Review: ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X 16G OC

by Tarinder Sandhu on 10 May 2021, 14:01

Tags: AsRock, AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaeqjr

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Results

Synthetic Benchmarks

3DMark Time Spy 17,059 marks
3DMark Time Spy Extreme 8,657 marks
3DMark Extreme Stress Test 99.0 per cent
DXR Ray Tracing Test 23.38 fps
Port Royal 9,359 marks
Mesh Shader Test 465 fps
World of Tanks enCore RT - FHD 41,724 marks
World of Tanks enCore RT - QHD 27,948 marks
World of Tanks enCore RT - UHD 14,223 marks

Gaming Benchmarks

Borderlands 3 - FHD 127.5 fps
Borderlands 3 - QHD 104.2 fps
Borderlands 3 - UHD 57.3 fps
Civilization VI: GS - FHD 147.3 / 91.4 fps
Civilization VI: GS - QHD 141.7 / 96.4 fps
Civilization VI: GS - UHD 120.7 / 91.6 fps
DiRT 5 - FHD 139.4 / 108.1 fps
DiRT 5 - QHD 117.1 / 55.7 fps
DiRT 5 - UHD 76.1 / 58.9 fps
Final Fantasy - FHD 200.1 / 70 fps
Final Fantasy - QHD 161.4 / 67 fps
Final Fantasy - UHD 94.1 / 34 fps
Forza Horizon 4 - FHD 180 / 158 fps
Forza Horizon 4 - QHD 147 / 127 fps
Forza Horizon 4 - UHD 95 / 79 fps
Gears Tactics - FHD 182.3 / 155.7 fps
Gears Tactics - QHD 132.1 / 85.6 fps
Gears Tactics - UHD 72.7 / 67.1 fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider - FHD 114 / 77 fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider - QHD 81 / 55 fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider - UHD 44 / 29 fps
Watchdogs Legion - FHD 50 / 38 fps
Watchdogs Legion - QHD 37 / 29 fps
Watchdogs Legion - UHD 20 / 15 fps

Vitals

Power Consumption 70W idle, 471W load
Temperature 34°C idle, 72°C load
Noise 28.5dB idle, 39.1dB load

Overclocking

3DMark Time Spy Extreme 9,195 marks
Dirt 5 - UHD 81.4 / 62.1 fps
Gears Tactics - UHD 76.9 / 71.1 fps

Analysis

These results are in line with expectations of a premium PC graphics card. Most games are run with their most demanding settings, including four instances of ray tracing alongside feature tests.

Blending a mix of old and new, it is fair to say the ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X OC is a 4K60 card in the majority of tests. The two outliers are Shadow Of The Tomb Raider and Watch Dogs. The former has first-generation implementation of ray tracing - read heavy penalty - and the latter is a framerate pig even on rival GeForce cards.

For most, then, you can crank the image quality up to maximum, dial the display to maximum, and have solid framerates. Either a high-refresh QHD or 4K60 FreeSync panel would make ideal visual companions.

Pulling over 300W from the board alone means total system-wide power consumption is pretty high, but you certainly don't need a 1,000W PSU - our test system has a Ryzen 9 5950X after all.

ASRock does very well with respect to temperature and, to a lesser degree, noise output. The card is cool, reasonably quiet and composed at all times, and though this may well be sample specific, it has less coil whine on high-framerate loading screens than the MBA card - ASRock's engineering team have done a good job. Switching over to the Quiet BIOS reduces performance by only a couple of per cent yet drops the noise level from 39.1dB to 36.8dB. We'd run it in that mode if it was our PC.

We've previously lamented the lack of overclocking headroom on Radeon RX 6800 XT cards. This model boosts to an average 2,661MHz core and is artificially limited to 17.2Gbps memory, resulting in between five and 10 per cent extra performance. The downside is board power escalates to 347W.

Overall, no complaints from a performance perspective. This really is a premium solution that, unfortunately, like most, remains rarer than hen's teeth.