AMD's recently released Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.4.1 WHQL drivers lower non-gaming power consumption, our testing finds. AMD did not mention these reductions in the changelog of its new driver release. We did a round of testing, comparing the previous 21.3.2 drivers, with 21.4.1, using Radeon RX 6000 series SKUs, namely the RX 6700 XT, RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT. Our results show significant power-consumption improvements in certain non-gaming scenarios, such as system idle and media playback.

The Radeon RX 6700 XT shows no idle power draw reduction; but the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT posted big drops in idle power consumption, at 1440p, going down from 25 W to 5 W (down by about 72%). There are no changes with multi-monitor. Media playback power draw sees up to 30% lower power consumption for the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT. This is a huge improvement for builders of media PC systems, as not only power is affected, but heat and noise, too.

When AMD introduced RDNA 2 architecture and higher-end Navi 21 GPU SKUs, it was only a matter of time before the company launches these GPUs inside professional-grade graphics cards. Today, thanks to the Chiphell forums, we have pictures and some specifications of AMD's upcoming Radeon Pro workstation graphics card. Pictured below is a new RDNA 2 based design that features AMD's Navi 21 GLXL GPU SKU. The new GLXL GPU SKU is supposed to be rather similar to the Navi 21 XL GPU found inside AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card, judging by the number and arrangement of capacitors on the back of the card.

When it comes to memory, the upcoming Radeon Pro workstation card is featuring 16 GB of VRAM, likely a variant of GDDR6 found on gaming-oriented graphics cards from RDNA 2 generation. When it comes to cooler design, the Radeon Pro graphics card has a blower-type cooler helping tame the Navi 21 GLXL GPU. Given that blower-type coolers are suitable for situations with less airflow, the TDP of this card could be around or under 250 Watts. You can take a look at the card below, however, do note that it is an engineering sample and the final product can look a bit different.

Bitspower today unveiled its top full-coverage water-block that's compatible with the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 "Big Navi" reference graphics cards; the Premium Mobius BPPRE-VG6900XTID. This 2-slot thick block uses nickel-plated copper as its primary material, combining it with a top that's essentially clear acrylic, but with an aluminium alloy cladding that resembles the styling of the reference cooling solution. The coolant never makes contact with the cladding. The acrylic top is studded with addressable-RGB LEDs, which take in a standard 3-pin ARGB connection. A matching back-plate made of anodized aluminium comes included with the block. The block comes with four G1/4" threads. Available now, the Premium Mobius BPPRE-VG6900XTID is priced at USD $320.

Nobody saw this one coming—or going. AMD last night released the Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black, a limited edition variant of the RX 6800 XT reference "Made by AMD" graphics card, sold-out directly through the company website. This card appears to be an aesthetic update, as it replaces all the matte silver bits on the cooler shroud with black. That's it...that's the product. The clock speeds are the same—2015 MHz game clocks—and so are is the core configuration, with 72 RDNA2 compute units. The card briefly appeared on the AMD store, allegedly, and disappeared before the first legitimate graphics card buyer could lift a finger.

During the development of the Eisblock Aurora RADEON RX 6800/6900/XT graphic card GPU block, we wanted to further increase the performance. The first step was to move the cooler closer to the individual components by reducing the thermal pads to a thickness of 1 mm. Next, we reduced the thickness of the nickel-plated copper block. Instead of 7 mm, it is now only 5.5 mm thick. The water flow inside the cooler has also been optimized. All important components such as the voltage transformers and the memory are now significantly better and more effectively cooled by the water. All this ensures a significant increase in cooling performance.

TUL Corporation, a leading and innovative manufacturer of AMD graphic cards since 1997, today brings it's fastest AMD Radeon RX 6000 series models with its Liquid Devil series, designed for the most demanding gaming and PC enthusiasts that require the very best performance for their existent custom loop water-cooling.

PowerColor and EK teamed up to create the fastest AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800XT. The new PowerColor Liquid Devil series are powered by the revolutionary AMD RDNA 2, with Raytracing support, groundbreaking AMD Infinity Cache, and 16 GB of dedicated GDDR6 memory to deliver outstanding gaming experience while running with zero noise at the lowest temperatures with the beautiful designed and high performance full-cover EK water block.

EK Water Blocks, the leading computer cooling solutions provider, is ready to offer a new Classic line GPU water block for graphics cards based on the latest AMD RDNA2 architecture. It fits most reference PCB designs of the Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800XT, and RX 6900 GPUs. Minimalistic design with fewer details makes this EK-Classic Line water block more affordable while still offering all the qualities of an EK product, such as high performance, excellent customer support, and a comprehensive installation manual.

The EK-Classic GPU Water Block RX 6800/6900 D-RGB directly cools the GPU, VRAM, and the VRM (voltage regulation module) as a cooling liquid is channeled right over these critical areas. The water block is in contact with power stages as well as Inductor chokes to maximize cooling and minimize the chances of coil whine. It boasts some new features, already previously introduced in the EK's Quantum line, such as the optimized flow paths that reduce hydrodynamic instabilities and vortexing (dead spots) inside of them.

Lenovo and AMD seem to be developing an exclusive partnership with client/workstation products. Following exclusivity for Lenovo to sell workstations powered by the Ryzen Threadripper PRO processors, the two appear to be collaborating on graphics cards. Pictures surfaced on Chinese social media of the new Lenovo Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT LEGION Edition graphics cards. At this point it's unclear whether Lenovo designed these cards, or if the designers of AMD's reference MBA (made by AMD) graphics cards lent a hand.

Looking at the red-illuminated "R" cornerstone design element, the possibility of the card being designed and made by the same OEM as reference-design MBA cards, cannot be ruled out. Use of the "R" cornerstone dates back to the Radeon RX Vega series. The typeface of the "R" has since been updated to match with the latest Radeon logo. Elsewhere across the card, we see a large "Radeon RX 6x00 XT" logo along the top of the card, which is RGB illuminated. The butch triple-slot card appears to be slightly larger than the RX 6800 XT / RX 6900 XT reference-design, pulling power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Along the metal back-plate we see a large, illuminated logo of LEGION, Lenovo's gaming PC marquee. Below are screengrabs from the animation, watch the animated GIF in the source link below. At this point we don't know if this card is China-exclusive, and exactly how it's marketed, whether it's sold standalone like any AIB retail card, or whether it's pre-installed on LEGION PCs, such as the 2021 LEGION 7000P desktops.

NVIDIA GeForce GPUs feature hotspot temperature measurement akin to AMD Radeon ones, according to an investigative report by Igor's Lab. A beta version of HWInfo already supports hotspot measurement. As its name suggests, the hotspot is the hottest spot on the GPU, measured from a network of thermal sensors across the GPU die, unlike conventional "GPU Temperature" sensors, which reads off a single physical location of the GPU die. AMD refers to this static sensor as "Edge temperature." In some cases, the reported temperature of this sensor could differ from the hotspot by as much as 20°C, which underscores the importance of hotspot. The sensor with the highest temperature measurement becomes the hotspot.

GPU manufacturers rarely disclose the physical locations of on-die thermal sensors, but during the AMD Radeon VII, we got a rare glimpse at this, in a company slide, with the sensors being located near components that can get the hottest, such as the compute units (pictured below). Igor's Lab put out measurements of the deviation between the hotspot and "GPU temperature" sensors on a GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition card. There's a much narrower deviation between the two (between 11-14°C), and than the one between hotspot and Edge temperature on an MSI Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming X Trio (which posts a 12-20°C difference).

Members form the UK Parliament are apparently preparing to introduce a bill that would regulate the scalping phenomenon that's being witnessed worldwide. According to Scottish politician Douglas Chapman, in an interview to IGN, "The issue of scalping first came up with constituents contacting me to explain their frustration about being unable to get hold of certain games consoles or computer components pre-Christmas." He then expanded on that by adding that "On investigation, we uncovered more details of the unscrupulous practice of 'scalping' by automated bots to bulk buy these goods and sell them on at inflated prices." Oh, and this bill is unlikely to pass, by the way.

Scalping, however, isn't done only in the UK; it's a pervasive international issue that crosses borders. And scalping, as it is known, is nothing but a form of speculation, which some might say is part of the backbone that keeps the world's capitalist blood pumping through the economy - some might even argue that scalping occurs directly due to mechanisms of supply and demand, and thus, isn't an unlawful activity in and of itself. Companies, corporations, and all other legal entities, however, have to adhere to strict anti-monopoly/anti-cartelization laws, which deal with the same base issue, although in another facet of it. The problem is that it appears that in some countries, speculation is regulated at the enterprise level, but not at the citizen level. And herein lies the crux of it.

AMD today released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin drivers. Version 21.2.1 beta comes with optimization for "Medium," with a 9% performance increase at 4K measured using an RX 6800 XT graphics card, over the previous driver. A number of bugs and issues are also addressed. To begin with stuttering noticed on certain RX Vega series graphics cards at high refresh rates. A screen flickering observed with MSI Afterburner has been fixed. A bug that caused recording and streaming with Radeon Software, on Radeon HD 7800 series GPUs, has been fixed. A rendering error with SketchUp on RDNA GPUs has been fixed. Samsung CRG9 displays waking up from screen to black screens, has been fixed. Application crashes with "Metro Exodus" with DXR enabled, have been fixed. Video playback on other displays in a multi-display setup, during "Doom Eternal" gameplay on one of the displays, experiences stutter, which has been fixed.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.2.1

If anyone was looking to buy a new GPU in the past few months, the person is likely familiar with the situation we are in. It is now a fact that the latest generation of GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA are extremely hard to find, and when you come across one it is listed at some mind-blowing price. However, the makers of those GPUs, AMD and NVIDIA, are claiming that we are near the end of this situation and the things are going to be better shortly. And companies such as these two must reach out to consumers and try to satisfy their needs, even in the difficult situation that is going on now with the GPUs.

In the interview with The Verge, AMD has confirmed that it will be selling more Radeon RX 6800, Radeon RX 6800 XT, and Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards using its website, throughout Q1 of this year. The company claims that it will try to supply as many customers as possible, without any exact figures. When it comes to NVIDIA, the company has commented that the situation will likely resolve sometime at the end of Q1, meaning that in March things should return to normal. The company has also added that in the meantime consumers shouldn't expect to buy any of the GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards at their original MSRP. NVIDIA also continues emphasizing that the reason for such high prices is the high demand they are seeing, exceeding production capacity by far.

Alienware, the gaming division of Dell Technologies, has today announced a lineup refresh, meaning that all of the existing products will get upgraded to versions with the latest hardware. And to start off, the company has equipped their thin and powerful Alienware m15 R4 and m17 R4 laptops with the latest hardware we saw announced just yesterday. The laptops are equipped with 12-phase voltage regulation modules to power the newest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series of mobile GPUs. To pair with a strong GPU, Alienware decided to use 10th generation Intel Comet Lake-H designs. These new laptops can be equipped with up to 4 TB of PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD storage and up to 32 GB of 2933 MHz RAM. For display, options range from FHD LCD to a 4K OLED panel and 360 Hz refresh rate for the m17 R4 model.

PowerColor Tuesday teased its upcoming Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT Liquid Devil series graphics cards. These cards are targeted at those with DIY liquid cooling setups, and come with factory-fitted full-coverage water blocks. The blocks are custom-made for PowerColor by EK Water Blocks. It's likely that PowerColor is reusing the PCBs from its Red Devil line of flagship air-cooled cards. The blocks feature nickel-plated copper as their primary material, with clear acrylic tops that are studded with addressable RGB LEDs that plug into the PCB's LED header.

AMD has recently launched its Radeon "Big Navi" 6000 series of graphics cards, making entry to the high-end market and positioning itself well against the competition. The "Big Navi" graphics cards are based on Navi 21 XL (Radeon RX 6800), Navi 21 XT (Radeon RX 6800 XT), and Navi 21 XTX (Radeon RX 6900 XT) GPU revision, each of which features a different number of Shaders/TMUs/ROPs. The highest-end Navi 21 XTX is the highest performance revision featuring 80 Compute Units with 5120 cores. However, it seems like AMD is preparing another similar silicon called Navi 21 XTXH. Currently, it is unknown what the additional "H" means. It could indicate an upgraded version with more CUs, or perhaps a bit cut down configuration. It is unclear where such a GPU would fit in the lineup or is it just an engineering sample that is never making it to the market. It could represent a potential response from AMD to NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, however, that is just speculation. Other options suggest that such a GPU would be a part of mainstream notebook lineup, just like Renoir comes in the "H" variant. We have to wait and see what AMD does to find out more.

Michael Driscoll, an Oracle data engineer, has written a data scraper that runs through eBay listings for the latest hardware, comparing products with their sale price. The objective was to see just how pervasive scalping actually is, and to get a (flawed and incomplete, but still extremely interesting) outlook at the scalping ecosystem and their gains with the current hardware and console shortages. Driscoll analyzed sales for the Xbox Series X|S, the PS5 (discless and disc-based) as well as NVIDIA's RTX 30-series, AMD's RX 6000 series, and Zen 3 processors. There are some assumptions on the gathering and analysis of this data, but that is part of the beast.

The results are potentially desperation-inducing. AMD's Zen 3 CPUs have sold for sometimes 240% of their MSRP (looking at the biggest offender, the Ryzen 9 5950X. The RX 6800 XT graphics card has been selling for within an inch of 200% of its MSRP as well, with a median price over the past week set at $1247 (compare that to the $649 MSRP). The RTX 3080 has been selling at 180% of its MSRP for the past week, but it has been moved at 220% of its MSRP before. The case repeats with several degrees of severity for the Xbox family and PS5 consoles.

Yesterday, Cowocotland, a technology website, has published information that AMD's reference design cards like the latest Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6800 GPUs are getting discontinued. That means that AMD will stop the production of the reference designs and rely completely on the supply of GPUs coming from add-in board partners to satisfy the market needs. This does not mean that the availability of these GPUs is not going to exist. Rather, there will not be AMD reference designs available for purchase from the company. Only cards that are custom made by AIBs, that AMD provides GPU+VRAM for, will offer customers cards with these GPUs.

VideoCardz claims that they have been able to confirm some pieces of the information, so it is a done deal. From now on, it seems that only graphics cards with Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6800 GPUs inside them will be the ones offered by AIBs. The reference design cards will only be produced until early 2021, giving it a month or two for consumers to purchase cards from AMD. After that period the market will rely completely on AMD's partners.

Update 4:30 pm UTC: Scott Herkelman, CVP & GM of AMD Radeon Tweeted that they have "extended the reference design builds indefinitely due to popular demand." Meaning that the reference cards will remain in production. Mr. Herkelman also thanked for feedback, where community was loud and clear that they want to see reference boards for a while longer.

AMD's recently-introduced SAM (Smart Access memory) feature enables users pairing an RX 6000 series graphics card with a Ryzen 5000 series CPU to take advantage of a long-lost PCIe feature in the form of its Resizable Bar. However, AMD currently only markets this technology for that particular component combination, even though the base technology isn't AMD's own, but is rather included in the PCIe specification. It's only a matter of time until NVIDIA enables the feature for its graphics cards, and there shouldn't be any technical problem on enabling it within Intel's platform as well. Now, we have results (coming from ASCII.jp) from an Intel Z490 motherboard (ASUS ROG Maximus XII EXTREME) with firmware 1002, from November 27th, paired with AMD's RX 6800 XT. And SAM does work independently of actual platform.

Paired with an Intel Core i9-10900K, AMD's RX 6800 XT shows performance increases across the board throughout the test games - which are games AMD themselves have confirmed SAM is working with. This means testing was done with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Forza Horizon 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Rainbow Six Siege. The results speak for themselves (SAM results are the top ones in the charts). There are sometimes massive improvements in minimum framerates, considerable gains in average framerates, and almost no change in the maximum framerates reported for these games on this given system. Do note that the chart for Forza Horizon 4 has an error, and the tested resolution is actually 1440p, not 1080p.

AMD has launched its RDNA 2 based graphics cards, codenamed Navi 21. These GPUs are set to compete with NVIDIA's Ampere offerings, with the lineup covering the Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT graphics cards. Until now, we have had reviews of the former two, but not the Radeon RX 6900 XT. That is because the card is coming at a later date, specifically on December 8th, in just a few days. As a reminder, the Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU is a Navi 21 XTX model with 80 Compute Units that give a total of 5120 Stream Processors. The graphics card uses a 256-bit bus that connects the GPU with 128 MB of its Infinity Cache to 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. When it comes to frequencies, it has a base clock of 1825 MHz, with a boost speed of 2250 MHz.

Today, in a GeekBench 5 submission, we get to see the first benchmarks of AMD's top-end Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. Running an OpenCL test suite, the card was paired with AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X 16C/32T CPU. The card managed to pass the OpenCL test benchmarks with a score of 169779 points. That makes the card 12% faster than RX 6800 XT GPU, but still slower than the competing NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, which scores 177724 points. However, we need to wait for a few more benchmarks to appear to jump to any conclusions, including the TechPowerUp review, which is expected to arrive once NDA lifts. Below, you can compare the score to other GPUs in the GeekBench 5 OpenCL database.

The launch of the AMD RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT was plagued with a lack of availability and inflated prices. Retailers sold out of reference models almost immediately leading to price gouging and the launch of custom boards a week later did little to ease the situation. AMD has acknowledged the situation and is working with AIBs to achieve MSRP prices. In an unofficial comment to Hardware Unboxed, an AMD representative confirmed that they hoped to reach MSRP prices within 4 to 8 weeks for custom cards. The cards are currently selling for 100+ USD higher than their suggested retail prices at retailers across the globe so this news from AMD will be welcome for many.

It's becoming clear that AMD's new "Big Navi" Radeon RX 6800 XT is a treat for overclockers, and that it launched with much lower engine clocks than the silicon is capable of, resulting in what is possibly the largest overclocking headroom on an AMD GPU in a long time. This has been highlighted by recent conquests of the 3DMark Fire Strike leaderboard by RX 6800 XT cards, displacing even the RTX 3090 from the top. It's becoming even more clear now just how far the RX 6800 XT can be pushed. Patrick Schur on Twitter reports that the RX 6800 XT engine clocks are capped at 2.80 GHz, which is possibly why we're yet to see anything faster than that. The upcoming RX 6900 XT, on the other hand, is a better-endowed beast.

According to Schur, the RX 6900 XT has a raised engine clocked limit to 3.00 GHz in comparison to the 2.80 GHz of the RX 6800 XT. This 200 MHz increase, coupled with the 8 additional RDNA2 compute units, should mean that the Fire Strike leaderboards will get another shake-up in December, when these cards are released to market. The memory clock on both cards is capped at 1075 MHz (real), or 17.2 Gbps GDDR6-effective, although this should depend heavily on the overclocking headroom of the memory chips. It's important to note here that neither the 3.00 GHz of the RX 6900 XT, nor the 2.80 GHz for the RX 6800 XT, are advertised clock speeds for the cards, and are achievable only by manual overclocking, in some cases employing extreme cooling solutions such as liquid nitrogen.

Alphacool presents the Eisblock Aurora Acryl GPX-A block for the Radeon MSI RX 6800/6800 XT Gaming X Trio and the Radeon Sapphire RX 6800XT Nitro+ graphics cards. The blocks offer outstanding cooling performance thanks to the full cover design. The new backplate, which is included with the coolers, also contributes to this. This stabilizes the graphics card and ensures an even contact pressure of the cooler. The cold plates are made of solid nickel-plated copper. The coolers cover all relevant components such as voltage converters and the graphics memory.

SAPPHIRE Technology announces the eagerly awaited new NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 6800 Series Graphics Cards for enthusiast gamers seeking the full effect of smooth 4K graphics with vivid visuals and unrivaled quality cooling solutions. Equipped with high-quality components to drive the most demanding AAA game scenarios, the NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 6800 Series Graphics cards are the key component to push gaming performance to the maximum thresholds. The aesthetic designs of these cards are crafted to beautifully fit with any PC build.

GIGABYTE late Wednesday launched its premium custom-design graphics cards based on the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800, under its coveted AORUS Gaming product family. These include the RX 6800 XT AORUS Master, the RX 6800 XT AORUS Master Type-C, and the RX 6800 AORUS Master. The RX 6800 XT AORUS Master and AORUS Master Type-C are nearly identical products, with the latter featuring a USB type-C connector (while the former has a third DisplayPort in its place). Both cards share their underpinnings with the RX 6800 AORUS Master.

The three cards feature GIGABYTE's latest AORUS Max-Covered triple-slot cooling solution that features three fans arranged in a way that sees the fans on the sides overlap the one in the center. Underneath is an aluminium dual fin-stack heatsink that makes direct contact with the GPU. As with any AORUS Gaming product, all three AORUS Master cards feature plenty of RGB LED illumination all around. The cards also feature an LCD display on top which gives out real-time monitoring. GIGABYTE mentions that the AORUS Master cards ship with the company's highest factory OC, but hasn't finalized these clock speeds yet. The company also launched its cost-effective Gaming OC series, which use simpler WindForce 3X cooling solutions, a milder factory-OC, and close-to-reference pricing.

Hot on the heels of its RX 6800 XT Red Devil unveiling, we have pictures of the Radeon RX 6800 XT Red Dragon, positioned a notch below the Red Devil. The Red Dragon comes with a milder factory overclock than the Red Devil, and hence a simpler cooling solution that's 2.5-slot thick (compared to 3-slot of the Red Devil). It uses an aluminium dual fin-stack heatsink design that uses a trio of fans—a smaller central fan flanked by larger fans—to ventilate the cooler.

The RX 6800 XT Red Dragon cooler is longer than the PCB by about 2 inches, so much of the airflow from the third fan goes through the card, and out through vents on the backplate. The power input configuration for the card is very likely the same 2x 8-pin PCIe as on the Red Devil. We also spy a dual-BIOS selector switch. Outputs include three DisplayPorts and an HDMI, there's no USB-C. It's also likely that PowerColor may reuse this exact board design for an RX 6800 Red Dragon card.