The Radeon RX 6900/6950 XT Owners Thread.

LtMatt · 1 Jan 2022 at 20:06

uksoldierboy said:
Matt i've just done some testing using the in game benchmarking.

My findings

Settings 1440P - 6900XT @2600-2700 (2664) 2124 mem (2112) 12600KF @5.1/ Ecores 4.1
Everything ultra including advanced options, Vulkan, water quality 3/4, TAA medium, vsync off, triple buffering off, Radeon image sharpening 50%

Run 1 REBAR Disabled
Vram usage peak 8097mb
FPS 92.4

Run 2 REBAR Disabled
Vram usage peak 9279mb
FPS 92.2

Run 3 REBAR Disabled
Vram usage peak 8944mb
FPS 92.4

With REBAR Enabled

Run 1
Vram usage peak 13491mb
FPS 98.1

Run 2
Vram usage peak 13479mb
FPS 98.1

Run 3
Vram usage peak 13468mb
FPS 98.2

All measured using Radeon Metrics overlay.

unless there's a read error, it does seem like using Rebar, at least in RDR2 on a z690 and intel 12 series, does in fact use quite a bit more vram, strangely i've seen it go as high as 16570mb in game after a few hours of playing, as mentioned though, i've not suffered none of the issues one would associate with hitting the vram limit, i've seen it go over 16gb on a few occasions, maybe my lack of issues is down to having a PCI Gen 4 Nvme and thus the transfer speeds are much higher?
in any case, using rebar at least in my brief testing using the benchmarking, does give more performance.
I'll continue to look into it more though, i've only had the one crash in hours and hours of gameplay ( DX FFFFF) not even sure it's related to memory usage, but thought it worth mentioning.

Good testing, I’ll download this tonight and report back tomorrow morning with my findings. Thanks for laying everything out neatly I’ll follow your testing method.

uksoldierboy · 1 Jan 2022 at 20:27

No worries bud it'll be interesting to see your results.

gpuerrilla · 1 Jan 2022 at 20:33

Good to see the feature that was included in the gen GPU releases just over a year back improves performance (much like how nvidia's should dependant on game+driver).

Cryfreeman · 1 Jan 2022 at 22:03

Thought I would try some older stuff with the beast 6900xt. Divinity 2 Definitive edition maxed at 4k/120 looks great! Didn’t think the difference from 60 would be so nice heh.

uksoldierboy · 2 Jan 2022 at 00:16

Digging more into the memory issue matt, I've come across quite a few post throughout various forums of people having the same issues, all of them with 6900xts and either sam or rebar enabled using vulkan.
The issue doesn't present itself using dx12 at all.
The posts all noted the same thing as me, when the bench starts or when gaming, the vram usage gets higher and higher, never going down until its used up and crashes.

LtMatt · 2 Jan 2022 at 05:26

uksoldierboy said:
Digging more into the memory issue matt, I've come across quite a few post throughout various forums of people having the same issues, all of them with 6900xts and either sam or rebar enabled using vulkan.
The issue doesn't present itself using dx12 at all.
The posts all noted the same thing as me, when the bench starts or when gaming, the vram usage gets higher and higher, never going down until its used up and crashes.

Had a look around myself, you might be onto something. Looks like it's affecting Nvidia too since I found 3090 users with the same issue, also using ReBar. Out of memory Error Crash, ERR_GFX_D3D_DEFERRED_MEM :: Red Dead Redemption 2 General Discussions (steamcommunity.com)

The game has just finished downloading, so I'll give it a go with SAM enabled and see what's up. Might be more of an app issue than a driver issue if it's affecting both vendors.

LtMatt · 2 Jan 2022 at 06:37

uksoldierboy said:
Matt i've just done some testing using the in game benchmarking.

My findings

Settings 1440P - 6900XT @2600-2700 (2664) 2124 mem (2112) 12600KF @5.1/ Ecores 4.1
Everything ultra including advanced options, Vulkan, water quality 3/4, TAA medium, vsync off, triple buffering off, Radeon image sharpening 50%

Run 1 REBAR Disabled
Vram usage peak 8097mb
FPS 92.4

Run 2 REBAR Disabled
Vram usage peak 9279mb
FPS 92.2

Run 3 REBAR Disabled
Vram usage peak 8944mb
FPS 92.4

With REBAR Enabled

Run 1
Vram usage peak 13491mb
FPS 98.1

Run 2
Vram usage peak 13479mb
FPS 98.1

Run 3
Vram usage peak 13468mb
FPS 98.2

All measured using Radeon Metrics overlay.

unless there's a read error, it does seem like using Rebar, at least in RDR2 on a z690 and intel 12 series, does in fact use quite a bit more vram, strangely i've seen it go as high as 16570mb in game after a few hours of playing, as mentioned though, i've not suffered none of the issues one would associate with hitting the vram limit, i've seen it go over 16gb on a few occasions, maybe my lack of issues is down to having a PCI Gen 4 Nvme and thus the transfer speeds are much higher?
in any case, using rebar at least in my brief testing using the benchmarking, does give more performance.
I'll continue to look into it more though, i've only had the one crash in hours and hours of gameplay ( DX FFFFF) not even sure it's related to memory usage, but thought it worth mentioning.

Definitely seeing higher video memory usage with SAM on. All information included in the screenshots below. I did multiple runs but the results were nigh on identical each time.
RDR2 - 1440P Everything maximum settings, MSAA/FXAA/res scale off, water quality high preset - 3/4.

SAM On - 12.8GB

SAM Off 7.3GB

Game seems to run fine with SAM on or off on Vulkan on the limited testing I've done so far. I'll need to play for a couple of hours to see if any problems surface with it enabled.

Given the performance increase from SAM is only 5 FPS or so, I'd probably just turn it off for now mate until the games had a patch.

Interestingly, when i tried to launch DX12 mode I got the same error as reported by users on the Steam forum here, running 3090s with ReBar on.

nvidiamd · 2 Jan 2022 at 07:33

Something is wrong anyway since VRAM usage is extra 5gb with SAM on. In any other game, SAM only needs under 1gb more.
I remember i read some tests and the biggest gain from enabling it was the increase of min FPS. So 5 FPS extra isn't much but if you also get extra 15 FPS for min FPS, that is already a lot better.
It needs the same extra VRAM if you enable it in DX12?

LtMatt · 2 Jan 2022 at 07:50

nvidiamd said:
Something is wrong anyway since VRAM usage is extra 5gb with SAM on. In any other game, SAM only needs under 1gb more.
I remember i read some tests and the biggest gain from enabling it was the increase of min FPS. So 5 FPS extra isn't much but if you also get extra 15 FPS for min FPS, that is already a lot better.
It needs the same extra VRAM if you enable it in DX12?

Wasn’t able to test as the game threw up the error I mentioned above.

uksoldierboy · 2 Jan 2022 at 11:38

LtMatt said:
Definitely seeing higher video memory usage with SAM on. All information included in the screenshots below. I did multiple runs but the results were nigh on identical each time.
RDR2 - 1440P Everything maximum settings, MSAA/FXAA/res scale off, water quality high preset - 3/4.

SAM On - 12.8GB

SAM Off 7.3GB

Game seems to run fine with SAM on or off on Vulkan on the limited testing I've done so far. I'll need to play for a couple of hours to see if any problems surface with it enabled.

Given the performance increase from SAM is only 5 FPS or so, I'd probably just turn it off for now mate until the games had a patch.

Interestingly, when i tried to launch DX12 mode I got the same error as reported by users on the Steam forum here, running 3090s with ReBar on.

Thanks for taking the time bud to do this, weird one for sure, had another crash last night, this time it just threw me back to desktop, no errors, just quit the game, the vram usage was over 16gb again.

The performance is fine with rebar/Sam off on these 6900xts so I'll just run with it off I guess, I'll also try doing some dx12 benchmarking and see how it gets on.

melmac · 6 Jan 2022 at 16:06

This is my last throw of the dice, I think my card is dead, but, I want to double check with you guys to see if there is anything else I can do.

Earlier today the electricity in my area went out for a split second. When I rebooted my computer, there was just a black screen on my monitor. And you know the beep that happens when you connect/disconnect a USB device? This beeping was happening every few seconds.

So I tried safe mode and it loaded in fine, no black screen. From Safe mode I removed the AMD drivers and rebooted the computer. This time it loaded into windows fine, obviously with no GPU drivers installed. But, there was corruption around the edges of the screen, which wasn't there in safe mode. I said I would go ahead and try to install the drivers, but, the installs gets to about 20-30% than it black screens again and I can't see anything.

I tried using DDU to uninstall the drivers. But, it made no difference, as I soon as I try to install the drivers(doesn't seem to matter what version) it black screens.

It's a reference model from Sapphire. Is there anything I else I can try before starting an RMA?

LtMatt · 6 Jan 2022 at 16:38

melmac said:
This is my last throw of the dice, I think my card is dead, but, I want to double check with you guys to see if there is anything else I can do.

Earlier today the electricity in my area went out for a split second. When I rebooted my computer, there was just a black screen on my monitor. And you know the beep that happens when you connect/disconnect a USB device? This beeping was happening every few seconds.

So I tried safe mode and it loaded in fine, no black screen. From Safe mode I removed the AMD drivers and rebooted the computer. This time it loaded into windows fine, obviously with no GPU drivers installed. But, there was corruption around the edges of the screen, which wasn't there in safe mode. I said I would go ahead and try to install the drivers, but, the installs gets to about 20-30% than it black screens again and I can't see anything.

I tried using DDU to uninstall the drivers. But, it made no difference, as I soon as I try to install the drivers(doesn't seem to matter what version) it black screens.

It's a reference model from Sapphire. Is there anything I else I can try before starting an RMA?

Try changing the cable or using DP/HDMI, depending on what you were using first. But other than that, I got nothing if it was truly working fine until that happened.

melmac · 6 Jan 2022 at 16:50

LtMatt said:
Try changing the cable or using DP/HDMI, depending on what you were using first. But other than that, I got nothing if it was truly working fine until that happened.

Thanks Matt. Yeah, I tried it using a HDMI cable, no output at all once I try to install the drivers.

The Sapphire reference don't have a dual Bios switch do they? Or it's hardly worth flashing a Sapphire reference bios onto it? IF such a thing is even possible with these GPUs.

EDIT: And, yes, the card was working perfectly fine.

Game · 6 Jan 2022 at 17:01

was you running surge protection from the socket ?

melmac · 6 Jan 2022 at 17:04

Game said:
was you running surge protection from the socket ?

Yes, have a surge protector.

Chud_Jenny · 6 Jan 2022 at 17:25

melmac said:
Yes, have a surge protector.

Quick check for the PSU. If you have an RGB mouse or keyboard plugged in. Turn the system off, flick the switch off and if the lights turn straight off the 12V rail is cooked on the PSU normally. Should take 10-30secs+ if the PSU is good for the caps to discharge.

melmac · 6 Jan 2022 at 18:06

Chud_Jenny said:
Quick check for the PSU. If you have an RGB mouse or keyboard plugged in. Turn the system off, flick the switch off and if the lights turn straight off the 12V rail is cooked on the PSU normally. Should take 10-30secs+ if the PSU is good for the caps to discharge.

Thanks for the suggestion, but, it isn't the PSU

Did your test and then tried another PSU just to be sure.

Chud_Jenny · 6 Jan 2022 at 18:10

melmac said:
Thanks for the suggestion, but, it isn't the PSU Did your test and then tried another PSU just to be sure.

I'd try the card on another board to be 100% sure and RMA if it's not happen on a 2nd board.

melmac · 6 Jan 2022 at 18:52

Chud_Jenny said:
I'd try the card on another board to be 100% sure and RMA if it's not happen on a 2nd board.

At this stage I am pretty certain it's the card. Just checked safe mode again and the graphic corruption at the edge of the screen is there in safe mode too.

Drumroll · 6 Jan 2022 at 21:42

Took delivery of a Red Devil, was suspicious when both seals were open. No protective rubber on the PCI-e terminals.
Tried my luck with the FE dealer and God, never again.
The card is a beast performance wise, but the coil whine was the worst I ever noticed on a GPU.
After two days arguing with the dealer, who tried to strong arm, I managed to get a collection booked. Tomorrow I’ll send the GPU back and taking delivery of a lesser 6800XT from Overclokers. £400 cheaper at this point seems a good deal. back to the 6900XT, I was pleasantly surprised with it scoring 19200 on air and no overclock, while the 3090 on water and overclocked only scored 17800.
Really gutted sending the GPU back, but even at a discount, I wouldn’t risk an open box for a £1400+ GPU, even at discounted price.