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Is RX 6800 XT overkill for 1440p

The RX 6800 XT is a 1440p gaming beast despite being nearly two years of age
Last Updated on October 28, 2022
RX 6800 XT 1440p gaming
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The RX 6800 XT is one of the best-built GPUs for high-end gaming. Building a PC with this component is one of the most cost-effective options when looking for 1440p gaming. This GPU was built on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture, the chipmaker’s technology that focuses on upgrading the performance-per-watt and balancing the cost-performance problems in the GPU market.

This graphic card has 2,877 Texture units, 4,608 Stream processors, 72 ray accelerators, a core speed of 1,825MHz, and a boost clock of 2,250MHz. It comes with 16GHz of memory speed, 512GB/s memory bandwidth, and a 300W TDP. It’s an efficient GPU that does not require much power compared with newer units and will perform quite stunningly in 1440p gaming.

GPUMSRP
AMD Radeon RX 6800XT$699
AMD Radeon RX 6800$609
AMD Radeon RX 6900$820
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080$999

In the above comparative table, the difference between the 6800 XT and the 6800 is only $90. For that price, you’ll have a 5%-10% performance increase in 1440p gaming and about the same in 4K gaming.

You’ll see almost the same results on the majority of benchmarks comparing the RX 6800 XT with the RTX 3080, and the price differential is abysmal. The RX 6800 XT won’t be overkill for 1440p gaming, it is, according to the data, the smartest option among current-gen GPUs.

Is the RX 6800 XT future-proof?

Talking about future-proof GPUs at this stage in the technology race is difficult. Big manufacturers are looking forward to bringing major updates that will change PC gaming as we know it. Even now, the release of the RTX 40 series and RX 7000 series are showing incredible upgrades over their respective previous-gen cards. However, not everybody aims for the top components, and not all future-proofing has to be measured under the same metric.

The RX 6800 XT has a 2,250MHz boost clock speed and 16GB of VRAM. Games nowadays run amazingly on these specifications. If you compare the brand new RTX 4080 has the same 16GB VRAM, which lends credence to the future usage of the aforementioned GPU. In our opinion, the RX 6800 XT is a graphic card that will run high-end video games for a long time.

Camilo is a contributor for PC Guide. He's been into tech since he was a teen, surfing through the web and local stores trying to find the cheapest way to play the latest Half-Life on his old Windows