AMD released Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black - exclusive reference graphics card with custom design

AMD, as expected, today released Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black & ; a new graphics card based on Navi 2x graphics processor with RDNA 2 architecture. Novelty is a special version of Radeon RX 6800 XT, and differs from her appearance & ; it is completely in black color, instead of silver-black coloration of the original model.

Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black graphic card is now available exclusively at AMD's brand store at amd.com. Surprisingly, the novelty turned out to be priced at the same amount as the original model & ; its recommended price in the U.S. was $649.

Previously, it was reported that the Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black will be a limited edition. By the time this news was written all of the video card's stock had of course been sold out. Whether AMD plans to release new batches & ; is unknown. Recall that both the usual Radeon RX 6800 XT and the new Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black are based on the Navi 21 XT GPU. It has 4608 stream processors. The base clock speed is 1825 MHz, the average gaming frequency is declared at 2015 MHz, and the maximum Boost frequency is 2250 MHz. The graphics card is equipped with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory with an effective frequency of 16 GHz.

AMD will release a special version of Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black "not for everyone" today

Today at 16:00 (Moscow time) AMD will launch the exclusive sale of the special edition of Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics gas pedal in the reference version, but in the new color scheme Midnight Black. It was reported to VideoCardz by one of the members of the so-called «exclusive AMD Red Team» club, whose members are the first to receive the latest news from the company and exclusive offers.

According to Andrew Khoi Nguyen (Andrew Khoi Nguyen), he received an e-mail from AMD, in which the manufacturer announced the upcoming launch of sales of a special version of Radeon RX 6800 XT in black. Recall that the original model's cooling system casing is painted silver and gray. Otherwise the special videocard version does not differ from the usual one. It is based on Navi 21 TX GPU with 4608 stream processors, 16 GB of GDDR6 video memory and 128 MB of Infinity Cache buffer memory. The card takes up 2.5 expansion slots in a PC case, has two 8-pin connectors for additional power and consumes up to 300W. Whether the price of the special version of the Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black will differ from the price of the regular one, which is $649 on AMD.com, is unknown. Recall that at the launch of the Radeon RX 6000 series of graphics cards, the company also allowed AMD Red Team members to buy the new items before others through its AMD.com store. This caused outrage among the regular customers, who didn't get the graphics cards, as all the cards were sold out in a matter of minutes. AMD's letter regarding Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black launch specifically states: «Based on feedback and popular requests from our community, we have created a limited batch of Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black graphics cards that offer the same amazing level of performance as the very popular Radeon RX 6800 XT. This is an exclusive advance notice to members of the AMD Red Team community. The number of graphics cards available will be limited. Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black graphics cards will be available only at AMD.com via the link included in the email on April 7, 2021, from approximately 6:00 a.m. Pacific North American Time, 9:00 a.m. North American Eastern Time, 3:00 p.m. Central European Time and 9:00 p.m. Taiwan Time».

AMD has already ceased production of reference graphics cards Radeon RX 6000.

Many end consumers have seen the new AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards this half year only in the price lists of online stores in the neighborhood with inflated prices. Now familiar with the plans of AMD sources say that production of reference versions of Radeon RX 6900 XT, Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800 has been discontinued.

Image Source: AMD

As early as last month, our own sources reported anonymously that AMD's plan was to supply reference graphics cards within approximately two weeks of the start of sales of the respective models, then they were to give way to partner products that relied on their own graphics card design. Cowcotland reports that production of reference versions of Radeon RX 6900 XT, Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800 has been discontinued. Given that video cards are difficult to buy, it is unlikely that they will be present in the price lists of stores for a long time. Soon they should give way to graphics cards in the performance of partners AMD & ; such a scheme of cooperation allows video card manufacturers to earn more from the sale of products, because the reference graphics cards they just resell, getting them in a ready form from AMD.

AMD will stop producing reference Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 in early 2021.

Reference samples of Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 graphics gas pedals will not stay on the market for long. This was announced by Scott Herkelman, Senior Vice President of AMD Radeon.

Image Source: TechPowerUp

When asked by a Twitter user, he answered that the reference versions of these video cards will be produced only until the beginning of 2021. After that, the company will rely on sales of models in non-standard version from its partners.

Recall that the start of sales of reference versions of video cards series Radeon RX 6800 took place on November 18. As expected, the novelties were in serious deficit and were quickly purchased worldwide. Many video card stores were never reached. Implementation of graphics cards Radeon, at least in the West, is engaged in the AMD itself and its partners, who also presented reference versions of gas pedals, but under their own brands. In addition, many partners of AMD company have already presented their non-reference versions of these models of graphics cards. However, the latter will go on sale not earlier than November 25. In contrast to the same NVIDIA, for AMD, the production of reference samples of new graphics cards only during the first months of their implementation is quite standard practice. Usually after that, the production and sales of graphics gas pedals Radeon are exclusively engaged in its partners, producing models with a different configuration of circuit boards and cooling systems.

How was the start of sales of Radeon RX 6000: AMD sold cards to fans by invitation, and the rest were not enough.

We don't know who's to blame for this situation; coronavirus, limited stocks, speculators or careless statements by AMD chief game architect Frank Azor, & ; however, the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 reference cards launched yesterday were instantly sold out. Moreover, the novelties have never reached many stores. Including the Russian ones;

In the Network, many complain that they did not have time to make a purchase, because all available offers ended in minutes, so their order was canceled. Others complain that the video cards did not even reach their local stores. Many recall the words of Frank Azor about « nonpaper launch » others & ; with tears in their eyes watching how the purchased video cards began to appear on eBay at absurdly inflated prices.

The redeemed Radeon novelties began to appear on the secondary trading floor

Let us remind you that in Russia video cards in the reference version of AMD itself will not be sold, sales of new products will be carried out by various partners of the company. Western users, in turn, have the opportunity to purchase AMD products directly through its official website. However, most ordinary buyers were deprived of this opportunity, because AMD this time decided to play unfairly.

@Radeon thanks for the early access trip to the future. #RX6000LaunchDay @VideoCardz pic.twitter.com/DgQ3bKdo6H & ; xyberKnight(The TechGames Crusader)���� (@xyberknight) November 18, 2020

Screenshots of e-mails appeared in the Network, which the company sent to its most loyal users who are part of the so-called Team Red Plus team. Its members got an exclusive opportunity to purchase Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 graphics cards earlier than others. In particular, in a letter, AMD indicated that the offer is limited and asked not to share the link to buy a video card with « the rest » consumers.

Against the background of such news especially cynical look the words of Frank Azora, who said on Twitter that he himself was able to buy a Radeon RX 6800 graphics card through the AMD website, without using a corporate account, but only a few times updated the page with the product.

Just successfully ordered an @amd @Radeon RX 6800 for myself on https://t.co/MnReZDudwp. Required some refreshing to get the order through but it worked. pic.twitter.com/0ERpS2BmnA & ; Frank Azor (@AzorFrank) November 18, 2020

As for the Russian market, the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 graphics cards as a separate product are not yet sold anywhere. The novelties can be found only in ready-made gaming computers. For example, such:

Source of images: Digital Razor

The Russian representation of AMD believes otherwise. Its press release states the following: «Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT are available from today in retail stores and on AMD.com at the recommended retail prices of 53,590 rubles and 59,990 rubles respectively»... Unfortunately, in fact, the situation was the opposite. For example, according to a comment on the website DNS Club, which, apparently, left a representative of the retail network DNS, November 18, the start of sales of new products from the Russian seller did not take place. The message also indicates that the delivery of graphics gas pedals is delayed, and at the start will be few copies.  There is no certainty on the date of start of sales. They may or may not start on November 19. However, before the launch the company will try to notify potential buyers in time. Russian retailer uses a similar approach to sales for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards.

Found a slide where AMD advertises ray tracing with Radeon RX 6800 XT: more than 60 FPS in Metro Exodus at 1440p.

VideoCardz resource had at its disposal a slide from the presentation of AMD company, which it will publish tomorrow together with the launch of its graphics gas pedals Radeon RX 6800 series. The slide shows the performance diagrams of the Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card in five games with support for DXR (ray tracing) nbsp technology; at 2560 × 1440 pixels resolution.

According to the source, the performance of the Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card was tested on a system with a Ryzen 9 5900X processor and 16GB of DDR4-3200 RAM at maximum image quality settings. For example, in Battlefield V, the average result of Radeon RX 6800 XT is 70 frames per second; in Call of Duty Modern Warfare, the card shows about 95 frames per second on average; in Crysis Remastered , about 90 frames per second; in Shadow of the Tomb Raider , 82 frames per second on average. The lowest average value this graphics card model shows in Metro Exodus & ; 67 frames/sec. AMD will not stop at the gaming tests and will also show the comparison of Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon VII performance in creative applications. According to VideoCardz, the company will release special plug-ins for using hardware ray tracing acceleration capabilities in such applications as Blender (including Cycles), as well as Houdini and Autodesk Maya. As an example, the source provides the following results: using the Radeon ProRender 2.5.17 plugin for Blender 2.90 Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card up to 49% faster renders the scene of The Junk Shop, up to 60% faster copes with the scene of Barcelona Pavilion, up to 62% faster draws Car Demo and up to 68% faster draws the scene of Classroom. All these demo scenes can be downloaded from the official Blender website. During the presentation, AMD will also confirm that it is developing FidelityFX Super Resolution technology (the official name of the technology). It is an analogue of NVIDIA DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling, Deep Learning Algorithms Smoothing). The company will not go into details yet, unfortunately, but will point out that it works with game developers on its adaptation in game projects. Recall that to work with DLSS technology, NVIDIA uses tensor cores of video cards of Turing and Ampere generation, with which the image on the screen is drawn at low resolution and then artificially scaled to higher resolution using machine learning algorithms.

Unusual black AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT reference photo

In the Chinese media space were published very interesting photos of an unusual sample Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card. Interest in the images was caused by the fact that the graphics gas pedal is fully made in black. As it turned out later, the photo shows a special version of Radeon RX 6800 XT, which Lenovo uses in its desktop gaming computers.

The fact that the photo shows exactly the Radeon RX 6800XT model, indicates the size of the graphics card cooling system, or rather its thickness.

Reference version of the Radeon RX 6800 XT

Recall that the AMD graphics cards RX 6800 XT, RX 6800 and RX 6900 XT itself contain silver inserts on the front side of the housing of the cooling system, and use a silver back plate.

There is also a change in the color of the casing edging on the top of the graphics card. In the original design, it is red. In the published photo & ; black. As sources indicate, black Radeon RX 6800 XT was produced by Sapphire. And it seems that the only difference from the reference version of this model is a different color of the cooling system casing. In one of the photos, black Radeon RX 6800 XT is located next to the GeForce RTX 3070, for which Lenovo has developed its own cooling system with two fans. One of Lenovo's representatives also published photos of a black Radeon RX 6800 XT as part of a gaming computer. Apparently, the graphics card logo has LED backlighting. The Radeon RX 6800 XT is based on the Navi 21 XT GPU with 4608 stream processors, 288 texture blocks and 128 raster blocks. The series of new Radeon graphics gas pedals is based on the RDNA 2 architecture, one of the features of which is the emergence of the so-called Real Time Beam Accelerators (Ray Accelerators), which are part of each Compute Unit of the graphics core. They perform the same function as the RT cores of GeForce RTX 20-series and the latest 30-series graphics cards. All currently available Radeon 6000 Series graphics cards feature 16GB of GDDR6 video memory as well as 128 MB of Infinity Cache fast buffer memory, which increases the bandwidth of the main memory stack. The Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 benchmarks will be available on November 18th. Recommended price for the former is $649, the latter $579. According to the ASUS company representative, at the start of sales video cards will be available in limited quantities. Approximately one week– two reference versions should also be expected to start selling non-standard versions of these graphics gas pedals. Nothing is yet known about what kind of camp the above black model Radeon RX 6800 XT belongs to. The flagship of the series Radeon RX 6000 & ; model Radeon RX 6900 XT will go on sale on December 8. The recommended price for the graphics card is $999.