AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is a high-end desktop GPU based on the RDNA2 architecture and uses the Navi 21 chip which is manufactured in 7nm at TSMC. The GPU has 80 compute units (CUs) / 5,120 shader units, as well as 16 GB of GDDR6 VRAM with a 256-bit interface (16 Gbps, 512 GB/s). The GPU supports hardware accelerated raytracing thanks to the RDNA2 architecture.

Features
RDNA2 serves as the basis for the Navi 21 graphics chip, which is the successor to the Navi 10 graphics chip from the previous RX 5700 series. A number of new features like SAM (Smart Access Memory) and the Infinity Cache make the RX 6800 series very interesting. PCI Express 4.0 and RIS (Radeon Image Sharpening) are still available. The new Media Engine lets you decode video at up to 8K resolution, and the new Display Engine supports screens up to 8K at 60Hz including HDR or 4K HDR at 144Hz.

Performance
The performance of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is between a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 (when Raytracing is not used). Using Raytracing, the performance falls back a bit (depending on the game) as the RTX cards offer a faster Raytracing rendering. Still, the RX 6900XT is one of the fastest desktop cards in 2021 and well suited for 4K gaming. Read our full review on the RX 6900 XT for more details.

Power consumption

The power consumption of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is quantified by the manufacturer at 300 Watts (TGP) and is thus somewhat less power-hungry than the GeForce RTX 3080 (320 Watts).

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 is high-end desktop graphics card based on the Ampere generation. It uses the big GA102 chip and offers 8,704 shaders and 10 GB GDDR6X graphics memory.

The gaming performance in 4k is clearly better than the old GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (approximately 15% faster). Therefore, even demanding games should run with maximum detail settings in 4k. Enabling raytracing will however reduce the framerate and therefore maximum details won't be playable. 

The RTX3080 is produced in 8nm at Samsung and rated at 320 Watt but the power efficiency is still quite good.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q