AMD’s benchmarks for its second-best GPU, the Radeon RX 6800 XT, shows how it outperforms Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080. If that wasn’t shocking enough, it even beats the top-tier RTX 3090 on several games. This is AMD’s mid-range $649 GPU competing with Nvidia’s $699 and $1499 graphics cards, highlighting the value that might be on offer for those in the market for a new card.
AMD’s 'Big Navi' GPU was eagerly awaited by Radeon fans. Not to mention, disgruntled Nvidia shoppers now open to the competition after the frustration of not being able to order any of the new RTX 30-series cards announced at the beginning of September. AMD already appears to be using the situation to its advantage, after issuing recommendations to retail partners to help avoid the ordering problems that plagued Nvidia. These include detailing concerns about automated ordering bots, the use of CAPTCHA to slow (and potentially eliminate) some bots, limiting purchase quantities, manual validation, and more. AMD is attempting to reduce problems to the only one that may be unavoidable, when demand outstrips supply.
AMD’s benchmarks Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The former is commonly used for benchmarks so the figures may be familiar to many. Using 4K resolution, with settings at Ultra, Filmic SMAA T2X and 16XAF, Nvidia’s RTX 3090 reaches 94.6 FPS, while RTX 3080 hits 83.9. In contrast, AMD’s RX 6800 XT fits between the two, with 90.9 FPS. Testing Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 4K resolution, the frame rates are 95.99 and 88.1 for the Nvidia GPUs and 94.86 FPS for Big Navi, this time falling only 1 frame per second behind the Nvidia card that is more than double the price. These are games where Nvidia’s ray tracing advantage would be expected to show. However, for many of the other games, the RX 6800 XT actually beats the RTX 3090’s frame rate.
How Reliable Are AMD’s Benchmarks?
Skeptics can check other websites for comparisons of Nvidia benchmarks, but the RX 6800 XT doesn’t launch until November 18, 2020, so AMD is the only source for that information for now. Also, the AMD Ryzen 5900X is used for these benchmarks and that also won’t be available until November 5, so a direct comparison is not really possible. In other words, shoppers currently need to rely on AMD’s benchmarks if they are unwilling to wait for hands-on reviews. The concern is that frame rates are only one measure of performance. If the cooling fans are running at full speed and the rendering is somehow not what was expected, more frames per second may not be that satisfying. This is not meant to imply doubt about AMD’s numbers, but simply to serve as a reminder that FPS is not everything.
There’s another detail to consider about AMD’s benchmarks. The RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, but consumers may want to wait for additional benchmarks and before ordering, if they are still torn between the latest graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia.
Source: AMD