An AMD graphics card launched in 2021 managed to beat Nvidia’s RTX 4080 and AMD’s own flagship, the RX 7900 XTX. It’s sure to be one of the best GPUs you can buy right now – unfortunately, it’s too expensive to be considered useful, and you won’t be able to use it on a regular PC.
The crazy GPU in question is the AMD Radeon Pro W6800X Duo. Thanks to the tests performed by a hardware expert, we have seen that it runs far outside the usual environment. Here’s how it happened.
AMD’s Radeon Pro W6800X Duo is mostly intended to run inside the 2019 Mac Pro. Apple sells it as a separate module, and it costs a fortune – a whopping $5,000. Despite these obstacles, we can see it running inside a regular PC, all thanks to der8auer. The YouTuber is a serious overclocking expert, and apparently he doesn’t shy away from other challenges either, even if they can be very expensive.
First, some quick facts about the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo. The Navi 21-based card consists of two graphics dies, not just one, and they are connected using AMD’s proprietary Infinity Fabric tech. It’s not exactly two full Navi 21 dies, though, because AMD has kept some of the computing units (CU) in each one, cutting it down a bit. In addition, each GPU has 32GB of GDDR6 memory and a total of 512GB/s memory bandwidth.
The number of displays that the GPU can support is certainly impressive. Apple’s product page tells us that the card can run up to eight 4K monitors, four 5K monitors, or six Pro Display XDRs. And if you want not just one, but two Radeon Pro W6800X Duo cards, you can – with an external Infinity Fabric Link connection, two Duo modules can be joined to create a monstrosity with a total of four GPUs.
This powerful GPU is made for workstations and will never end up in the hands of a gamer by accident. It can only run on the 2019 Mac Pro, but der8auer convinced it to run on a standard motherboard and put it through some benchmarks to check performance. To do this, the overclocker needs to make several tweaks.
The standard AMD Adrenalin drivers also present a problem because the card is not intended to be run outside of an Apple computer. Fortunately, the YouTuber was able to overcome that obstacle by using the Apple Boot Camp driver. Once the GPU was finished, der8auer installed it in a system with an Intel Core i9-13900K and 32GB of DDR5-6000 memory.
The benchmark results show that the card is worth the price for those who can use it. It proved to be 4% faster than the RTX 4080 and even 8% faster than the RX 7900 XTX, which means it was able to beat AMD’s current flagship consumer card. However, Nvidia’s RTX 4090 is not undefeated – it still wins by 27%.
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