Some of the review scores seem to call it the Pulse+ such as the Shadow of Tomb Raider one, liking the benchmark results though albeit it's not a big step up over the 6800 XT and pricing well that's probably a big step up when it comes to flagships like Nitro or Devil also there's like two or three designs for the Nitro and Pulse this time that I need to check on what the deal is with that. EDIT: Could be a nice step up in terms of fan noise and how these scale though in addition to thermal benefits albeit less so than the blower style 5700 XT had on it's stock variant. (Maybe not worth another 100 Euro on the price tag however ha ha.)

JonasBeckman:

Some of the review scores seem to call it the Pulse+ such as the Shadow of Tomb Raider one, liking the benchmark results though albeit it's not a big step up over the 6800 XT and pricing well that's probably a big step up when it comes to flagships like Nitro or Devil also there's like two or three designs for the Nitro and Pulse this time that I need to check on what the deal is with that. EDIT: Could be a nice step up in terms of fan noise and how these scale though in addition to thermal benefits albeit less so than the blower style 5700 XT had on it's stock variant. (Maybe not worth another 100 Euro on the price tag however ha ha.)

Also showing Pulse+ in Temps and Acoustics - infact it appears to be in all the results showing as Pulse+ so far..

Yeah, this is what happens when you receive a card 24 hours prior to launch 🙂 Sorry, obviously it is labeled wrong in the charts. PULSE+ = NITRO+

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

Yeah, this is what happens when you receive a card 24 hours prior to launch 🙂 Sorry, obviously it is labeled wrong in the charts. PULSE+ = NITRO+

Thank you for both today's reviews. Can you quickly answer me why one product is recommended and the other one top pick? Which is their basic difference that made you label them such way?

itpro:

Thank you for both today's reviews. Can you quickly answer me why one product is recommended and the other one top pick? Which is the basic difference that made you label them such way?

Sure, I was struggling with the choice here myself. First off, perf is the same. I think the XFX is the better-looking product (albeit that is subjective), it is a notch more silent. But my biggest gripe and the decisive factor is pricing. The XFX sells at 749 USD whereas the Sapphire card will sell at 769 USD. That's 799 EUR. And remember this is a card series that sells at 649 USD for the reference model. I understand a 50~75 USD extra for the premium model, but 769 USD is very steep. But if everybody disagrees with me on this, I'll happily make it a top pick award, this one was difficult to call.

Quite possibly the model I'm going to get. Sapphire never let me down.

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

Sure, I was struggling with the choice here myself. First off, perf is the same. I think the XFX is the better-looking product (albeit that is subjective), it is a notch more silent. But my biggest gripe and the decisive factor is pricing. The XFX sells at 749 USD whereas the Sapphire card will sell at 769 USD. That's 799 EUR. And remember this is a card series that sells at 649 USD for the reference model. I understand a 50~75 USD extra for the premium model, but 769 USD is very steep. But if everybody disagrees with me on this, I'll happily make it a top pick award, this one was difficult to call..

I agree with you, these prices are so high - I doubt there are going to be price drops on either side because NV will position their price for RT performance and AMD will position their price for raster and vram. This trend of ever increasing GPU prices seems like it will always continue - we've still yet to have any increase in performance at the £200 as well, 480/580/5500..... It's getting absurd.

If this is not a paper launch then I don't know what a paper launch is..... https://i.imgur.com/nCvSpz4.png

ACEB:

Far Cry benchmarks mention the 3090 instead of the 6800xt, the incorrect name in the highlighted graph position on 4k results

Perceptive, thanks, and fixed.

My OCs are based on a lasting set of tweaks. Not based on 'hey look it passed 3DMark this one time'.

Kosmoz:

Maybe you had a bad silicon or some other explanation, but it's not like we didn't already know from various leaks that these cards OC past 2.5Ghz, even past 2.6Ghz. It's not an exception or a fluke this kind of OC for the RX 6000s.

I can speak for myself as to how the tweaking went, 2550 MHz on either card was simply not stable. It's not like we tweak and then run unigine heaven or something, no the cards have to pass four games in Ultra HD with tweaked settings.

Webhiker:

If this is not a paper launch then I don't know what a paper launch is.....

They ordered 0 PowerColor reference model cards, but received 25 of them. That's pretty funny. Otherwise the table is just sad. Of the cards they actually did order, they haven't received any.

i hope Godfall will be used as a benchmarking tool it looks so good

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

I can speak for myself as to how the tweaking went, 2550 MHz on either card was simply not stable. It's not like we tweak and then run unigine heaven or something, no the cards have to pass four games in Ultra HD with tweaked settings.

HH, this is why i come here and trust you

Very tiny rendering performance differences between all these models. So it all comes to which one is more silent and which one is cheaper. ... or more likely, which one is in stock for a few split seconds. Overclocking is dead. RIP.

buhehe:

$120 over MSRP (i.e. +18%) seems like a steep price to pay to get a slighly quieter card and a minor overclock. The reference cooler is no longer garbage, I don't think these AIB prices are justified in the long term.

I have ref. 6800 , quiest card i ever had. Really good cooling . Sure You can OC them to max on ref cooling . I dont see point spending 1$ more.

Thanks Hilbert for the top notch reviews. Some efforts are barely noticed, we know how under pressure one is. We appreciate your work, it's always a joy to have reviews to read. Kudos. On a different subject. Another GPU which I'll not buy. Seriously, these prices are insanely expensive. Yes, I am not forced to buy one. That I know. Not that this will make it cheaper. But I digress.

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

I can speak for myself as to how the tweaking went, 2550 MHz on either card was simply not stable. It's not like we tweak and then run unigine heaven or something, no the cards have to pass four games in Ultra HD with tweaked settings.

Considering the wide boost clock range I would imagine that many of the 6800's and the 6800XT's are pretty variable in what they can achieve and what users would be able to fine tune through a combination of increasing the power limit but without bios modding it seems the default is now 15% not 20% and not 50% plus how quickly the power draw and temps would increase and how much headroom is actually left especially for a factory overclock model like what these are. Somewhat curious what a triple 8-pin can do but I'm going to expect not much and 2500 Mhz is about the best these do and with a good binning on the card at that. Guessing that's why both the Red Devil and Nitro+ utilize double 8-pin connectors and no more this time around too same as Pulse and I expect the Red Dragon would too. Wonder what bios or soft modding can eventually do here, probably also limited returns but someone's going to try for 2600 ha ha. EDIT: There are words for the availability situation but eh plenty of time for display driver and the settings software to mature further at least and what reviews for additional 6800's the XT variant of these and the later 6900 XT will show these capable of and how it compares to NVIDIA. (Same with their GPU's though but newer NVIDIA drivers could also bring some surprises.)

wavetrex:

Very tiny rendering performance differences between all these models. So it all comes to which one is more silent and which one is cheaper. ... or more likely, which one is in stock for a few split seconds. Overclocking is dead. RIP.

Yea, overclocking is really over. I´ve never bothered to oc my 1080ti and it´s going to be the same with my next CPU because Intel, Nvidia and AMD already overclock their parts out of the box... But something that´s making me worry is that suddenly every card seems to suffers from coil whine. How is this possible???

Hey Hilbert I get this is your day job but these cards ARE NOT AVAILABLE TO BUY. You need to call this out and don't review vapour ware products otherwise both Nvidia and AMD will continue supplying cards none of us can buy, making you a shill. TBH I don't even read the reviews for these non existent cards anymore it's a waste of my time as I can't buy them. You make them a recommended buy when there is no stock availability. Stand up for us PC Gamers and say enough is enough.