Skip to content

Main Navigation

Puget Systems Logo
  • Solutions
    • Recommended Systems For:
    • Content Creation
      • Photo Editing
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Adobe Lightroom Classic
        • Adobe Photoshop
      • Video Editing
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Adobe After Effects
        • Adobe Premiere Pro
        • DaVinci Resolve
        • Foundry Nuke
      • 3D Design and Animation
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Autodesk 3ds Max
        • Autodesk Maya
        • Blender
        • Cinema 4D
        • Houdini
        • ZBrush
      • Real-Time Engines
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Game Development
        • Unity
        • Unreal Engine
        • Virtual Production
      • Rendering
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • OctaneRender
        • Redshift
        • V-Ray
      • Digital Audio
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Ableton Live
        • FL Studio
        • Pro Tools
    • Engineering
      • CAD
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Autodesk AutoCAD
        • Autodesk Inventor
        • Autodesk Revit
        • SOLIDWORKS
      • Photogrammetry
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • ArcGIS Pro
        • Agisoft Metashape
        • Pix4D
        • RealityCapture
    • Scientific Computing
      • Recommended Systems For:
      • Data Science
      • Machine Learning / AI
      • Scientific Computing
    • More
      • Recommended Systems For:
      • Compact Size
      • Live Streaming
      • NVIDIA RTX Studio
      • Quiet Operation
      • Virtual Reality
  • Products
    • Intel Core i7 & i9
      Workstations with 13th Gen Intel Core i7 & i9 processors on Z690 and Z790 chipsets
    • AMD Ryzen 7 & 9
      Workstations with AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors on B650 and X670 chipsets
    • AMD Threadripper PRO
      Workstations with AMD Threadripper PRO 5000 WX processors on the WRX80 chipset
    • Intel Xeon W
      Workstations with Intel Xeon W 3300 processors on the C621E chipset
    • Rackmount & Server
      Servers and workstations in rackmount chassis
    • Custom Computers
      Customize a desktop workstation from scratch
    • Custom Servers
      Customize a rackmount server from scratch
    • QNAP Network Attached Storage
      Check out our external storage options as an authorized reseller for QNAP
    • Recommended Third Party Peripherals
      View our list of recommended peripherals to use with your new PC
  • Publications
    • Articles
    • HPC Blog
    • Blog Posts
    • Case Studies
    • Podcasts
    • Press
  • Support
    • Contact Support
    • Support Articles
    • Warranty Details
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Press Kit
    • Testimonials
    • Careers
  • Talk to an Expert
  • My Account
  1. Home
  2. /
  3. Hardware Articles
  4. /
  5. Agisoft Metashape 1.6.5 – AMD Radeon RX 6800 (XT) Performance

Agisoft Metashape 1.6.5 – AMD Radeon RX 6800 (XT) Performance

Posted on December 2, 2020 by William George
Always look at the date when you read an article. Some of the content in this article is most likely out of date, as it was written on December 2, 2020. For newer information, see our more recent articles.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • Test Setup
  • Benchmark Results
  • Performance Analysis
  • Are AMD’s Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT Good for Agisoft Metashape?

TL;DR: AMD Radeon RX 6800 & 6800 XT Performance in Metashape

Unfortunately, these new AMD Radeon cards are not able to keep up with NVIDIA's comparably priced GeForce RTX 30 Series video cards in Metashape. Better optimization of Metashape for AMD cards, especially in the Build Depth Maps step, might be able to improve their performance in the future – but for now we would recommend sticking with NVIDIA for this application.

Introduction

AMD recently launched a new generation of their Radeon graphics cards, and we have finally gotten our hands on the first two models – the RX 6800 and 6800 XT – courtesy of our friend Brian Stroh at BPS Customs. With this product line, AMD's emphasis seems to primarily be on gaming performance… but since our focus here at Puget Systems is on workstation applications, we are giving them a shot in several professional software packages. This article will look at how they handle Agisoft Metashape, the only photogrammetry program we test which does not explicitly require CUDA support (and thus a NVIDIA graphics card).

Agisoft Metashape Photogrammetry Performance Review for AMD Radeon RX 6800 & 6800 XT
Image
Agisoft Metashape Photogrammetry Performance Review for AMD Radeon RX 6800 & 6800 XT

If you want to see the full specifications for the new Radeon RX 6000 Series, we recommend checking out AMD's product page. But at a glance, here are what we consider to be the most important specs:

VRAM Cores Boost Clock Power MSRP
GeForce RTX 3070 8GB 5,888 1.70 GHz 220W $499
Radeon RX 6800 16GB 3,840 2.10 GHz 250W $579
Radeon RX 6800 XT 16GB 4,608 2.25 GHz 300W $649
GeForce RTX 3080 10GB 8,704 1.71 GHz 320W $699

While specs rarely line up with real-world performance, it is nice to see AMD including 16GB of VRAM on their new Radeon 6800 cards. However, based on our past testing, this really shouldn't affect Metashape performance in any meaningful way.

From a pricing standpoint, these cards are right in between the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and 3080 – although currently, supply is so poor on all of these cards that you would be lucky to find one in-stock for anywhere near the manufacturer's suggested retail price. We typically use the MSRP as a baseline, though, in order to rule out fluctuations due to different brands, sales, and scarcity.

In the end, what this means is that we will be primarily looking to see if these cards are able to out-perform the RTX 3070 and whether or not they can beat the more expensive RTX 3080. That is also why we excluded higher (and lower) models from this comparison; if you want to see a wider range of NVIDIA cards, check our our article from the RTX 30 Series launch.

CTA Image
Metashape Workstations

Puget Systems offers a range of powerful and reliable systems that are tailor-made for your unique workflow.

Configure a System!
CTA Image
Labs Consultation Service

Our Labs team is available to provide in-depth hardware recommendations based on your workflow.

Find Out More!

Test Setup

Here are the specifications of the system we used for our Metashape testing, with components selected to minimize other bottlenecks:

Test Platform
CPU AMD Ryzen 9 5950X
CPU Cooler Noctua NH-U12S
Motherboard Gigabyte X570 AORUS ULTRA
RAM 4x DDR4-3200 16GB (64GB total)
Video Card AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT 16GB
AMD Radeon RX 6800 16GB

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8GB
Hard Drive Samsung 960 Pro 1TB
Software Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Metashape Professional 1.6.5

To test each video card, we used our in-house Metashape benchmark – both the standard and extended versions. Each was run twice per GPU, and the best results were included in the charts below. Here is some basic info about the image sets in these projects:

  • Rock Model – 36 photos at 20 megapixels each
  • School Map – 51 photos at 18 megapixels each
  • School Model – 439 photos at 18 megapixels each
  • Park Map – 792 photos at 18 megapixels each

We make these benchmarks publicly available under the Creative Commons BY-ND license, so if you use Metashape Professional (or get the 30-day trial) you can download them from our website and compare your system's performance with the results shown here.

Benchmark Results

Here are charts showing the performance of the new AMD Radeon cards (in red) compared to NVIDIA's competing GeForce models (green) and no active GPU (grey – why we included that will become apparent in the analysis):

Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Previous Next
System Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Previous Next

Performance Analysis

The overall spread in our smaller Metashape image sets isn't huge, with no more than a few percent variance there between the four cards we tested, but if you are working with larger projects (hundreds of images or more) then the differences between GPUs become very pronounced. And the delta isn't so much between tiers of cards within the same product family, though that is measurable, but rather between AMD's Radeon line and NVIDIA's GeForce. In both of our larger image sets, the AMD cards were 60-70% slower than their NVIDIA counterparts – which is a massive drop in performance, unfortunately.

But where is such a big difference coming from? To answer that, we have to look at the how these cards fare in each processing step:

Metashape 1.6.5 Radeon RX 6800 & 6800XT vs GeForce RTX 3070 & 3080 Performance Table

Table showing processing time per step (lower is better)

Image
Metashape 1.6.5 Radeon RX 6800 & 6800XT vs GeForce RTX 3070 & 3080 Performance Table

Pouring over the table above provides a few interesting insights:

  1. The AMD Radeon cards are as fast or faster than NVIDIA's GeForce when it comes to Align Photos, Build Dense Cloud, Build Mesh, and Build Texture steps. They are just a hair behind in Build Depth Maps, but not enough to be a big concern.
  2. In Map projects, both the Build DEM and Build Orthomosaic steps appear to be CPU only (since they perform the same across all four video cards as well when no video card is selected in Preferences). Build Dense Cloud may fit this category as well, but it does seem to vary a little between the AMD and NVIDIA cards.
  3. Decimate Mesh is, oddly, slower with AMD cards than with no GPU selected at all (and faster on NVIDIA cards). It is an extremely short part of the overall photogrammetry process, however, so it isn't worth worrying about.
  4. The big performance issue with AMD cards, then, comes from a single step: Build Depth Maps. Having one of these Radeon cards does reduce processing time by 5-10% in this step on our large image sets, compared to no GPU acceleration, but having a NVIDIA GeForce card instead drops that time by ~80%! Since this is also one of the longest steps in Metashape's workflow, the massive lead NVIDIA cards have here carries them to a huge victory in overall processing time as well.

Here is a gallery of charts showing the individual step processing times in the Park Map project, to help visualize these differences:

Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Previous Next
System Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Previous Next

Are AMD’s Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT Good for Agisoft Metashape?

Unfortunately, no – these new AMD Radeon cards are not able to keep up with NVIDIA's comparably priced GeForce RTX 30 Series video cards in Metashape. Better optimization of Metashape for AMD cards, especially in the Build Depth Maps step, might be able to improve their performance in the future – but for now we would recommend sticking with NVIDIA for this application.

As always, please keep in mind that these results are strictly for photogrammetry in Agisoft Metashape. If you have performance concerns for other software in your workflow, we highly recommend checking out our Hardware Articles (you can filter by "Video Card") for the latest information on how a wide range of programs perform with various GPUs, CPUs, and other hardware.

CTA Image
Photogrammetry Workstations

Puget Systems offers a range of powerful and reliable systems that are tailor-made for your unique workflow.

Configure a System!
CTA Image
Labs Consultation Service

Our Labs team is available to provide in-depth hardware recommendations based on your workflow.

Find Out More!

Related Content

  • NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada vs RTX A6000 for Content Creation
  • GPU Rendering: NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Performance
  • Unreal Engine: NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Performance
  • Topaz AI Suite: NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Performance
View All Related Content

Latest Content

  • Basic Guide to Identify and Remove Malware
  • Should I Upgrade My Gpu
  • Case Study with Lost Boys Interactive
  • Samsung 990 Pro Critical Firmware Update
View All
Tags: Agisoft, AMD, GeForce, GPU, GPU Acceleration, Hardware Acceleration, Metashape, NVIDIA, photogrammetry, Radeon, Radeon RX 6800, Radeon RX 6800 XT, RTX 3070, RTX 3080, Video Card

Who is Puget Systems?

Puget Systems builds custom PCs tailored for your workflow

Extensive in-house testing
making you more productive and giving you more performance for your dollar

Reliable workstations
with fewer crashes and blue screens means more time working, less time waiting on your computer

Support that understands
your complex workflows and can get you back up and running ASAP

Proven track record
check out our customer testimonials and Reseller Ratings

Get Started

Browse Our Workstations

Fractal Design Define 7 Chassis with Puget Systems Logo

Select your workflow:

Content Creation
Engineering
Scientific Computing
More

Latest Articles

  • Basic Guide to Identify and Remove Malware
  • Should I Upgrade My Gpu
  • Case Study with Lost Boys Interactive
  • Samsung 990 Pro Critical Firmware Update
  • How To Use Linux Kernel Boot Options
View All

Post navigation

 DaVinci Resolve Studio – AMD Radeon RX 6800 (XT) PerformanceAMD Radeon RX 6800 (XT) Review Roundup 
Puget Systems Logo
Build Your Own PC Site Map FAQ
facebook instagram linkedin rss twitter youtube

Optimized Solutions

  • Adobe Premiere
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Solidworks
  • Autodesk AutoCAD
  • Machine Learning

Workstations

  • Content Creation
  • Engineering
  • Scientific PCs
  • More

Support

  • Online Guides
  • Request Support
  • Remote Help

Publications

  • All News
  • Puget Blog
  • HPC Blog
  • Hardware Articles
  • Case Studies

Policies

  • Warranty & Return
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Delivery Times
  • Accessibility

About Us

  • Testimonials
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

© Copyright 2023 - Puget Systems, All Rights Reserved.