Radeon Pro W6800X Duo Outperforms the RX 7900 XTX

It’s not common to see professional graphics cards beating the gaming-dedicated GPUs because gaming GPUs are dedicated to provide maximum performance in video games for comparatively less cost.

This is why it’s hard to find a gamer opting for a professional AMD or Nvidia GPU because they are several times more expensive but deliver less in video games.

In a recent experiment by popular overclocker Der8auer, he used the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo MPX Module that features an aluminum heatsink with no fans, rated at 400W. The Radeon Pro W6800X Duo was launched specifically for Mac Pro 2019 for those who wanted to push their performance in graphically intensive applications.

This MPX module was launched at €5000 but somehow Der8auer managed to get it for €3500. The Pro W6800X Duo has two Navi 21 chips, but each is cut down to 60 Compute Units, making 3840 stream processors for each die. The total memory on this dual GPU is 64GB where each GPU can utilize 32GB of their VRAM separately.

The card is almost impossible to run on a regular desktop as it was specifically designed for Apple Mac Pro 2019. However, Der8auer some adjustments and modifications that allowed it to work with the Z790 motherboard and an i9 13900K.

As the GPU featured an MPX connector and PCI-E connector, it can only be connected with the PCI-E interface. Apart from that, Der8auer connected two 12V and two ground wires to the 16-pin PCI-E connector from the power supply so that the GPU can be fed enough power. After that, the GPU was connected to the motherboard using a standard PCI-E x16 riser cable.

After failing the Timespy test a couple of times, he managed to finally go through the full benchmark process that provided these results. As you can see, the 6800X Duo was able to score 97.21 fps which even beat the RTX 4080 and the RX 7900 XTX by 4% and 8% respectively.

Only the 4090 could beat the 6800X duo by a big 27% margin. No real gaming tests were conducted but I assume that the results should have been similar. This was definitely a nice experiment by Derbauer on what we could achieve if we can make proprietary products work on regular platforms. But this does not mean that the W6800X Duo will make a good gaming card because it is far more expensive than the current-gen GPUs and it’s not easy to find or even make it work on a desktop.

Not only Derbauer had to make several modifications to power up this GPU which most PC users won’t be able to but he also had to install Apple Boot Camp driver because the regular Radeon Adrenalin software refused to install.

Source: Der8auer: Youtube