ITGuru:

Think i will be parting ways with Nvidia in favour of 6900 XT, THE TIME HAS COME. Just need to get my hands on a waterblock for it and overclock the sht out of it.

If they can overclock as well as some of the rumors, it should be a lot of fun.

not going for the Halo product this time round as I just dont need it but this card looks very nice might get a cheaper one as it will be liquid cooled so the coolers a bit redundant

I might wait to see if there is a model from an AIB thats already water cooled with an AIO like from Gigabyte with the waterforce series or if any other AIB throws their hat in the ring with an AIO variant.

let's see if the numbers shipped are good. if so the price of water blocks will drop i'm jonesing to do a SFF loop but you can't do that with Ampere

Will see. I think this new premiere will be better than previous, as there is already AIB sample going to review IT portal in my country. Just ordered HP reverb G2, so...I think 6800xt should be enough for that, as this set runs at 9.3m pixels total at 90hz/fps. Sapphire or powercolor is my choice. RT sucks, and I saying it owning 2080s at the moment. Too much performance loss. It is like anchor for game engine. Fkn dessert map in BF5, no freaking reflection, yet performance automatically dips below acceptable level for me. And y, I know, MP and RT is bad idea. Go figure, u have feature in game/driver and using it is well, pointless... 3y onward maybe will be better. But doubt it. So, fuk RT.

Hope they're going to do a Non XT with the same cooler, if so i'm sold and leaving Nvidia since i'm getting an AMD 5800X.

ITGuru:

They usually charge megabucks for it, you'd be better getting a separate block and doing it yourself, good example was the Gigabyte Waterforce 2080 TI, it was like 600 bucks more than the founder's edition....but it had "nice LED!"

https://videocardz.com/press-release/asus-reveals-custom-radeon-rx-6800-rog-strix-lc-rog-strix-oc-and-tuf-series Asus already announced one..... but I agree with you I am not paying the usual "Asus tax" on this luxury card. I see they are doing a 6800XT TUF though which I must admit I do like a lot as its black out design will go well with my "anti RGB" build 🙂

ITGuru:

Indeed, the only reason why i upgraded from 1080ti to the 2080ti was a a roughly 40%-50% gain in most games, the first thing i always switch off is the RT FX and those overdone reflections that make most textures look like mirrors, whic add very little to realism and demand a lot raw power. I do love the DLSS though, probably will miss it with AMD, i do hope AMD will be able to implement DLSS or at least make their own.

I agree here, I think its going to be a long time before games become dominantly RT focused with full GI and path tracing effects. Right now its just reflections, just go and watch the Watch Dogs Legion RT comparison video.... there is next to no difference in IQ but performance is borked even on 30 series cards compared to RT off. The hardware and software simply isn't there just yet. Though with consoles using basic RT features I can see things slowly but surely changing and maybe next console generation (if there is one) we will have full RT implementation with hardware that can actually drive the performance. As for DLSS, I think its a great tech but I think its much better suited to lower end GPU's. Imagine how well it could be used in the Nintendo Switch 2 (if they stick with Nvidia). I know the current Switch would of benefited hugely from this. As for AMD they said they are still working on something and rumours are pointing towards a collaboration between AMD and Microsoft where they are using a new hybrid form of chequerboard rendering mixed with A.I to up sample to higher resolutions. How well it will work I don't know, and it could all be complete nonsense. One things for certain though we still see a trend with the benchmarks AMD showed off, whereby their cards perform exceptionally well in Microsoft titles (Gears and Forza were shown). This means AMD could end up having a huge leg up this time around on PC ports as everything is using RDNA2 but AMD this time have finally reentered the high end PC GPU market. This could also mean that AMD's RT solution should work really well in these titles.

CPC_RedDawn:

I agree here, I think its going to be a long time before games become dominantly RT focused with full GI and path tracing effects. Right now its just reflections, just go and watch the Watch Dogs Legion RT comparison video.... there is next to no difference in IQ but performance is borked even on 30 series cards compared to RT off. The hardware and software simply isn't there just yet. Though with consoles using basic RT features I can see things slowly but surely changing and maybe next console generation (if there is one) we will have full RT implementation with hardware that can actually drive the performance.

RT comes down to the implementation. Watch Dog Legions RT sucks but Watch Dog Legions without RT sucks anyway - so I think the game should be ignored. It's using it for one effect but Control uses it for 3 effects. Cyberpunk seems to be going a similar route, diffuse, shadows and reflections. DXR 1.1 adds a lot of flexibility and aside from Minecraft we've yet to see how it benefits performance. That's not to mention that both AMD/Nvidia are bringing new features/optimization techniques with RDNA2/Ampere that I doubt are being used in current games.