4:51 PM - AMD RX 6900XT
So I bought a 6900 XT at the end of june. It replaced a 1080ti. I decided to write a brief review for folks who haven't gotten cards yet.
The short version is I have regrets. The GPU is really great in some titles and performs better than expected. Doom Eternal gets 250+ FPS with raytracing at 3440x1440. Control gets 60 FPS with raytracing. Farcry 5, Dirt 5, and many other games run well and are usually much better than my old 1080ti. But there's a problem. My favorite games are Blizzard titles like Overwatch and Starcraft II. Both of these titles run like crap. With maxed-out settings, starcraft II starts around 114FPS at the beginning of a 1v1 match but drops to 55FPS by late game and averages around 60FPS according to the AMD software. Lowering some of the effects only improved the FPS by a few. Not significant. CPU usage is around 6% during game play on a 3950x. GPU utilization is below 50% according to windows.
Overwatch is similarly a problem. The game is certainly playable on high settings can even peak around 300FPS if the cap is raised. On ultra settings, it struggles to hit 70FPS. With a 144hz display, this is a big let down. The 1080ti could do that well but would overheat after an hour or so on ultra settings. The higher textures seem to kill performance.
My GPU is not using SAM and is not overclocked. A minor overclock does help a bit in overwatch but the power draw isn't worth the gain. I can't enable SAM due to the CSM setting in the bios needing to be off. With that config, I can't dual boot.
When the GPU does well, it blows out the 1080ti but haivng several older games choke or even do worse than the 1080ti is rediculous on a GPU that cost me $1700. I bought the 1080ti used on ebay with a waterblock for $500 about 2 years ago.
My wife has a 6800 XT and it does fine in world of warcraft. Not all blizzard games are hot garbage with AMD cards but several are. I recommend nvidia GPUs if you like blizzard titles.
In retrospect, I probably should have gotten a 3080 instead.