RX 6950XT or 6900XT vs 6800XT or 6800, what makes more sense?

[Mr.Meerkat]

Hey all, with GPU prices finally falling like a brick, I think it's time for a third attempt in upgrading my computer with a 7 year old AMD Fury...

 

The four GPUs I've short listed are as follows:

1. Reference RX 6950XT, £800 (funnily enough, it dropped £50 over the last two days so it's now being considered)

2. Sapphire RX6900XT Nitro+, £770

3. Sapphire RX6800XT Nitro+, £670

4. Sapphire RX6800 Nitro+, £600

All the waterblocks (alphacool) costs pretty much the same (£70-85) so not a factor in this case. 

 

I guess the reason why I'm not just taking the 6800 or 6800XT straight away is because with it still being marginally above MSRP, phycology is saying "spend more" and get either cards above, that are considerably under MSRP. I guess with the 6800XT being up-to 15% faster than the 6800 then that £70 does make sense to spend...but then the 6900XT isn't that much more than the RX6800XT, which then given the 6950XT is only £30 more than the 6900XT, might as well go all out. As I'll be watercooling whatever I get (and heavily undervolting), I guess the coolers can be disregarded but maybe the silicon quality is a consideration. 

 

To clarify, all four are wayyyyyyyyy overkill for me (literally only issue with my Fury is the lack of new drivers ) but as I will be watercooling it, life becomes incredibly difficult trying to find compatible waterblocks with a non-inflated card (below RX6800), that is less 27cm long. I mean do I really want to pay £500 for a 6700XT Nitro, where the waterblock is £120-ish (so only £50-ish less than the RX6800 with waterblock) when I might as spend that extra £50 for a RX6800. As for why no Nividia cards, already tried a RTX3080 but Nvidia drivers just wasn't having my build (card worked flawlessly on my other builds tho...including with a G3258 ).

 

I guess the actual question is probably "does it make sense to spend £130 more for a RX6950XT over a RX6800XT?".

In terms of rest of comp, the main ones are 3700X and SF750. 

[Ryuikko]

What's your target resolution and I'd assume your primary use is gaming?

[TheGlenlivet]

Go big on the GPU now and upgrade to a 5800X3d when those get cheap too.

You'll be gaming on that system for years to come...

[Sir Beregond]

I'd probably opt for the 6900XT if you plan to play around with the card, otherwise, probably not worth the extra $100 over the 6800XT, but the 6800XT is definitely worth it over the 6800.

 

But agree with the other question. What resolution you gaming at?

[RONOTHAN##]

If it weren't for your power supply, the 6900 XT would likely be my pick. The reference cards do tend to perform worse than the non reference cards, and given how the only difference between the 6900 XT and 6950 XT is the stock power limit and the memory slider limit (the 6950 XT can run an extra 100MHz memory clock) with the fact that AMD power limits are pretty easy to bypass, the 6900 XT would be the best performing card here once overclocked.

 

That said, 6900 XTs are stupid power hungry when overclocked, I've seen power draws of over 500W on my card (granted, it was performing like a 3090 Ti at that point, but still), and I wouldn't exactly want to trust 500W of transient heavy GPU load on a 750W SFF power supply. If you aren't gonna be overclocking the card (IMO the entire reason to get a 6900 XT), save your money and get the 6800 XT, at stock the performance figures are close enough that you probably wouldn't notice, and the 6800 XT is a lot more forgiving on power supplies

19 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

(and heavily undervolting)

Yeah, if this is your plan, don't get the 6900 XT or above. The RX 6000 series benefits (performance wise) from overvolting, not undervolting, so why spend the extra 100 pounds on a card just to nerf the performance of it?

[Mr.Meerkat]

53 minutes ago, Ryuikko said:

What's your target resolution and I'd assume your primary use is gaming?

Sorta. Mainly gaming with a bit of hardware acceleration for photo/video editing (mainly the former rather than the latter).

Resolution wise, 3440x1440. 

45 minutes ago, Sir Beregond said:

What resolution you gaming at?

Ditto above

46 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The reference cards do tend to perform worse than the non reference cards, and given how the only difference between the 6900 XT and 6950 XT is the stock power limit and the memory slider limit

Yeah, slightly misread the spec sheet and the 6950XT is just a overclocked 6900XT where a custom board will be better (which given it's a little shorter as well is a big benefit as well )

49 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Yeah, if this is your plan, don't get the 6900 XT or above. The RX 6000 series benefits (performance wise) from overvolting, not undervolting, so why spend the extra 100 pounds on a card just to nerf the performance of it?

I should clarify that I will basically be trying to either keep it stock OC speeds and bringing the voltage as far down as possible or maybe even apply a small OC and try to decrease the voltage a tad (no idea about Navi OC-ing tho so maybe not possible). 

[Ryuikko]

15 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Sorta. Mainly gaming with a bit of hardware acceleration for photo/video editing (mainly the former rather than the latter).

Resolution wise, 3440x1440. 

Then basically what @RONOTHAN##said applies here. I wouldn't really trust a 6900xt or above with a sfx 750 watt psu, so a 6800xt would be your best bet here 

[Sir Beregond]

6 minutes ago, Ryuikko said:

Then basically what @RONOTHAN##said applies here. I wouldn't really trust a 6900xt or above with a sfx 750 watt psu, so a 6800xt would be your best bet here 

Ah, I missed the 750W PSU. Yeah I'd upgrade if you get a 6900XT.

[RONOTHAN##]

18 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

I should clarify that I will basically be trying to either keep it stock OC speeds and bringing the voltage as far down as possible or maybe even apply a small OC and try to decrease the voltage a tad (no idea about Navi OC-ing tho so maybe not possible).

They have a bit of headroom doing that, but they don't have a ton of headroom because those cards are very voltage limited. 

 

The 6800 XT is the best option for what you're trying to do. The 6900 XT only really makes sense when you're going to be pushing the cards to their limits (they are currently the only GPU on the market that actually gets a noticeable performance increase when overclocked at ambient, assuming you don't care about power draw), but since in your system it's not really a good idea to push them just stick with the 6800 XT. . To put it in Intel terms, the 6800 XT is the 12900, the 6900 XT is the 12900K, and the 6950 XT is the 12900KS. If you aren't gonna push them, there isn't much difference between all of them for performance. If you are gonna push them, then the higher SKUs do start having an advantage. 

[Mr.Meerkat]

2 minutes ago, Sir Beregond said:

Ah, I missed the 750W PSU. Yeah I'd upgrade if you get a 6900XT.

30 minutes ago, Ryuikko said:

Then basically what @RONOTHAN##said applies here. I wouldn't really trust a 6900xt or above with a sfx 750 watt psu, so a 6800xt would be your best bet here 

Too bad CM's V1100 SFX doesn't exist already  

I guess there's always CM's V850 (which is seemingly a "barely hitting" plat labelled as gold)...let's not mention the EVGA as somehow it's built a bit of a weird rep...

 

But anyway, I love how I could run dual Hawaii (290Xs) on a bronze 850W PSU and I knew someone who ran dual 780ti on a 700W PSU (and it never exploded...) but we can't even run a single high-end GPU on a nice 750W these days  

[Sir Beregond]

Just now, Mr.Meerkat said:

Too bad CM's V1100 SFX doesn't exist already  

I guess there's always CM's V850 (which is seemingly a "barely hitting" plat labelled as gold)...let's not mention the EVGA as somehow it's built a bit of a weird rep...

 

But anyway, I love how I could run dual Hawaii (290Xs) on a bronze 850W PSU and I knew someone who ran dual 780ti on a 700W PSU (and it never exploded...) but we can't even run a single high-end GPU on a nice 750W these days  

Yeah, I wouldn't do less than a 1000W PSU these days if you plan to play with a top end card, push power, etc.

[-rascal-]

Not worth getting the 6950XT; basically a factory OC'd  6900XT with the GDDR6 Memory running at 18Gbps (vs 16Gbps on the 6900XT).

 

If you are planning to put the GPU under water (an/or overclocking too) the over-built PCB on the NITRO+ would be the way to go.

 

Either the 6800XT or 6900XT.

£100 jump is pretty high.

[Action_Johnson]

I would go 6800XT.