Question 6800 vs 6800XT vs N32

[biostud]

I'm planning to upgrade my system feb/march when the 7800X3D is released so I can decide which 8-core CPU makes most sense to me. I have an Odyssey G9, but I mostly play older games, and world of tanks and no interest in raytracing (at current pricing and performance). The 6800 series seems to offer bester price/performance atm, an N32 arrival is unknown. So what would you do? Buy now before stock is gone, wait and maybe miss out, or something else? I really dont want to spend much more than $800 in Danish prices for a video card.


(Prices for comparison)
3080 10GB ($999)
7900XT ($1142)
4080 ($1570)

 

[coercitiv]

Maybe it is related to my monitor, when I'm in windows the power consumption is 30-35W?

I had some issues with ~30W idle power consumption after setting up a Custom Resolution to "overclock" from 60 to 75Hz. It took me quite a while to realize this was the cause, and the fix was to change the timing standard.

That being said, reported power with an idle 1440p desktop is around 5-6W. With some hardware accelerated app such as a browser with several tabs open, this may go to 12-15W. Getting 30W usually means some type of load, or at least movie decoding.

 

[In2Photos]

Maybe it is related to my monitor, when I'm in windows the power consumption is 30-35W @ 240Hz?

So droping from 240Hz to 120Hz on my display and my idle power, halved. I could also see that vram speeds dropped from 908Mhz to ~192Mhz....

This would be my guess. I have 3 1080p monitors. I'm running the main one @144Hz and the 2 secondary @60Hz. But, my system seems to use about 23W at idle and the vRAM is at full clock speed despite near 0 GPU usage.

 

[biostud]

A reboot seems to have fixed the memory speed being stuck high when i desktop.

I also had to up the mV to 1060, as it crashed @ 1050 mV playing borderlands.

 

[biostud]

Crashed today playing BL3, so up to 1070mV.

Seems like Be Quiet! Pure Power 12 850W is on my shortlist for a PSU for my upcoming build.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Seems like Be Quiet! Pure Power 12 850W is on my shortlist for a PSU for my upcoming build.

You can't really go wrong with Be Quiet!. I've been using some of their SFF PSUs for various builds. So far they've been excellent.

 

[In2Photos]

Crashed today playing BL3, so up to 1070mV.

Seems like Be Quiet! Pure Power 12 850W is on my shortlist for a PSU for my upcoming build.

I crashed twice this past weekend playing the Division 2. But it's the same type of crash I had on my previous system Game freezes, audio sticks, I have to use task manager to close the game. So I don't think it's card/driver/UV settings. I replaced my FSP 850W with a Corsair on my new build. The fan on the FSP was bothering me.

 

[biostud]

I crashed twice this past weekend playing the Division 2. But it's the same type of crash I had on my previous system Game freezes, audio sticks, I have to use task manager to close the game. So I don't think it's card/driver/UV settings. I replaced my FSP 850W with a Corsair on my new build. The fan on the FSP was bothering me.

I got a Radeon driver crash, so the undervolting is a likely culprit

 

[biostud]

You can't really go wrong with Be Quiet!. I've been using some of their SFF PSUs for various builds. So far they've been excellent.

The new one has 10 year warranty and is ATX 3.0. It is a step down from my current platinum to gold rated, but the pure power 13 Titanium is roughly double the price, and with my relatively limited use, I’ll think it will be ok.

 

[Stuka87]

I got a Radeon driver crash, so the undervolting is a likely culprit

If you disable the undervolt (and whatever other changes you have made), do the crashes stop entirely?

 

[Ranulf]

I crashed twice this past weekend playing the Division 2. But it's the same type of crash I had on my previous system Game freezes, audio sticks, I have to use task manager to close the game. So I don't think it's card/driver/UV settings. I replaced my FSP 850W with a Corsair on my new build. The fan on the FSP was bothering me.

Div2 has all kinds of issues with DX12. I've recently got about 6 hours of game time in it despite the issues the devs have been having with crashes on top of the dx12 issues and the delay due to them screwing up the latest season update or whatever. But thats because I'm running in DX11 mode with the 2060Super. Div1 and 2 ran fine for me in DX11 and win7 with a RX570 for years. I've not played the game on the win7 system though since maybe 2020.

 

[biostud]

If you disable the undervolt (and whatever other changes you have made), do the crashes stop entirely?

I haven't really gamed that much before I undervolted it, so I can't tell. But it doesn't crash frequently enough for me to do anything else than raise the voltage a bit and see if that will keep it stable.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I haven't really gamed that much before I undervolted it, so I can't tell. But it doesn't crash frequently enough for me to do anything else than raise the voltage a bit and see if that will keep it stable.

I don't want to mess with the voltages etc. so just set max frequency to 80% and voltage to 95% and performance is literally the same for my RX 6800 but the fans stopped blowing like a jet engine and junction temp went lower than 90C. It does sort of mess up Windows Explorer as dragging the icons becomes insanely lagging. Reboot fixes that.

 

[biostud]

I don't want to mess with the voltages etc. so just set max frequency to 80% and voltage to 95% and performance is literally the same for my RX 6800 but the fans stopped blowing like a jet engine and junction temp went lower than 90C. It does sort of mess up Windows Explorer as dragging the icons becomes insanely lagging. Reboot fixes that.

Uhm, if you set voltage @ 95% aren't you "messing" with the voltages? Whether it is by percentage or an absolute value doesn't really matter. When you set it at 95% then it the same as setting it @ 1092,5mV.

So my settings would be max frequency 98% voltage 93% memory 105% fast timings.

 

[igor_kavinski]

So my settings would be max frequency 98% voltage 93% memory 105% fast timings.

I wonder which games/benchmarks the max frequency really benefits? I've tried Quake RTX, Unigine Superposition and the Titanic HG 401 RT demo and they all run the same with 80% max frequency. It's like the GPU just burns power at higher frequency and it is limited by something else.

 

[biostud]

I wonder which games/benchmarks the max frequency really benefits? I've tried Quake RTX, Unigine Superposition and the Titanic HG 401 RT demo and they all run the same with 80% max frequency. It's like the GPU just burns power at higher frequency and it is limited by something else.

Maybe try something without raytracing? As you've seen in my findings in this thread max frequency cost a lot of power without a lot of performance to follow. 40% power increase for <10% performance increase...

But mostly it benefits the benchmarks were it is important to be faster than the competition, no matter the power cost...

 

[Stuka87]

I wonder which games/benchmarks the max frequency really benefits? I've tried Quake RTX, Unigine Superposition and the Titanic HG 401 RT demo and they all run the same with 80% max frequency. It's like the GPU just burns power at higher frequency and it is limited by something else.

Pretty much all new GPUs are clocked up to their highest possible speeds from the manufacturer. This results in having the voltage set way higher than it would typically need to be to ensure all chips are able to hit those speeds.

The AMD control panel has a built in "automatic undervolt" button. Have you used this? It would likely result in more than a 5% decrease in voltage (That you have manually configured now), which would then mean less heat.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The AMD control panel has a built in "automatic undervolt" button. Have you used this? It would likely result in more than a 5% decrease in voltage (That you have manually configured now), which would then mean less heat.

Yes, that's what I tried before I resorted to manually moving the sliders. The automatic undervolt didn't work too well for me and junction temperature hardly decreased and fans were still howling (in Quake 2 RTX).

 

[biostud]

Pretty much all new GPUs are clocked up to their highest possible speeds from the manufacturer. This results in having the voltage set way higher than it would typically need to be to ensure all chips are able to hit those speeds.

The AMD control panel has a built in "automatic undervolt" button. Have you used this? It would likely result in more than a 5% decrease in voltage (That you have manually configured now), which would then mean less heat.

From my experience and what I’ve seen others getting, you will most likely end up with 1125 mV.

 

[biostud]

Didn't look at power consumption but 2300Mhz @1070mV with my 7800X3D seems to give me ~74 fps

 

[igor_kavinski]

Didn't look at power consumption but 2300Mhz @1070mV with my 7800X3D seems to give me ~74 fps

What was the previous fps?

 

[Hans Gruber]

I am not screwing around. I bought a watt meter in preparation of my next GPU purchase. If I go the 6800xt route, I want the perfect mix of performance and power savings from the wall. Detailed testing would be required.

 

[biostud]

What was the previous fps?

~68fps, so GPU limited at that resolution.

 

[biostud]

I am not screwing around. I bought a watt meter in preparation of my next GPU purchase. If I go the 6800xt route, I want the perfect mix of performance and power savings from the wall. Detailed testing would be required.

I actually bought one for the same reason, but besides the lower power usage it is also much easier to cool.

 

[In2Photos]

I actually bought one for the same reason, but besides the lower power usage it is also much easier to cool.

Agreed. I see low to mid 70s even after hours of gaming and fans are still slow enough that I can't really hear them..

 

[biostud]

Agreed. I see low to mid 70s even after hours of gaming and fans are still slow enough that I can't really hear them..

I tried normal settings on the new setup which gave me 77fps vs 74fps with 1070mV/2300Mhz, well worth running with lower power settings IMHO.