Meet the Radeon RX 6800
The Radeon RX 6800 appears to look exactly the same... yet the devil is in the details. AMD has used the same styling in a more restrained manner.
It measures the same 267mm long and 120mm high but is presented in a strict dual-slot form factor, which is a boon for those of you looking to game in a SFF PC. AMD can use a smaller cooler as the Radeon RX 6800 pulls a maximum 250W, or 50W below the XT. The mirrored accents remain though they're smaller on this iteration.
The rear, too, is a copy of its bigger brother, and that's no bad thing save for the exposed brace.
Logs show this one runs at an average in-game Boost Clock of 2,210MHz, surpasses its rated speed by a larger margin than RX 6800 XT.
The side profile of the Radeon RX 6800 makes it look like a squashed version of the XT part. A smaller heatsink and overall profile reduces weight to 1,385g. Still significant, of course, yet the robust build quality translates to no GPU sag when installed in a system. RX 6800 retains the sidelit logo. The default red colour matches better with the card's design.
AMD will be providing these reference boards to partners with the aim of getting stock out quickly to customers who cannot wait longer for aftermarket models. Nvidia doesn't do that with its Founders Edition. Both boards, however, will not be bundled with any game codes.
The fingerprint magnet that's the I/O bracket is exactly the same, and we reckon it would look better if it was anodised in dark grey.
Video wise, both cards support hardware decode of 4K90 and 8K24 for VP9, 1080p600 or 4K150 for H.264, 1080p360, 4K90 or 8K24 for H.265 and 8K30 for AV1. Encode is 1080p360 or 4K90 for H.264 and 1080p360 and 4K60 for H.265. There's no encode for VP9 or AV1. Phew.