Back on top?! AMD Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT Review – Feel the same, but with big differences in detail

1 - Einführung und technische Details 2 - Teardown: Platine, Spannunsversorgung, Kühler 3 - Borderlands 3 4 - Control (+DXR) 5 - Far Cry New Dawn 6 - Ghost Recon Breakpoint 7 - Horizon Zero Dawn 8 - Metro Exodus (+DXR) 9 - Shadow of the Tomb Raider 10 - Watch Dog Legion (+DXR) 11 - Wolfenstein Youngblood 12 - World War Z 13 - Leistungsaufnahme und Effizienz im Gaming 14 - Leistungsaufnahme, Spannungen und Normeinhaltung 15 - Lastspitzen und Netzteil-Empfehlung 16 - Taktraten und Temperaturen 17 - Lüfter und Geräuschemission ('Lautsärke') 18 - Übersicht, Zusammenfassung und Fazit

Power consumption and efficiency with DXR

If you activate DXR and use the various raytracing functions, the image of the absolute, average power consumption in watts over the whole benchmark corresponds roughly to the values that you could expect without DXR, if a full load is generated correctly

In terms of efficiency, the performance disadvantage spoils the better positioning of the Radeon cards, because although the power consumption of the current GeForce cards is higher, the performance is still adequate in proportion. SAM helps, but not much.

Power consumption and efficiency Rasterization Only

If DXR is left out, the Radeons suddenly show their strength. The absolute measured power consumption of the Radeon RX 6800 XT is 32 watts below that of a comparable GeForce RTX 3080 FE, whereby this is even a bit faster than the Radeon without SAM. Nevertheless the difference is clearly visible. The GeForce RTX 3070 FE is much closer to the sweet spot, even if it has to give up a bit in terms of performance.

You can see it in the efficiency evaluation that the GeForce RTX 3070 FE can even push itself between both Radeons, which is quite remarkable. The GeForce RTX 3090 FE is even a bit more efficient than the RTX 3080 FE and you stay below the values of the old NVIDIA flagship RTX 2080 Ti with all current cards. This is also a realization that you can take with you.

In Ultra-HD the absolute values of the power consumption of all cards increase a bit, which isn’t surprising due to the high GPU load. Here NVIDIA would certainly score big points with DLSS if this feature were implemented more extensively.

In terms of efficiency, however, the picture is different from that in WQHD, where the Radeon RX 6800 XT only moves in front of the GeForce RTX 3090 due to the better third decimal place. The reason is simply the noticeable bandwidth limitation, which in some games slows down the RX 6800 XT somewhat.

For all further details about power consumption I have of course two more chapters, because especially the details are already important, also when buying a power supply.