Radeon RX 6800 & RX 6800 XT Review: AMD’s Back With Big Navi

The previous page features an array of synthetic benchmarks using our Intel Core i9-powered test rig and the Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT. Here we'll throw in a few actual game tests and then break things down a little further with some direct comparisons between the various platforms we tested.

Radeon RX 6800 & Radeon RX 6800 XT Game Tests Intel Powered Test System

In this particular groups of game tests, the Radeon RX 6800 essentially led the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3070 across the board when the system was GPU limited -- we're disregarding that 1440p FarCry New Dawn test, since that one was CPU limited. And as we've seen throughout our testing, the Radeon RX 6800 XT traded victories with the GeForce RTX 3080.

Radeon RX 6800 XT Platform Comparisons Big Navi On Intel vs. AMD

To save you the trouble of having to compare the Intel vs. AMD test system results, we've summarized a handful of them for you here. In the charts below, we compare the performance of the Radeon RX 6800 XT when tested with and without Smart Access Memory (SAM) on the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X-based system versus the Intel Core i9-10980XE-based rig...


Overall, there isn't much separating the platforms in fully GPU-bound situations, though the Ryzen 9 5950X -- especially with Smart Access Memory Enabled -- does score the most wins. In the 3DMark tests (Fire Strike and Time Spy above), where the CPU's physics performance is factored into the overall score, however, the Ryzen 9-system scores a couple of clear victories.

We should also point out that these benchmarks somewhat compare the Radeon RX 6800 XT's performance over PCI Express Gen 3 (Intel) and Gen 4 (AMD). Although having more bandwidth is always welcome, with current games and GPUs, a PCIe 3.0 x 16 slot is plenty wide enough to keep a Radeon RX 6800 XT fed.