AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Full Details: whats new ?

Hello guys. let's start in 1987, when the first video card from ATI appeared. It was named EGA Wonder and worked with EGA graphics . A year later, ATI launched a 16-bit ISA graphics card running in an 8-bit slot. It had connectors for both analog and digital video, so different types of PC monitors could be connected to it . In 1991, ATI introduced the Mach8 to the market, which was originally a coprocessor and then relaunched as an integrated processor as Mach32. And 1992 was the year of the first 2D accelerator from ATI. In 1994, ATI released its first 64-bit Mach64 processor . These products already had features like color conversion and were quite popular as powerful 2D accelerators. And already in 1995, this video card was equipped with a 3D processor and appeared on the market under the name Rage I. At that time, the release of Rage chips was accompanied by the appearance of a new logo on the boxes. In 1996, the company released the Rage 2 graphics card. 

This chip had excellent 2D performance, but reasonably moderate 3D performance. The product was very widespread in the market, although there were some problems with the drivers. And already in 1997 the Rage Pro video card was released, which managed to successfully compete with the Nvidia Riva 128. In the same year, the Rage XL video card was released. It was a heavily pared-down Rage Pro for the OEM market. In 1998, the Rage 128 was released, marking the beginning of the end of the Rage line .

Insufficient texture compression capabilities have reduced the popularity of this video card, as well as driver problems that greatly upset users. In 1999, Rage Fury Maxx came out with two Xs at the end. It was ATI's first dual-GPU graphics card. Unfortunately, the two chips installed on the PCB failed to show decent performance in 3D applications. In 2000, video cards were first sold under the new Radeon brand. The first such novelty was the Radeon 7500, but the performance of this video card did not shock users. Still, Radeon has become a fairly serious novelty on the market. 

The good profit the company earned from the first Radeon products spawned the release of the following models in this line. In 2001, the Radeon 8500 came out in two models. The LE models were designed for the entry level, and the XT models were designed for maximum responsiveness. In 2002, the Radeon 8500 All-In-Wonder was released, where ATI combined a 3D graphics card with an analog TV and radio tuner. It was a very successful move in the OEM market where nVidia was never successful. In the same year a new series was released with the first video card Radeon 9000. 

And after several weak models of the 9000 series, the video card Radeon 9600 Pro became the most popular model of the mid -range in 2003. It was a really good graphics card with decent frame rates, the only drawback of which was the lack of Shader Model 3.0 support. In the same year, the Radeon 9800 XT appeared. It was a very fast and legendary graphics card that could only be called a stove or an airplane taking off . In 2004, with the release of the X700 video card, ATI created a completely new market segment. At a very reasonable price, the video cards did not support shaders 3.0, which negatively affected the competition with the GeForce 6 series video cards. Nvidia cards offered more 3D effects, and more interestingly, resourceful users could simply unlock a GeForce 6600 to a GeForce 6800. And in 2005, the Radeon X850 came out. 

It was a very fast graphics card, outperforming the GeForce 6800 GT in many ways when it comes to Shader Model 2.0b. The situation will be clearer when you take into account Shader Model 3.0 and the fact that many games simply did not work on AMD hardware. In the same year, the X1300 Pro appeared, which finally supported Shader Model 3.0 and DirectX 9. But at the same time it was wildly slow. In early 2006, ATI tried to compete with the seventh generation GeForce cards at least in the mid- range segment with the Radeon X1650 Pro. And in the same year, a very powerful video card called X1950 XTX finally appeared . 

Then ATI practically destroys all GeForce 7 series video cards from nVidia and takes the crown. It was very popular and very fast, but expensive and very hot. One way or another, the Radeon X1950 XTX was the first graphics card to be remembered as the clear winner of a competitor. In the same year, ATI was acquired by AMD and merged into it as the graphics division of the AMD Graphics Products Group. But ATI products continued to be produced under the same brand. In 2007, the Radeon HD 2600 Pro video card was born. At that time they did not make any special competition for GeForce, but ATI video cards for the first time allowed direct audio output via DVI-out. The HD 2900 XT also came out with it, which had terrible driver problems and was just a stove. 

And in the same year the Radeon HD 3850 came out. It was a pretty decent video card. With its performance, it could not stand up to competing GeForce cards. But thanks to the moderate price, it has become a very popular product at the middle level. In 2008, the HD 3870 X2 appeared, which regained leadership, but consumed like a locomotive. In the same year, 4670 and 4870 appeared, which were already more popular due to moderate consumption. Well, as usual, a double version of the 4870 was introduced, which gave cool performance where Crossfire was supported . In 2009, ATI succeeded in making the Juniper line an attractive mid-range option. Low idle power consumption , moderate power consumption under load, and low manufacturing costs made a good profit for the company back then. But in November 2009, the Radeon HD 5870 came out. It turned out to be a high-end card, and quite affordable, which could only be beaten by the GeForce GTX 295 with two GPUs. And 2010 was the last year for ATI. 

This year they managed to release a not bad HD 5670 video card , which sold well in the middle segment. And after 25 years ATI finally turned into AMD. It's a big deal, but it makes sense for AMD. In the same year, the HD 6850 and 6870 video cards were released. They showed very good performance and could work with four monitors at once. And already in 2012, AMD released the HD 7000 line, which for many years kept a not bad level of performance. In 2013, they released the RX 200 series, which essentially replaced and slightly updated the HD 7000. The flagship of this line in the face of the R9 290X were very hot stoves, but they could draw a good number of frames. In 2015, AMD releases its 300th series of video cards with the R9 Fury X at the head. 

And already in 2016 the same Polaris with the flagship RX 480 appear . Then in the spring of 2017 AND decided to re-release the polaris and the RX 500 line was born, which was not much different from its predecessor. This summer they are showing RX Vega graphics cards on HBM 2. These were unique graphics cards for both work and play. But they did not really compete with the green ones, like the polaris. At the beginning of 2019, the Radeon 7 video card is born . 

This is the first video card on the 7 nanometer process technology, which already really showed good performance at the peak of the middle segment, but it was quickly discontinued and did not enter the masses. And already in the summer of 2019, the company releases the first version of the RDNA architecture, of which the RX 5000 are representatives. 

These video cards still occupy not bad positions in the middle segment. But they are clearly far from the green flagships. And just one of these days we will see the continuation of this whole story with the release of Big Navi, which will bring the newest RDNA 2 architecture and possibly compete with the RTX 3000. Well, Thank you guys.