Nvidia RTX 3080 vs AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT: Which graphics card will win?

(Image credit: Nvidia / AMD)

Information technology seemed for a brief moment that Nvidia was nearly to drive away in the graphics card race with the launch of the RTX 3000 series of cards. But AMD was holding back, revving its engines only to driblet the clutch and zoom towards team dark-green. After years, Nvidia and AMD are going at it neck and neck, each bringing very powerful and capable cards to market.

For consumers, increased competition is a skillful thing. It was fear of what AMD could bring with Vega that Nvidia released the 1080 Ti, a graphics carte du jour and then expert that many of its users forwent upgrading to the 2000 series. And Nvidia even priced the RTX 3080 aggressively, hoping that any affront by AMD would be blunted.

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Well, AMD isn't here to play. To accept on the RTX 3080, AMD volition be bringing out the Radeon RX 6800 XT. On paper, it performs at or slightly above the RTX 3080, while existence $50 less and including six more GBs of memory. Things just got interesting.

Here'due south a breakup of everything you need to know well-nigh Nvidia RTX 3080 vs AMD RX 6800 XT.

Nvidia RTX 3080 vs AMD RX 6800 XT: Toll and availability

The Nvidia RTX 3080 launched on September 17th, and sells for $699. However, Nvidia's new card has been nigh incommunicable to find since information technology start came out, with many scalpers selling it online at exorbitant prices.

The RX 6800 XT is due out on Nov xviii, and will undercut the RTX 3080 by $fifty with a toll tag of $649. As such, we look it to sell out similarly fast.

Nvidia RTX 3080 vs AMD RX 6800: Specs compared

	AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT	Nvidia RTX 3080
Price	$649	$699
Compute Units	72	Due north/A
CUDA Cores	Northward/A	8704
Base of operations Clock	TBD	1440 MHz
Game Clock	2015 MHz	N/A
Boost Clock	2250 MHz	1710 MHz
Memory	16GB GDDR6	10GB GDDR6X
TDP	300W TBP	320W TDP
Retention bus	256-bit	320-bit

Nvidia RTX 3080 vs AMD RX 6800 XT: Performance

While we wish nosotros could give a definitive respond as to which card is nigh powerful, information technology's hard to say without independently testing for ourselves. So don't be swept away past net hype as information technology's not uncommon for companies to fudge numbers to brand its products more than appealing.

Based on the graphs below, both cards are very similar. Co-ordinate to AMD, at 4K, both the RTX 3080 and RX 6800 XT perform on par with one another, with Nvidia pulling slightly ahead in some games while AMD edges out in others. Once more, we don't know the exact test parameters, but if AMD is being fair in its testing, and so both cards are comparable.

Likely, AMD is picking and choosing titles it knows it can eek out a performance edge against Nvidia. While AMD wasn't so crass as to merely include games that it knew information technology could shell Nvidia at, we're not seeing total transparency here. For example, it'southward unclear whether or non ray tracing was turned on for these titles.

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT — (Image credit: AMD)

On the graph in a higher place, nosotros can see that AMD is pulling ahead confronting Nvidia in most benchmarks. It'south a curious consequence, given how far ahead Nvidia has been in the graphics card race these past few years.

Hardcore Nvidia fans will know that team green has a lot more than money than AMD. It means it can invest more than in research and development, ultimately producing more powerful technology. Co-ordinate to Statista, Nvidia invested $ii.viii billion in inquiry and development during the 2020 financial year. By comparison, AMD has spent $508 million on R&D in 2020 so far. That's a massive schism.

And so how is this possible? Well, it's probable that AMD was taking advantage of Smart Access Retentiveness in these tests. Smart Access Memory is when an RX 6000 series GPU is coupled with a Ryzen 5000 series CPU, assuasive the carte du jour to accept full access to the GPUs GDDR6 memory. This will yield greater overall functioning. It may just exist a few percentage points, simply it could exist enough to give AMD the slight edge. Of course, this feature isn't available when coupled with an Intel CPU. And since Nvidia isn't in the consumer processor market place, this kind of proprietary technological cantankerous-talk can merely happen if users are running total AMD hardware.

Nvidia RTX 3080 vs AMD RX 6800 XT: Compages

Comparing AMD'due south RDNA ii architecture to Nvidia'due south Ampere is like comparing — as much as I bewail the clichė — apples and oranges. The two are based on different technologies, use different manufacturing processes, and use unlike metrics. Looking at which has the larger number proves fiddling.

For this generation, AMD has added Ray Tracing hardware on its cards, with inquiry and development collaboration with Microsoft. The goal for both companies has been to optimize DirectX 12 Ultimate, as evidenced by Microsoft's total hardware support on Xbox.

RDNA 2, like the original RDNA, is a vii nanometer chipset, but with 50% performance per-watt improvement. Even though RDNA 2 is using the same manufacturing processes as concluding generation, AMD says its optimized data paths on the back stop to eek out that increased performance per watt. There's also a 30% clock increment over last gen and it sticks to a 300 watt TDP.

Ampere is Nvidia's architecture with the 3000 serial of GPUs. It's fabricated some major changes over last generation'south Turing. Ampere fries, manufactured by Samsung, sit on an 8 nanometer process, a huge improvement over Turing's 12 nm. Information technology does require a higher TDP at 350 watts. Merely over Turing, Ampere brings 2nd generation Ray Tracing cores and third generation Tensor Cores, delivering two times the throughput. While Nvidia claimed in its presentations that 3080 would bring double the performance over 2080 Ti, information technology was more like a thirty-70% increase, depending on the title. Even and then, those are dramatic gains.

Nvidia has invested a significant amount of time and resource into making Ray Tracing a thing. Information technology learned a lot from Turing, and is bringing that experience to Ampere. AMD, on the other hand, is just at present getting in on the Ray Tracing game. Co-ordinate to some number crunching from VideoCardz, AMD's Ray Accelerators appear to be 33% slower than Nvidia'south RT cores. This could prove to be meaning one time we get out easily on for full comparison testing.

On the image upscaling side, AMD did unveil its Fidelity FX Super Resolution, a direct competitor to Nvidia's DLSS. While DLSS was shaky at offset, it's come a long way, and tin help games fake a smooth 4K-looking experience. We'll have to look and meet how Super Resolution matches upwardly in one case review units are sent out.

Nvidia RTX 3080 vs AMD RX 6800 XT: Memory

Let's assume that both the RTX 3080 and RX 6800 XT are exactly the same in operation. Information technology's in memory, nevertheless, where AMD will pull alee. While Nvidia was being miserly with the amount of memory included on its cards, simply 10 GBs on the 3080, AMD is packing its cards with 16GBs worth of chips. But both Nvidia and AMD are using slightly dissimilar technologies.

While AMD is sticking with GDDR6 memory, Nvidia has gone with Micron'southward GDDR6X, a memory technology that tin push double the bandwidth. Simply Nvidia isn't clocking its memory at double. It will instead keep it at a lower clock speed while gaining the aforementioned level of functioning. This can yield less heat, more than overclocking capabilities, and of course, Nvidia could push out a patch to increase that frequency.

Even and then, the RX 6800 XT is probable the improve value, as that increased overhead tin help in 4K gaming, high resolution video encoding and other GPU intensive applications.

But the most curious addition to AMD's technological lineup is Smart Access Memory. Like mentioned above, it's the ability for both an RX 6000 series GPU and a Ryzen 5000 serial CPU to work in tandem to accost all of the 6000 serial GDDR6 retentiveness. We're seeing a similar thought with the upcoming PS5 in which Sony has designed its chips to work together for greatest overall efficiency.

If this tendency holds truthful, then it could mean that manufacturers volition try and push custom ecosystems of computer hardware and so users can obtain maximum performance. What'due south stopping AMD from creating custom RAM and SSDs? All of which can be optimized at the hardware level for greater overall performance. Nosotros wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia is trying to effigy out a similar solution, which might exist hard as it isn't competing in the consumer desktop CPU infinite. Possibly a partnership with Intel?

Nvidia RTX 3080 vs AMD RX 6800 XT: Outlook

Information technology's a hard time to be a PC gamer right now. In that location are astonishing new cards on the market, but nobody can seem to find any. From long lines in front end of Micro Centers to bots buying up all 3080 inventory only to sell on eBay, finding a GPU has been similar searching for water in a drought.

Fifty-fifty then, if yous see pre-orders for an RX 6800 XT, nosotros nevertheless would recommend not clicking the Buy It Now button. Wait for contained testing before you lot drop $650 on a slice of hardware that might go out you disappointed, no matter how tempting it is.

Imad Khan is news editor at Tom'southward Guide, helping straight the solar day'due south breaking coverage. Prior to working at the site, Imad was a full-time freelancer, with bylines at the New York Times, the Washington Post and ESPN. Outside of piece of work, yous can find him sitting blankly in front of a Word document trying desperately to write the outset pages of a new volume.