We Have Been Testing The Radeon RX 6800 Series On Linux

Written by Michael Larabel in Radeon on 16 November 2020 at 09:00 AM EST. 56 Comments
RADEON
But can't tell you yet how it performs...

Besides this morning being the announcement of the AMD MI100 "Arcturus" accelerator and ROCm 4.0, this morning also marks the embargo lift on the Radeon RX 6000 series "unboxing" content. But the embargo hasn't yet lifted on the Radeon RX 6800 series reviews / performance benchmarks.


So at least I can confirm that Linux testing has been ongoing for the Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT graphics cards that were announced last month with an availability date of 18 November. Both cards have been in-house this month and currently undergoing testing.


While no new performance/review information can be shared for the "unboxing" embargo lift day, it should be fairly obvious that AMD wouldn't send out review samples of these new RDNA2 graphics cards to Phoronix if they were a dud on Linux. From last month as a reminder are the Radeon RX 6000 series Linux support expectations with my Linux/Mesa support expectations for RDNA2 given my close monitoring of the Sienna Cichlid patches and related AMD Radeon open-source Linux driver work over recent months. So check that out for now if trying to get your Linux system ready for a Radeon RX 6800 series upgrade in the coming days.


The Radeon RX 6800 is a 250 Watt graphics card aiming for entry-level 4K performance and to compete with the RTX 2080 Ti while should hit retail on Wednesday at ~$579 USD. The Radeon RX 6800 XT at $649 USD should go up directly against the GeForce RTX 3080. AMD isn't shipping the Radeon RX 6900 XT flagship graphics card until December.


So for now, here is an apt size comparison of the graphics cards and stay tuned for the full Radeon RX 6800 series Linux coverage soon.

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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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