ASUS Radeon RX 6800 STRIX OC Review

Name: ASUS Radeon RX 6800 STRIX OC
Brand: ASUS
Price: 700 USD

W1zzard

on Jan 26th, 2021,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: ASUS

(15 Comments) »

Introduction

We have with us the ASUS ROG STRIX Radeon RX 6800 OC graphics card, our first custom-design Radeon RX 6800 graphics card after the pile of RX 6800 XT cards we've munched through. While its bigger siblings, the RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT, hog much of the limelight with the DIY enthusiast crowd for smooth 4K UHD gaming, the RX 6800 is a bit of an underdog. At a starting price of $580, AMD is confident of the RX 6800 outperforming the GeForce RTX 3070, which starts at $500. ASUS takes things up a notch by giving this GPU its most premium ROG STRIX treatment. The card is based on a similar-looking board design to the RX 6800 XT ROG STRIX (air-cooled), which means there's plenty of cooling muscle to tame the already cooler RX 6800.

The Radeon RX 6800 has an interesting mandate for its price: to offer maxed out gaming performance at 1440p while being perfectly capable of 4K UHD gaming with reasonably high settings. The RTX 3070 is advertised by NVIDIA to beat the RTX 2080 Ti, and AMD claims that the RX 6800 beats the RTX 3070. This means you're dealing with plenty of graphics horsepower right off the bat. The RX 6800 is based on AMD's new RDNA2 graphics architecture, which also powers the latest game consoles, such as the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X/S. The architecture meets all the requirements for DirectX 12 Ultimate, which includes real-time raytracing standardized under DirectX Raytracing. An extremely compute-intensive technology, raytracing requires enormous compute muscle and fixed-function hardware. A side effect of this is vast increases in compute power for the latest generation of GPUs, which significantly increases performance for conventional raster 3D graphics.

The Radeon RX 6800 is carved out of the 7 nm "Navi 21" silicon the RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT are based on and features 60 out of 80 RDNA2 compute units, translating to 3,840 stream processors, 60 Ray Accelerators, 240 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. The memory sub-system is the same as the RX 6900 XT, with 16 GB of the fastest JEDEC-standard 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface. This is already a lot faster than the 14 Gbps memory the RTX 3070 is equipped with, not to mention double the memory size, but AMD has taken things in the memory bandwidth department a step further by deploying 128 MB of super-fast on-die L3 cache it calls Infinity Cache. Together, this memory solution offers a peak theoretical bandwidth of 2 TB/s.

ASUS adds value to the RX 6800 by giving it the latest generation of its ROG STRIX DirectCU III cooling solution, which it debuted with the GeForce RTX 30-series. It features a large aluminium fin-stack heatsink that's ventilated by a trio of Axial-Tech fans. Since the cooler is longer than the PCB, airflow from the third fan flows right through. The ASUS RX 6800 STRIX OC also comes with a handy factory overclock, with the GPU boosting up to 2190 MHz as opposed to the 2105 MHz reference. ASUS is pricing the card at $700, and you can currently find it on eBay for around $1000.

Radeon RX 6800 Review Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Shader Units	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RX Vega 64	$400	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1080 Ti	$650	3584	88	1481 MHz	1582 MHz	1376 MHz	GP102	12000M	11 GB, GDDR5X, 352-bit
RX 5700 XT	$370	2560	64	1605 MHz	1755 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070	$340	2304	64	1410 MHz	1620 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070 Super	$450	2560	64	1605 MHz	1770 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
Radeon VII	$680	3840	64	1802 MHz	N/A	1000 MHz	Vega 20	13230M	16 GB, HBM2, 4096-bit
RTX 2080	$600	2944	64	1515 MHz	1710 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Super	$690	3072	64	1650 MHz	1815 MHz	1940 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3060 Ti	$800	4864	80	1410 MHz	1665 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Ti	$1000	4352	88	1350 MHz	1545 MHz	1750 MHz	TU102	18600M	11 GB, GDDR6, 352-bit
RTX 3070	$850	5888	96	1500 MHz	1725 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800	$950	3840	96	1815 MHz	2105 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
ASUS RX 6800 STRIX OC	$1000 MSRP: $700	3840	96	1980 MHz	2190 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800 XT	$1200	4608	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3080	$1000	8704	96	1440 MHz	1710 MHz	1188 MHz	GA102	28000M	10 GB, GDDR6X, 320-bit
RX 6900 XT	$1550	5120	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3090	$2000	10496	112	1395 MHz	1695 MHz	1219 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit

Packaging

The Card

The ASUS Radeon RX 6800 STRIX OC shares the same impressive looks and cooler shroud with other STRIX cards from the GeForce 30 and Radeon RX 6000 Series. I really like the new look ASUS created; it's clean, yet powerful with its metal highlights on the front and back of the card.

Dimensions of the card are 32 x 14 cm, and it weighs 1709 g.

Installation requires three slots in your system.

Display connectivity includes three standard DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.1.

The card has two 8-pin power inputs. This configuration is rated for up to 375 W of power draw.

Two fan headers near the back of the card can be used to connect case fans to the graphics card. These fans will now run in sync with the graphics card fans—stopped when idle and at increasing speed depending on the GPU temperature. Since the graphics card is the primary heat source in most computers, this makes a lot of sense and helps keep noise levels down.

The AMD Radeon RX 6000 series doesn't support multi-GPU. Here, you see the BIOS switch, which lets you toggle between the default (Performance) BIOS and a "quiet" BIOS that runs the fans quieter, at slower speeds with higher temperature.

Teardown

ASUS designed a huge heatsink, which does a great job keeping the card cool. Seven heatpipes quickly move any heat away from the GPU core and to a large array of fins, where it is dissipated in the airflow of the three fans. This is the same cooler assembly as on the ASUS GeForce RTX 3090 STRIX OC, only with minor adjustments for the different GPU and PCB geometry.

Once the main heatsink is removed, a metal reinforcement frame becomes visible. It helps prevent sagging and provides some extra cooling for the VRMs.

The backplate is one of the thickest I ever had in my hands and protects the card against damage during installation and handling. There's also several thermal pads, which help reduce temperatures a little bit.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles or forum posts.