amd's rdna 2 has been launched into the
wild
and first of all we saw the reference
cards with the 6800xt
offering the best value from amd's side
of the camp
however fast forward a few weeks later
and we've now got
the taichi series from ASRock this is a
custom model
and it's also overclocked out of the
factory and showing you guys side by
side comparisons
with this card versus the reference 6800
and also 6900 xt variants
we can see that this taichi here is
coming much closer to a 6900 xt
and we'll go roll some benchmarks
quickly for you guys and then talk about
what makes this card so special in
particular
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so
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so this card is one of the biggest cards
i've seen here at the studio weighing in
at 1.75 kilograms
sporting two 100 mm fans and a single
90 mm fan in the center where it
definitely has the cooling
to match its behemoth size and we'll
pull up the measurements here for the
dimensions in case you guys
are worried about whether this thing
might fit or not in your
atx tower case measuring roughly 32
centimeters long
though the performance here was very
impressive both out of the box and also
on the custom fan profiles
where if i had to select from any of the
different fan profiles here
i would actually even on this card
consider selecting 80
if i wanted to overclock or just keep my
temperatures down
over long periods of time where we saw
at 80 46 decibels this was doing a
phenomenal job of cooling
same with the 60 manual fan speeds and
then out of the box we're getting 52
fan speeds but these were in pretty hot
ambiance so delta adjusting these
to what i usually test out and run the
numbers here shows that this cooler is a
phenomenal choice
not just for the lower temperatures but
also the low noise
so this massive specimen that i'm
holding in my hands isn't all
just looks and speaking of the looks
we've got the rgb
on the side of the card which lights up
the tai chi logo then the three fans one
of those in the middle
lights up full rgb then on the back
plate there's also the tai chi symbol
and logo that lights up rgb all of which
can be controlled through the polychrome
software
with eight different styles to choose
from or you can switch the leds off
both in software all manually on the
card itself
with a manual flick switch they've also
got a switch for a dual bios
the quiet mode and also the oc mode
which is the default out of the box
since the car was already extremely
quiet out of the box and performed
extremely well
i decided to just give you guys what
we're showing up here on the screen
the oc numbers where what we saw in
those gaming benchmarks was
the tai chi was performing very close
and sometimes even
beating a 6900 xt and it was doing so
whilst remaining quieter and of course
saving more money
now compared to a 6800 xt reference
model
this is really bringing a better cooling
solution and even then
the reference model was doing a pretty
good job especially for out of the box
solutions
from the manufacturer themself now if
you're getting a card like this you're
probably interested
in taking it even further above the
limits out of the box
and here's where there's some good and
also bad news the good news being that
this cooler can support healthy
overclocks where when we overclocked it
we decided to quickly run shadow of the
tomb raider where we got this thing up
to 2.7 gigahertz
and we managed to max the memory slider
no problems but we only saw
a little bit of a performance uplift
because the millivolt
gains were limited out of the box at
1150 millivolt
we also see the power being limited at
115
and this took our wattage up not too
much however the performance gains
weren't so much either
though if we do the flip side of the
coin under vaulting a lot of you guys
out there are interested in
undervaulting these new cards in 2020
and here's where we saw a phenomenal
drop in wattage when we dropped it down
to
10 060 millivolt and we dropped it down
to 2.2 gigahertz roughly
on the clocks this is where we saw the
wattage going down
over 100 watts so this card right here
will undervolt
very well however the performance will
dip since this is an overclocked model
out of the factory
but whether saving 100 watts and keeping
your card cooler and quieter
is a choice for you guys i'm not too
sure but i will start putting my radeon
profiles
in the description for you guys if you
wish to load them up
and check things out for yourself so do
keep in mind that i am running
in a hotter ambient climate here so if
anything these profiles should work
on the majority of people's pcs out
there but what about some of the other
features on the tai chi
well if you want to download asrock's
tweaker they've just released a new
version of this
and it will support different profiles
out of the box having silent and also
overclock mode
and i will say that i was very impressed
with how this software not only looked
but performed so asrock have definitely
stepped up their game
in providing software utility though
although everything may seem
amazing up until this point custom
models like the tai chi right here
generally do command a premium over the
reference models
this costing over a hundred dollars more
than the 6800 xt
does make it carry a premium however i
feel like in this case with the tai chi
they've beefed up
everything to the cooler to the
temperatures to the noise to the rgb
to the vrm implementation and to the
clock speeds
which makes it perform phenomenally well
in the benchmarks
now in terms of outputs you've got a
hdmi 2.1
and also two display outs and a usb
type-c and you've also got that 120
hertz 4k
10-bit support at 444 rgb
if you wish to play games in 120 hertz
full glory which now works with amd and
the lg oleds
the one thing about the new rdna 2 cards
is when i tested the crypto mining
performance out
they don't really do mining well in
terms of what else is out there in terms
of their price tags
on those products so if you're a gamer
and you're looking for one of these it's
going to perform exceptionally well
if you're a cryptocurrency miner then
you will wish to look elsewhere and then
we've got smart access memory
which i did talk about in the previous
review that we did on the 6900xt
i'll link that up here for you guys
where it does work it does give
performance gains depending on your
situation
but i found it to be kind of in a beta
phase personally where it was giving out
some stuttering
and in certain circumstances was giving
out some funny buggers
on the bias itself to the point where we
had to reflash the bias so me personally
i would give smart access memory a
couple of months
before i used it but it is a benefit
that amd cards are currently offering
and what about ray tracing here's where
the 6800 xt tai chi
will beat out the reference 6800 xt
and this all leads us now to a
conclusion
with this behemoth right here and me
personally if you guys have followed me
for a while
you'll know that i love big chunky cards
the bigger
the better when it comes to a graphics
card i'm a desktop enthusiast
and this card right here really hits the
mark if you are a desktop
gaming enthusiast where this cooler
right here and the way asrock have
implemented this card
is phenomenal they've definitely stepped
up things over the 5700 xt
tai chi which i liked that when that
came through but this thing is
even better and you've also got the
performance that'll come
very close and actually closer to a 6900
xt
and with a bit of overclocking will
actually beat it than that of a 6800 xt
so they've done a great job however you
will pay a bit of a premium
for this card right here that's of
course when it comes in stock
but that being said the 6800 xt tai chi
oc
gets the big yes of approval here at
tech yeah city and with that aside
i hope you guys enjoyed today's review
if you did
then be sure to hit that like button for
us and also let us know in the comment
section below
what you think of this behemoth right
here
in today's review love reading those
thoughts and opinions
just like this question of the day which
comes from hip dad and they ask
nice video is this contest worldwide
and they're talking about our rx 6800
video that we recently did in comparison
mainly to the 30 70 and 3060 ti
where the starter video i said that
we're giving away the rx 6800
that contest is still running so go
check that video out if you want a
chance
so i already answered that question in
the video but that was mainly just to
say thank you to the guys
who watched through to the end and i'll
catch you guys in another tech video
very soon
and if you're new around here then you
may wish to sub and ring the bell
to see the videos as soon as they drop
and i'll catch you next time
peace out for now bye
you