GPU reviews like the RTX 30-series launch. We’ve done some ‘bonus’ tests on each of the Founders Edition reviews, but we’re shifting gears this round. We’re adding four new/recent games that will be tested on each of the CPU testbeds: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Dirt 5, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Watch Dogs Legion — and we’ve enabled DirectX Raytracing (DXR) on Dirt 5 and Watch Dogs Legion.
There are some definite caveats, however. First, the beta DXR support in Dirt 5 doesn’t look all that different from the regular mode, and it’s an AMD promoted game. Coincidence? Maybe, but it’s probably more likely that AMD is working with Codemasters to ensure it runs suitably on the RX 6800 cards. The other problem is probably just a bug, but AMD’s RX 6800 cards seem to render the reflections in Watch Dogs Legion with a bit less fidelity.
Besides the above, we have a third suite of ray tracing tests: nine games (or benchmarks of future games) and 3DMark Port Royal. Of note, Wolfenstein Youngblood with ray tracing (which uses Nvidia’s pre-VulkanRT extensions) wouldn’t work on the AMD cards, and neither would the Bright Memory Infinite benchmark. Also, Crysis Remastered had some rendering errors with ray tracing enabled (on the nanosuits). Again, that’s a known bug.
Radeon RX 6800 Gaming Performance
We’ve retested all of the RTX 30-series cards on our Core i9-9900K testbed … but we didn’t have time to retest the RTX 20-series or RX 5700 series GPUs. The system has been updated with the latest 457.30 Nvidia drivers and AMD’s pre-launch RX 6800 drivers, as well as Windows 10 20H2 (the October 2020 update to Windows). It looks like the combination of drivers and/or Windows updates may have dropped performance by about 1-2 percent overall, though there are other variables in play. Anyway, the older GPUs are included mostly as a point of reference.
We have 1080p, 1440p, and 4K ultra results for each of the games, as well as the combined average of the nine titles. We’re going to dispense with the commentary for individual games right now (because of a time crunch), but we’ll discuss the overall trends below.
9 Game Average
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Borderlands 3
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The Division 2
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Far Cry 5
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Final Fantasy XIV
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Forza Horizon 4
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Metro Exodus
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Red Dead Redemption 2
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Shadow Of The TombRaider
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Strange Brigade
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AMD’s new GPUs definitely make a good showing in traditional rasterization games. At 4K, Nvidia’s 3080 leads the 6800 XT by three percent, but it’s not a clean sweep — AMD comes out on top in Borderlands 3, Far Cry 5, and Forza Horizon 4. Meanwhile, Nvidia gets modest wins in The Division 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Metro Exodus, Red Dead Redemption 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and the largest lead is in Strange Brigade. But that’s only at the highest resolution, where AMD’s Infinity Cache may not be quite as effective.
Dropping to 1440p, the RTX 3080 and 6800 XT are effectively tied — again, AMD wins several games, Nvidia wins others, but the average performance is the same. At 1080p, AMD even pulls ahead by two percent overall. Not that we really expect most gamers forking over $650 or $700 or more on a graphics card to stick with a 1080p display, unless it’s a 240Hz or 360Hz model.
Flipping over to the vanilla RX 6800 and the RTX 3070, AMD does even better. On average, the RX 6800 leads by 11 percent at 4K ultra, nine percent at 1440p ultra, and seven percent at 1080p ultra. Here the 8GB of GDDR6 memory on the RTX 3070 simply can’t keep pace with the 16GB of higher clocked memory — and the Infinity Cache — that AMD brings to the party. The best Nvidia can do is one or two minor wins (e.g., Far Cry 5 at 1080p, where the GPUs are more CPU limited) and slightly higher minimum fps in FFXIV and Strange Brigade.
But as good as the RX 6800 looks against the RTX 3070, we prefer the RX 6800 XT from AMD. It only costs $70 more, which is basically the cost of one game and a fast food lunch. Or put another way, it’s 12 percent more money, for 12 percent more performance at 1080p, 14 percent more performance at 1440p, and 16 percent better 4K performance. You also get AMD’s Rage Mode pseudo-overclocking (really just increased power limits).
Radeon RX 6800 CPU Scaling and Overclocking
Our traditional gaming suite is due for retirement, but we didn’t want to toss it out at the same time as a major GPU launch — it might look suspicious. We didn’t have time to do a full suite of CPU scaling tests, but we did run 13 games on the five most recent high-end/extreme GPUs on our three test PCs. Here’s the next series of charts, again with commentary below.
13-Game Average
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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
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Borderlands 3
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The Division 2
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Dirt 5
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Far Cry 5
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Final Fantasy XIV
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Forza Horizon 4
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Horizon Zero Dawn
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Metro Exodus
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Red Dead Redemption 2
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Shadow of the Tomb Raider
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Strange Brigade
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Watch Dogs Legion
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These charts are a bit busy, perhaps, with five GPUs and three CPUs each, plus overclocking. Take your time. We won’t judge. Nine of the games are from the existing suite, and the trends noted earlier basically continue.
Looking just at the four new games, AMD gets a big win in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (it’s an AMD promotional title, so future updates may change the standings). Dirt 5 is also a bit of an odd duck for Nvidia, with the RTX 3090 actually doing quite badly on the Ryzen 9 5900X and Core i9-10900K for some reason. Horizon Zero Dawn ends up favoring Nvidia quite a bit (but not the 3070), and lastly, we have Watch Dogs Legion, which favors Nvidia a bit (more at 4K), but it might have some bugs that are currently helping AMD’s performance.
Overall, the 3090 still maintains its (gold-plated) crown, which you’d sort of expect from a $1,500 graphics card that you can’t even buy right now. Meanwhile, the RX 6800 XT mixes it up with the RTX 3080, coming out slightly ahead overall at 1080p and 1440p but barely trailing at 4K. Meanwhile, the RX 6800 easily outperforms the RTX 3070 across the suite, though a few games and/or lower resolutions do go the other way.
Oddly, my test systems ended up with the Core i9-10900K and even the Core i9-9900K often leading the Ryzen 9 5900X. The 3090 did best with the 5900X at 1080p, but then went to the 10900K at 1440p and both the 9900K and 10900K at 4K. The other GPUs also swap places, though usually the difference between CPU is pretty negligible (and a few results just look a bit buggy).
It may be that the beta BIOS for the MSI X570 board (which enables Smart Memory Access) still needs more tuning, or that the differences in memory came into play. I didn’t have time to check performance without enabling the large PCIe BAR feature either. But these are mostly very small differences, and any of the three CPUs tested here are sufficient for gaming.
As for overclocking, it’s pretty much what you’d expect. Increase the power limit, GPU core clocks, and GDDR6 clocks and you get more performance. It’s not a huge improvement, though. Overall, the RX 6800 XT was 4-6 percent faster when overclocked (the higher results were at 4K). The RX 6800 did slightly better, improving by 6 percent at 1080p and 1440p, and 8 percent at 4K. GPU clocks were also above 2.5GHz for most of the testing of the RX 6800, and it’s default lower boost clock gave it a bit more room for improvement.
Radeon RX 6800 Series Ray Tracing Performance
So far, most of the games haven’t had ray tracing enabled. But that’s the big new feature for RDNA2 and the Radeon RX 6000 series, so we definitely wanted to look into ray tracing performance more. Here’s where things take a turn for the worse because ray tracing is very demanding, and Nvidia has DLSS to help overcome some of the difficulty by doing AI-enhanced upscaling. AMD can’t do DLSS since it’s Nvidia proprietary tech, which means to do apples-to-apples comparisons, we have to turn off DLSS on the Nvidia cards.
That’s not really fair because DLSS 2.0 and later actually look quite nice, particularly when using the Balanced or Quality modes. What’s more, native 4K gaming with ray tracing enabled is going to be a stretch for just about any current GPU, including the RTX 3090 — unless you’re playing a lighter game like Pumpkin Jack. Anyway, we’ve looked at ray tracing performance with DLSS in a bunch of these games, and performance improves by anywhere from 20 percent to as much as 80 percent (or more) in some cases. DLSS may not always look better, but a slight drop in visual fidelity for a big boost in framerates is usually hard to pass up.
We’ll have to see if AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution can match DLSS in the future, and how many developers make use of it. Considering AMD’s RDNA2 GPUs are also in the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X, we wouldn’t count AMD out, but for now, Nvidia has the technology lead. Which brings us to native ray tracing performance.
10-game DXR Average
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3DMark Port Royal
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Boundary Benchmark
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Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War
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Control
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Crysis Remastered
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Dirt 5
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Fortnite
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Metro Exodus
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Shadow of the Tomb Raider
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WatchDogs
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Well. So much for AMD’s comparable performance. AMD’s RX 6800 series can definitely hold its own against Nvidia’s RTX 30-series GPUs in traditional rasterization modes. Turn on ray tracing, even without DLSS, and things can get ugly. AMD’s RX 6800 XT does tend to come out ahead of the RTX 3070, but then it should — it costs more, and it has twice the VRAM. But again, DLSS (which is supported in seven of the ten games/tests we used) would turn the tables, and even the DLSS quality mode usually improves performance by 20-40 percent (provided the game isn’t bottlenecked elsewhere).
Ignoring the often-too-low framerates, overall, the RTX 3080 is nearly 25 percent faster than the RX 6800 XT at 1080p, and that lead only grows at 1440p (26 percent) and 4K (30 percent). The RTX 3090 is another 10-15 percent ahead of the 3080, which is very much out of AMD’s reach if you care at all about ray tracing performance — ignoring price, of course.
The RTX 3070 comes out with a 10-15 percent lead over the RX 6800, but individual games can behave quite differently. Take the new Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. It supports multiple ray tracing effects, and even the RTX 3070 holds a significant 30 percent lead over the 6800 XT at 1080p and 1440p. Boundary, Control, Crysis Remastered, and (to a lesser extent) Fortnite also have the 3070 leading the AMD cards. But Dirt 5, Metro Exodus, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Watch Dogs Legion have the 3070 falling behind the 6800 XT at least, and sometimes the RX 6800 as well.
There is a real question about whether the GPUs are doing the same work, though. We haven’t had time to really dig into the image quality, but Watch Dogs Legion for sure doesn’t look the same on AMD compared to Nvidia with ray tracing enabled. Check out these comparisons:
Apparently Ubisoft knows about the problem. In a statement to us, it said, “We are aware of the issue and are working to address it in a patch in December.” But right now, there’s a good chance that AMD’s performance in Watch Dogs Legion at least is higher than it should be with ray tracing enabled.
Overall, AMD’s ray tracing performance looks more like Nvidia’s RTX 20-series GPUs than the new Ampere GPUs, which was sort of what we expected. This is first gen ray tracing for AMD, after all, while Nvidia is on round two. Frankly, looking at games like Fortnite, where ray traced shadows, reflections, global illumination, and ambient occlusion are available, we probably need fourth gen ray tracing hardware before we’ll be hitting playable framerates with all the bells and whistles. And we’ll likely still need DLSS, or AMD’s Super Resolution, to hit acceptable frame rates at 4K.
Radeon RX 6800 Series: Power, Temps, Clocks, and Fans
We’ve got our usual collection of power, temperature, clock speed, and fan speed testing using Metro Exodus running at 1440p, and FurMark running at 1600×900 in stress test mode. While Metro is generally indicative of how other games behave, we loop the benchmark five times, and there are dips where the test restarts and the GPU gets to rest for a few seconds. FurMark, on the other hand, is basically a worst-case scenario for power and thermals. We collect the power data using Powenetics software and hardware, which uses GPU-Z to monitor GPU temperatures, clocks, and fan speeds.
GPU Total Power
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AMD basically sticks to the advertised 300W TBP on the 6800 XT with Metro Exodus, and even comes in slightly below the 250W TBP on the RX 6800. Enabling Rage Mode on the 6800 XT obviously changes things, and you can also see our power figures for the manual overclocks. Basically, Big Navi can match RTX 3080 when it comes to power if you relax increase the power limits.
FurMark pushes power on both cards a bit higher, which is pretty typical. If you check the line graphs, you can see our 6800 XT OC starts off at nearly 360W in FurMark before it throttles down a bit and ends up at closer to 350W. There are some transient power spikes that can go a bit higher as well, which we’ll discuss more later.
GPU Core Clocks
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Looking at the GPU clocks, AMD is pushing some serious MHz for a change. This is now easily the highest clocked GPU we’ve ever seen, and when we manually overclocked the RX 6800, we were able to hit a relatively stable 2550 MHz. That’s pretty damn impressive, especially considering power use isn’t higher than Nvidia’s GPUs. Both cards also clear their respective Game Clocks and Boost Clocks, which is a nice change of pace.
GPU Core Temp
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GPU Fan Speed
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Temperatures and fan speeds are directly related to each other. Ramp of fan speed — which we did for the overclocked 6800 cards — and you can get lower temperatures, at the cost of noise levels. We’re still investigating overclocking as well, as there’s a bit of odd behavior so far. The cards will run fine for a while, and then suddenly drop into a weak performance mode where performance might be half the normal level, or even worse. That’s probably due to the lack of overclocking support in MSI Afterburner for the time being. By default, though, the cards have a good balance of cooling with noise. We’ll get exact SPL readings later (still benchmarking a few other bits), but it’s interesting that all of the new GPUs (RTX 30-series and RX 6000) have lower fan speeds than the previous generation.
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We observed some larger-than-expected transient power spikes with the RX 6800 XT, but to be absolutely clear, these transient power spikes shouldn’t be an issue — particularly if you don’t plan on overclocking. However, it is important to keep these peak power measurements in mind when you spec out your power supply.
Transient power spikes are common but are usually of such short duration (in the millisecond range) that our power measurement gear, which records measurements at roughly a 100ms granularity, can’t catch them. Typically you’d need a quality oscilloscope to measure transient power spikes accurately, but we did record several spikes even with our comparatively relaxed polling.
The charts above show total power consumption of the RX 6800XT at stock settings, overclocked, and with Rage Mode enabled. In terms of transient power spikes, we don’t see any issues at all with Metro Exodus, but we see brief peaks during Furmark of 425W with the manually overclocked config, 373W with Rage Mode, and 366W with the stock setup. Again, these peaks were measured within one 100ms polling cycle, which means they could certainly trip a PSU’s over power protection if you’re running at close to max power delivery.
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To drill down on the topic, we split out our power measurements from each power source, which you’ll see above. The RX 6800 XT draws power from the PCIe slot and two eight-pin PCIe connectors (PEG1/PEG2).
Power consumption over the PCIe slot is well managed during all the tests (as a general rule of thumb, this value shouldn’t exceed 71W, and the 6800 XT is well below that mark). We also didn’t catch any notable transient spikes during our real-world Metro Exodus gaming test at either stock or overclocked settings.
However, during our FurMark test at stock settings, we see a power consumption spike to 206W on one of the PCIe cables for a very brief period (we picked up a single measurement of the spike during each run). After overclocking, we measured a simultaneous spike of 231W on one cable and 206W on the other for a period of one measurement taken at a 100ms polling rate. Naturally, those same spikes are much less pronounced with Rage Mode overclocking, measuring only 210W and 173W. A PCIe cable can easily deliver ~225W safely (even with 18AWG), so these transient power spikes aren’t going to melt connectors, wires, or harm the GPU in any way — they would need to be of much longer duration to have that type of impact.
But the transient spikes are noteworthy because some CPUs, like the Intel Core i9-9900K and i9-10900K, can consume more than 300W, adding to the total system power draw. If you plan on overclocking, it would be best to factor the RX6800 XT’s transient power consumption into the total system power.
Power spikes of 5-10ms can trip the overcurrent protection (OCP) on some multi-rail power supplies because they tend to have relatively low OCP thresholds. As usual, a PSU with a single 12V rail tends to be the best solution because they have much better OCP mechanisms, and you’re also better off using dedicated PCIe cables for each 8-pin connector.
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Radeon RX 6800 Series: Prioritizing Rasterization Over Ray Tracing
It’s been a long time since AMD had a legitimate contender for the GPU throne. The last time AMD was this close … well, maybe Hawaii (Radeon R9 290X) was competitive in performance at least, while using quite a bit more power. That’s sort of been the standard disclaimer for AMD GPUs for quite a few years. Yes, AMD has some fast GPUs, but they tend to use a lot of power. The other alternative was best illustrated by one of the best budget GPUs of the past couple of years: AMD isn’t the fastest, but dang, look how cheap the RX 570 is! With the Radeon RX 6800 series, AMD is mostly able to put questions of power and performance behind it. Mostly.
The RX 6800 XT ends up just a bit slower than the RTX 3080 overall in traditional rendering, but it costs less, and it uses a bit less power (unless you kick on Rage Mode, in which case it’s a tie). There are enough games where AMD comes out ahead that you can make a legitimate case for AMD having the better card. Plus, 16GB of VRAM is definitely helpful in a few of the games we tested — or at least, 8GB isn’t enough in some cases. The RX 6800 does even better against the RTX 3070, generally winning most benchmarks by a decent margin. Of course, it costs more, but if you have to pick between the 6800 and 3070, we’d spend the extra $80.
The problem is, that’s a slippery slope. At that point, we’d also spend an extra $70 to go to the RX 6800 XT … and $50 more for the RTX 3080, with its superior ray tracing and support for DLSS, is easy enough to justify. Now we’re looking at a $700 graphics card instead of a $500 graphics card, but at least it’s a decent jump in performance.
Of course, you can’t buy any of the Nvidia RTX 30-series GPUs right now. Well, you can, if you get lucky. It’s not that Nvidia isn’t producing cards; it’s just not producing enough cards to satisfy the demand. And, let’s be real for a moment: There’s not a chance in hell AMD’s RX 6800 series are going to do any better. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but these cards are going to sell out. You know, just like every other high-end GPU and CPU launched in the past couple of months. (Update: Yup, every RX 6800 series GPU sold out within minutes.)
What’s more, AMD is better off producing more Ryzen 5000 series CPUs than Radeon RX 6000 GPUs. Just look at the chip sizes and other components. A Ryzen 9 5900X has two 80mm square compute die with a 12nm IO die in a relatively compact package, and AMD is currently selling every single one of those CPUs for $550 — or $800 for the 5950X. The Navi 21 GPU, by comparison, is made on the same TSMC N7 wafers, and it uses 519mm square, plus it needs GDDR6 memory, a beefy cooler and fan, and all sorts of other components. And it still only sells for roughly the same price as the 5900X.
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Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t want to buy an RX 6800 card. It’s really going to come down to personal opinions on how important ray tracing will become in the coming years. The consoles now support the technology, but even the Xbox Series X can’t keep up with an RX 6800, never mind an RTX 3080. Plus, while some games like Control make great use of ray tracing effects, in many other games, the ray tracing could be disabled, and most people wouldn’t really miss it. We’re still quite a ways off from anything approaching Hollywood levels of fidelity rendered in real time.
In terms of features, Nvidia still comes out ahead. Faster ray tracing, plus DLSS — and whatever else those Tensor cores might be used for in the future — seems like the safer bet long term. But there are still a lot of games forgoing ray tracing effects, or games where ray tracing doesn’t make a lot of sense considering how it causes frame rates to plummet. Fortnite in creative mode might be fine for ray tracing, but I can’t imagine many competitive players being willing to tank performance just for some eye candy. The same goes for Call of Duty. But then there’s Cyberpunk 2077 looming, which could be the killer game that ray tracing hardware needs.
We asked earlier if Big Navi, aka RDNA2, was AMD’s Ryzen moment for its GPUs. In a lot of ways, it’s exactly that. The first generation Ryzen CPUs brought 8-core CPUs to mainstream platforms, with aggressive prices that Intel had avoided. But the first generation Zen CPUs and motherboards were raw and had some issues, and it wasn’t until Zen 2 that AMD really started winning key matchups, and Zen 3 finally has AMD in the lead. Perhaps it’s better to say that Navi, in general, is AMD trying to repeat what it did on the CPU side of things.
RX 6800 (Navi 21) is literally a bigger, enhanced version of last year’s Navi 10 GPUs. It’s up to twice the CUs, twice the memory, and is at least a big step closer to feature parity with Nvidia now. If you can find a Radeon RX 6800 or RX 6800 XT in stock any time before 2021, it’s definitely worth considering. RX 6800 and Big Navi aren’t priced particularly aggressively, but they do slot in nicely just above and below Nvidia’s competing RTX 3070 and 3080.
The previously unreleased AMD processors Ryzen 7 5700 U and Ryzen 5 5500 U were first spotted on Geekbench. Both processors find their place in the ultra-low-voltage class from AMD and are intended for mobile use, for example in notebooks. The recent leak seems to confirm the rumors that have been circulating since October. The Ryzen 5 5500 U offers 2.1 GHz in the base, about 4, 04 GHz in the boost cycle and 8 MB of L3 cache with 6 cores and 12 threads. The Ryzen 7 5700 U, on the other hand, comes with 1.8 GHz base clock and 4, 34 GHz in boost as well 8 MB L3 cache with 8 cores and 16 threads.
According to rumors, the base of the AMD Ryzen 7 5500 U and 5700 U still form the Zen2 architecture. Both CPUs also have the internal code name Lucienne and, together with the Ryzen 3 5300 U, should be a cheaper alternative to the planned Cezanne models with a Zen 3 base, namely AMD Ryzen 7 5800 U, Ryzen 5 5600 U and Ryzen 3 5400 U, offer. According to the data, the rumor also seems to be confirmed that the new chips are a new edition from Renoir. In the processor information of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700 U there is a reference to the code name Renoir. Furthermore, VideoCardz would like to know that many Luecienne chips seem to be in circulation at the ODMs and are currently being tested there.
A release of the new AMD Ryzen 5000 U series is expected for the CES 2021. An Acer Aspire 5 laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700 U, which should be available from February, briefly appeared on Amazon. The article can now no longer be found.
Also before this unusual Advent season the Hardwareluxx editorial team put their heads together (with a distance, of course) and discussed this year’s Christmas recommendations. That wasn’t always easy, because the last few months have been unusual for us too. A lot of new hardware was shown, but it wasn’t always available. With the Christmas hardware hunt this year you need a bit of luck. Our editorial team has compiled the most interesting processors, the fastest graphics cards, the new storage solutions and much more. Which product is worthwhile under the Christmas tree? We clarify!
Processor recommendations:
For multicore fans: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990 X
AMD started with its Ryzen Threadripper processors in August 2017 the hunt for if possible many CPU cores for the end user and brought this year with the Ryzen Threadripper 3990 X finally its newest flagship. Proud 64 cores and 128 He puts threads on the scales, is one of the most powerful processors ever, but is a real niche product for a very special target group, because for gamers or even just simple everyday work it is simply too oversized with one Price of almost 3. 650 Euro anything but a bargain.
Technically speaking, the fastest Threadripper has a lot to do with the Ryzen Threadripper 3970 X and 3960 X common, the AMD together with the TRX 40 platform about a year ago, but still on 32, or. 24 cores were restricted. It continues to build on the Zen 2 architecture and offers an integrated quad-channel DDR4 memory controller and up to 64 PCIe 4.0 lanes. Despite doubling the cores and caches, AMD is sorting its current Threadripper flagship in the 270 – W-TDP class, with which the clock rates at least slightly in the boost had to be corrected downwards.
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990 X works with at least 2.9 GHz and boosts up to 4.3 GHz. For comparison: At 24 Cores strong Ryzen 3970 X it was up to 4.5 GHz, with the Ryzen 9 5950 X it is even up to 4.9 GHz.
Especially for smaller film studios that work with many special effects in post production, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990 X a real win. But the is also for professionals who feed their workstation daily with complex computing tasks such as video rendering or software compiling – Kerner’s recommendation. Everyone else will find it difficult to actually use the core monster to capacity.
Hardware luxx test: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990 X in the test: With 128 Threads on the multi-threaded Throne
The all-rounder in the high-end: AMD Ryzen 9 5950 X
With a price of about 850 Euro is the AMD Ryzen 9 5900 X, its platform costs Thanks to the AM4 socket, they are also significantly lower than the Threadripper model. This is represented by 16 cores and 32 Threads still have more than enough cores available to be able to offer high power even in a professional environment. The top-of-the-line AM4 model has only been available in stores since the beginning of November and is therefore based on the new Zen 3 architecture, which has been able to catch up, especially in terms of single-core and gaming performance, and thus bring down the last Intel bastion . The Ryzen 3990 – generation offers high gaming performance, a lot Multicore power and a much better price-performance ratio than the competition.
The AMD Ryzen 9 5950 X can reach up to 4.9 GHz in turbo and even beats the smaller Ryzen 9 5900 X with twelve cores. The base clock, however, is 3.4 GHz, the L3 cache is 64 MB, the TDP class to 105 W.
Like its predecessor, AMD’s Ryzen also supports 5000 DDR4 – 3200 in dual-channel operation 20 PCIe Gen4 lanes and is produced in the 7 nm process . Price has to be around 850 Euro for the Ryzen 9 5950 X.
Hardware Luxx-Test: Generational stragglers: AMD Ryzen 9 5950 X and Ryzen 7 5800 X in the test
Cheaper 10 – Core entry: Intel Core i9 – 10850 K
With the Intel Core i9 – 10850 K the core number within our Christmas recommendations is further reduced. For the LGA socket – 972 are currently ten cores and 20 Threads the maximum that our recommendation from the Comet Lake S series has to offer. Compared to the Intel Core i9 – 10850 K as the reigning top model of the platform actually only sinks on paper Tact. The basic clock rate, single core boost, Max Turbo 2.0 and the thermal velocity boost fall over 100 MHz lower, while the TDP specifications continue to 125 W and is thus even above the significantly more powerful Ryzen processors. Even the PL1 and Tau remain identical to the top model.
But not the price: It falls from around 514 Euro on only 419 Euro significantly, with which the Core i9 – 10850 K clearly does offers better price-performance ratio with only marginally lower performance and is therefore perfect for our next Christmas recommendation.
The Intel Core i9 takes its place – 10850 K in LGA – 1200 – Socket with Z 490 – chipset that 16 PCI-Express -Provides lanes for connecting a graphics card and still trusts the 3.0 standard, but already offers 2.5Gbe. The memory controller comes with DDR4 – 2666 rightly. Overall, the Intel Core i9 – 10400 K is a very fast gaming processor that is only marginally is slower than the current top model of the Comet Lake S family. In the price comparison it is currently for 419 Euro available.
Hardwareluxx-Test: cheaper 10 – Core entry: Intel Core i9 – 10850 K in the test
Older representative with eight cores: The Ryzen 7 3700 X
The Ryzen – 5000 – Generation is still quite young and currently consists of only four models. The entry starts at around 270 Euro for the Ryzen 5 5600 X, but with six cores it offers a little less computing units than our next recommendation. Because for about 20 You get more euros with the Ryzen 7 3700 X equals eight cores and 16 Threads, which significantly increases the multicore performance, but a small one for the player There is a disadvantage in terms of single-core and gaming performance, as the previous generation is still based on the Zen 2 architecture. In practice, however, the differences should be limited, especially since the graphics card is the more decisive component when gaming anyway.
AMD’s Ryzen 7 3700 X offers eight cores with clock speeds of 3.6 up to 4.4 GHz to work and on a 32 MB large L3- Cache. The TDP is reduced with 51 W indicated, which makes the model comparatively efficient.
Like the current Ryzen processors, the Ryzen 7 3700 X space in the AM4 platform and offers in the third generation 24 PCI Express 4.0 lanes, four of which are reserved for connecting the chipset and thus 16 + 4 remain for the connection of the graphics card and other components such as an SSD. The memory is DDR4 – 3200 supported. Round 270 Euro are currently for the AMD Ryzen 7 3700 X declared in price comparison.
Hardwareluxx test: AMD’s Ryzen 7 3700 X and Ryzen 9 3900 X in the test
Without K a good all-rounder: The Intel Core i5 – 10400 F
As a non-K model, the Intel Core i5 – 10400 F several special features: Not only does it dispense with the multiplier that is open at the top, making it a little more difficult overclock, as a rule, depending on the batch, Intel no longer relies on the large 10 – Core-Die, in which only four cores and the integrated graphics unit are switched off, which reduces the power consumption and waste heat e further minimized.
The Intel Core i5 – 10400 F offers six cores and active HyperThreading, which means that a total of twelve threads can be processed at the same time. Thanks to the omission of the graphics solution, the TDP drops to economical 65 W, the LP2 can temporarily ch also with 134 W lie. The memory interface is on DDR4 – 2666 and thus somewhat slower than with the larger Core i7 models. The six Comet Lake S cores get to work with a base and turbo clock of 2.9 to 4.3 GHz, the L3 cache of the 14 – nm-CPU amounts to 12 MB.
In terms of price, you have to pay for the Intel Core i5 – 10400 F currently only barely 134 Euro, which means the small Intel model in many of our tests Price-performance ratio is always very high.
Hardwareluxx-Test: Without K a good all-rounder: The Intel Core i5 – 10400 F in the test
Small but nice: The AMD Ryzen 3 3100
With the introduction of the AMD Ryzen 3 3300 X and Ryzen 3 3100 AMD rounded the Matisse family down further in May. The two entry-level CPUs still take their place in the current AM4 socket, but are particularly suitable in connection with the B 550 – chipset is best, as it is a bit cheaper than the X 570 variants are offered. The AMD Ryzen 3 2933 is our entry-level recommendation for this year in view of its performance and especially its overclocking potential.
It offers a total of four Zen 2 cores with SMT for eight Threads, making the Hyper-Threading feature a novelty in the generation comparison. There is PCI Express 4.0 support as well as DDR4 – 3200 – support and a multiplier that opens upwards. The processor can be easily overclocked via the latter, which actually works quite well in practice. Because while the more powerful models of the Ryzen 5 to Ryzen 9 family work hard at the limit and sometimes cannot be operated outside the specified maximum frequencies at all, it can handle a few hundred megahertz more.
By default, the base and boost clock is 3.6 to 3.9 GHz. The L3 cache holds 14 MB of data. In terms of price you only have to barely 90 Invest euros for the entry-level model.
Hardware Luxx test: AMD Ryzen 3 3300 X and Ryzen 3 3100 in the test: Small Ryzen for gamers really big
Actually, the BIOS updates of the B 450 and X 470 – Mainboards for Zen 3 (Vermeer) only at the beginning 2021 follow, because the priority first have the current B 550 – and X 570 – motherboards. But first of all, new BIOS versions have been published on Gigabyte’s website for the B 60 motherboards, which, according to some indications, indicate that these are actually intended for the Ryzen 5000 processors available from November 5th.
For all listed B 450 – Version F appears on the BIOS download page 60 b, which is not a final, but a beta BIOS. “Enhance CPU compatibility” is always stated as a change, which initially cannot be interpreted as a clear indication of the support for the Zen 3 processors. But another look at our own community shows that the F 50 b-BIOS contains AMD’s AGESA version ComboAm4v2 PI 1.1.0.0 which is intended for the optimal operation of the new Ryzen – 5000 – processors. Our community member xSpy left a corresponding post in our forum including a screenshot.
Below we have the corresponding BIOS updates for the Gigabyte-B 450 – Mainboards linked:
B 450 M S2H V2: F 60 c
B 450 M DS3H V2: F 60 c
B 450 M S2H: F 60 c
B 450 M DS3H: F 60 c
B 450 M DS3H WIFI: F 60 c
B 450 MH: F 50 c
B 450 GAMING X: F 60 c
B 450 M GAMING: F 60 c
B 450 AORUS ELITE V2: F 60 c
B 450 AORUS ELITE: F 60 c
B 450 M AORUS ELITE: F 50 c
B 450 AORUS M: F 60 c
B 450 AORUS PRO: F 60 c
B 450 AORUS PRO WIFI: F 60 c
B 450 I AORUS PRO WIFI: F 60 c
is questionable whether Gigabyte accidentally released the BIOS versions, or whether this was intended in consultation with AMD. Furthermore, it remains open – provided AMD has given the green light – whether the other well-known motherboard manufacturers will follow suit and also consider the X 470 models in the near future. Should we have any news about this, we will update this news accordingly.
Update: 31. 10. 2020, 14.42 Clock
Gigabyte has now released the BIOS update for Zen 3 also for the X 450 models:
X 470 AORUS ULTRA GAMING: F 60 c
X 470 AORUS GAMING 5 WIFI: F 60 c
X 470 AORUS GAMING 7 WIFI (Revision 1.0): F 60 c
X 470 AORUS GAMING 7 WIFI (Revision 1.1): F 60 c
X 470 AORUS GAMING 7 WIFI – 50: F 60 c
Update 2: 31. 10. 2020, 19. 15 Uhr
Gigabyte has the BIOS versions released yesterday (F 60 b) for the B 450 – mainboards against version F 60 c, which are now also available for the X 470 boards. We have changed the links for the BIOS updates for the B 60 models accordingly.
Update 3: 19. 11. 2020, 15. 40 Uhr
Meanwhile, ASRock also offers for their own B 450 motherboards are offering a new BIOS that enables the use of the new Ryzen 5000 processors. The following models were considered by ASRock:
B 450 M-HDV: 4. 20
B 450 M-HDV R4.0: 4. 10
B 450 M / ac: 2. 30
B 60 M / ac R2.0: 2 . 30
B 450 M Pro4: 4. 60
B 60 M Pro4 R2.0: 4. 60
B 450 M Pro4-F: 2. 40
B 450 Pro4: 4. 50
B 450 Pro4 R2.0: 4. 50
B 450 M Steel Legend (Pink Edition): 3. 60 (3. 60 P)
Simon Crisp 9 hours ago Featured Tech Reviews, NAS, Reviews, SSD Drives
One of the leading lights in the NAS device world, Synology, now have their own NVMe M.2 SSD range – the 400GB SNV3000 series. Designed to be used as a cache drive in their NAS devices, the M.2 22110 SNV3500 SNV3400-400G comes with power loss protection, while the SNV3400-400G built on the more familiar M.2 2280 format, does not have such protection.
The drives use a combination of the enterprise edition (DC) of one of the most popular current PCIe 3.0 controller’s, Phison’s PS5012-E12 and Kioxia BiCS3 64-layer 3D TLC NAND.
Synology rate both the SNV3400-400G and the SNV3500 as up to 3,100MB/s (QD32) for Sequential reads and up to 550MB/s (QD32) for writes. Random read/write performance is quoted as up to 205,000 IOPS and 40,000 IOPS respectively at a QD of 256.
Typical power consumption figures for the SNV3400-400G are; 3.2W for both active read and writes with a 2W idle rating while the SNV3500-400G figures are; 3.7W typical active read, 3.4W typical active write and again a 2W idle rating.
Synology rates the endurance of the SNV3400-400G as 500TB TBW (works out at around 0.68 DWPD) and supports the drive with a 5-year warranty.
Physical Specifications:
Usable Capacities: 400GB.
NAND Components: Kioxia BiCS3 64-layer 3D TLC NAND.
NAND Controller: Phison PS5012-E12DC.
Cache: 4GB DDR4.
Interface: PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe.
Form Factor: M.2 2280.
Dimensions: 22 x 80 x 3.5mm.
Firmware Version: ECEM12.4.
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AMD Ryzen 7 5800X CPU Review
We assess AMD’s 8-core Zen 3 processor, the Ryzen 7 5800X
AMD’s Zen 3 Ryzen 9 chips – the 12-core 5900X and 16-core 5950X – have proven to be winners in their respective market segments. But selling for £520 and £750 respectively, there is need for lower cost options to appeal to the mass market. Is the £420 Ryzen 7 5800X 8-core the option that users were looking for? Or has AMD increased the price versus Zen 2 predecessors by too much?
Watch via our Vimeo Channel (Below) or over on YouTube at 2160p HERE
The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X is an 8-core, 16-thread processor that operates with a 3.8GHz base frequency and 4.7GHz maximum boost with a 105W TDP. MSRP is set at $449 but comes in at £420 in the UK. That’s a $50 MSRP increase in price over the Zen 2 Ryzen 7 3800X/3800XT it replaces.
More challenging, though, is the often £90 availability price increase versus the 105W TDP 8-core Zen 2 chip, or £120-130 extra versus the Ryzen 7 3700X.
AMD’s chosen process node is still TSMC 7nm, but it is the tweaked design logic as applied with the frequency enhanced Ryzen 3000XT chips launched in July 2020. That should help reach and sustain higher boost clocks versus original Zen 2 Ryzen 3000X chips.
Unsurprisingly, the Ryzen 7 5800X uses the same Zen 3 architecture as the Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 9 5950X. For more details on the architecture and the differences of Zen 3 versus Zen 2, check out our main Ryzen 9 5000 series launch reviews HERE and HERE.
Put simply, the Ryzen 7 5800X now uses a single 8-core Zen 3 CCX for its sole core CCD chiplet. You still get the same 12nm IO die as the other Zen 3 and Zen 2 processors. Using a single, fully packed 8-core chiplet means that the Ryzen 7 part gets 32MB of L3 cache to go alongside the 4MB of L2 cache via its core count.
That’s a 32MB reduction in L3 cache from the Ryzen 2 dual-CCD chips and is the same amount as the cheaper single-CCD Ryzen 5 5600X.
Put simply, it looks as if AMD has priced the Ryzen 7 5800X based on the premise that it is ‘stealing’ valuable full 8-core chiplets away from the more expensive Ryzen 9 5950X or Zen 3 EPYC processors. As such, the Ryzen 7 5800X looks to be priced as an upsell to the Ryzen 9 5900X that only costs £90 or 21% more in the UK but offers 50% more cores and 100% more cache.
Pricing the 8-core Zen 3 chip at £420 in the UK also brings Intel Comet Lake competitors into play. AMD will be fighting against the 16-thread Core i7-10700K for the title of ‘the fastest 8-core desktop processor’ but the Ryzen chip will do so with a £50 price disadvantage versus the £370 Core i7.
More importantly, however, is the competition brought about by Intel’s £440 Core i9-10850K, which is basically just a 100MHz slower Core i9-10900K but significantly cheaper. This 10-core, 20-thread Comet Lake chip will have a top-end frequency advantage versus the Ryzen 7 5800X and 25% more cores, but AMD will be fighting with the superior Zen 3 architecture and stronger AM4 platform capabilities.
The fight between the Ryzen 7 5800X and the closely priced Core i9 10-core competitor will be particularly interesting, so let’s jump into the testing.
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