Sapphire announces the Radeon RX 6800 XT NITRO + and Pulse

The Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT will be released on November 18, 2020, while the Radeon RX 6900 XT will arrive on December 8, 2020. AMD's partner manufacturers are also preparing to release their custom graphics cards. Sapphire, for its part, will release the Radeon RX 6800 XT NITRO+ and Pulse .

The RX 6800 cards revisited

AMD's various partner manufacturers are preparing to release their revamped versions. Asus will release the ROG Strix LC Radeon RX 6800 XT . This card features a hybrid air-liquid cooling system. It's designed for overclocking enthusiasts due to the efficiency of the air-liquid cooling system. Asus will also present other cards, such as the ROG Strix RX 6800 with a standard three-fan air cooler. MSI, for its part, will release the MSI RX 6800 XT Gaming X Trio, a Radeon version of the RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio, in addition to other models such as MECH, EVOKE , and others.

Sapphire is also making waves, having just announced its Radeon RX 6800 XT Nitro+ and Radeon RX 6800 XT Pulse . The first model, the Radeon RX 6800 XT Nitro+, is designed for the most demanding enthusiasts seeking enhanced performance. The second model offers reasonable performance with a standard three-fan air cooler. Both cards feature a sleek black color scheme and a compact, robust design. The Pulse model also incorporates subtle red accents. These cards are quite large and will occupy 2.5 to 3 slots.

The performance of the Radeon RX 6800 XT

This new Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card, based on the RDNA 2 , features 72 Compute Units , 128MB of Infinity Cache, and 16GB of GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit memory bus. It is manufactured using a 7-nanometer process. It has 128 ROPs and 288 texture units. Its 28 billion transistors operate at 2.015 GHz and reach a maximum frequency of 2.250 GHz in boost mode . The Infinity Cache optimizes memory bandwidth, enabling it to transfer up to 512GB of data per second.

This new card supports ray tracing and features 72 ray accelerators. AMD confirms that its new cards will support ray tracing if the game uses standardized common APIs such as Microsoft's DXR or Vulkan Raytracing. These cards will obviously not support Nvidia's proprietary APIs. The Radeon RX 6800 XT consumes approximately 300 watts.

For the moment, Sapphire has not announced the prices of these 2 Radeon RX 6800 XT NITRO + and Pulse cards, but they are surely close to those of AMD: $649.