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6900XT or Wait for 3080 Ti

Sky01454

Sky01454

Sky01454

Associate
Joined
27 Jan 2009
Posts
212
Hello folks,

I am in a dilemma right now. I am looking at buying a pre built with a AMD RX 6900XT however as you know the Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti is on its way. Should I wait for the 3080 Ti or go ahead with the 6900XT. The 6900XT I am looking at is the XFX MERC 319 which I hear is one of the best. What do you guys (And girls) think? Would like to know some opinions about this. My 1080 Ti suddenly died which is rather annoying. Running a 980 on a 5120x1440 which is torturing the GPU oh and stuck in 60hz as the GPU is a relic.

Thanks
 
You'll find it difficult to pick up a 3080Ti on launch day at MSRP. Scalpers will likely be selling it for £1800-£2500 if current prices in the UK for the 3080 and 3090 are anything to go by. If you could guarantee a launch day sale, then I'd go with the 3080Ti all day.

If Ray-Tracing and features like NVENC etc aren't a deal-breaker for you, then I'd pick up the 6900XT as part of the pre-build as the 3080Ti and 6900XT will probably trade blows in rasterization.

From reading around, the Merc is also a decent overclocker as well, so you might squeeze an additional 3-7% of performance out of it as well.
 
If you think you would favour a remarkably quiet and cool running card that's exceptionally responsive to performance tuning, more than the additional ray tracing performance and/or DLSS for the games that support those features, then the 6900 XT could be the one for you. General performance is likely to be similar at your resolution. Of course the 3080 Ti could surprise us and be more efficient than it's siblings but I don't think there is any reason to believe that and as per the above, it will likely be illusive and even more painful on the pocket. The XFX merc looks awesome too, it looks like something built by the Empire in Star Wars!

Another thing to consider is the age of your CPU, if it's more than 2-3 years old then the problem with the Nvidia driver overhead could come in to play and hamper the Nvidia card's performance.
 
xenosys1983 said:
You'll find it difficult to pick up a 3080Ti on launch day at MSRP. Scalpers will likely be selling it for £1800-£2500 if current prices in the UK for the 3080 and 3090 are anything to go by. If you could guarantee a launch day sale, then I'd go with the 3080Ti all day.

If Ray-Tracing and features like NVENC etc aren't a deal-breaker for you, then I'd pick up the 6900XT as part of the pre-build as the 3080Ti and 6900XT will probably trade blows in rasterization.

From reading around, the Merc is also a decent overclocker as well, so you might squeeze an additional 3-7% of performance out of it as well.
Click to expand...

Agree with the scalping however I was hoping to get a 3080 ti via a pre built PC.

heartburnron said:
If you think you would favour a remarkably quiet and cool running card that's exceptionally responsive to performance tuning, more than the additional ray tracing performance and/or DLSS for the games that support those features, then the 6900 XT could be the one for you. General performance is likely to be similar at your resolution. Of course the 3080 Ti could surprise us and be more efficient than it's siblings but I don't think there is any reason to believe that and as per the above, it will likely be illusive and even more painful on the pocket. The XFX merc looks awesome too, it looks like something built by the Empire in Star Wars!

Another thing to consider is the age of your CPU, if it's more than 2-3 years old then the problem with the Nvidia driver overhead could come in to play and hamper the Nvidia card's performance.
Click to expand...

I am still running my i7 5930K at 4.5Ghz however I do feel that it will bottleneck current gen GPU's weither its AMD or Nvidia. So I am considering buying a pre built as I might as well upgrade my CPU. The prices of the RTX 3090 I have found are like £300 less than what I would pay for the complete prebuilt PC so I am not convinced to spend that much on a single GPU.
 
Sky01454 said:
Hello folks,
The 6900XT I am looking at is the XFX MERC 319 which I hear is one of the best. What do you guys (And girls) think?
Click to expand...
I believe it's probably the best 6900 XT on air in terms of looks and cooling performance.

You can literally run 2700Mhz on the Merc and keep temps in check with 60-70% fan speed; and it's faster than everything out there at this speed... unless you enable Ray Tracing. :)

See here, here here and here if you want to know more about 6900 XT Merc performance.
 
LtMatt said:
I believe it's probably the best 6900 XT on air in terms of looks and cooling performance.

You can literally run 2700Mhz on the Merc and keep temps in check with 60-70% fan speed; and it's faster than everything out there at this speed... unless you enable Ray Tracing. :)

See here, here here and here if you want to know more about 6900 XT Merc performance.
Click to expand...

Cheers saw your post in the owner thread and has been convincing me not to go for the 3090.
 
As your old card died, you should get what you can find available/or in reasonable time if you intend to play more than little during summer.
There's simply no guarantee about prices normalizing in foreseeable future.
And availability...

Here in Finland many people who ordered Ampere cards after launch from big Nordic countries covering electronics chain are still waiting for their cards.
And actually shop has been cancelling orders because of no slightest sign on availability of some models.
Situation is pretty much same in others shops with little cards arrived.
And if there's some cards left over from existing orders to actually give shelf availability prices are super horrible.
(especially considering 3080 having same amount of memory as what's meant for GPU in XSX...)
And situation is same in Germany with pretty much only cards available from stock having similar pricing.

Definitely can't see another SKU helping availability with limited abiltiy to produce cards.
And would expect already starting price to be horrible.


Myself just ordered Sapphire Nitro+ 6900XT SE in Monday when finding one shop with stock in last weekend with not entirely horrible price.
Just couldn't see any other way to get any new high end GPU in foreseeable time.
Another shop would have had Gigabyte's Gaming OC in stock, which would have been preferred choise as little narrower card likely allowing using Lian Li's PCIe cooler next to cards to exhaust some heat...
But price would have been 13% higher over already salty one.

Well, at least I should have nearly normal price Ryzen 5900X coming hopefully in next week.
 
Just bought a Liquid Devil Ultimate for £1999. Thinking I may have made the wrong decision and cancel the order. Surely it is not worth £700 extra for the pre build Merc 319.
 
Sky01454 said:
yeah its nuts. Going to cancel. Btw is that seriously a R9 290X you are running?
Click to expand...

Yup :D Had a 3070fe but it was being used for gaming maybe an hour or so a week so flogged it on. Going to wait for Battlefield 6 and see what's knocking about gpu wise then.
 
Grim5 said:
That's actually cheap, some European stores have had it listed at 4000 Euro
Click to expand...

The thing is, its not worth £700 more compared to what SI charges for a pre build.

Gerard said:
Yup :D Had a 3070fe but it was being used for gaming maybe an hour or so a week so flogged it on. Going to wait for Battlefield 6 and see what's knocking about gpu wise then.
Click to expand...

Surprised its still kickin as they run so hot I thought most of them has died.
 
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