Choosing between 6900XT and RTX 3080

[silentassassin1989]

Hey all,

I currently have two cards:

* RTX 3080 Founder's edition

* 6900XT - Amd reference model

 

I am currently using my 6900XT as my daily driver and it's fine. I wanted to some mining on my RTX 3080 but I'm kind of scared because the memory temps go up to 105c so I stopped doing that.

 

What I wanted to know is which would you recommend for 1440p gaming? Some of the games I play:

* Assassins Creed Valhalla -> Plays much better on AMD

* Control -> Plays better on Nvidia
* Starcraft 2 -> Either GPU is overkill

* Rage 2 -> No difference on either GPU
* Horizon zero dawn - Tiny bit better on AMD

What I'm thinking of buying:

* Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition -> RTX 3080 probably b/c of ray tracing

I'm pretty much swapping between the two cards regularly because some titles work better with Ray Tracing + DLSS and some just straight out kick ass on the 6900XT. 
But the process of switching my cards all the time is kind of painful. I was thinking about getting a 3090 but it's 1500 euro's which kind of means I have to do away with both cards and that seems like a waste.

If I end up keeping the 3080 as my daily driver I'm a little bit afraid of the 10g being too small and that I end up buying another graphics card next year. With the 16G on the 6900XT there is less to worry about.

[OfficialTechSpace]

The 6900XT is AMD's RTX 3090 equivalent. It's without-a-doubt faster than your 3080. [Reference: https://youtu.be/nxQ0-QtAtxA?t=319]

 

It's up to you which GPU you'd rather have installed, but I'd recommend the 6900XT.

 

Selling the 3080 wouldn't be a terrible option either, they go for about $2500 USD on eBay.

13 minutes ago, silentassassin1989 said:

What I'm thinking of buying:

* Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition -> RTX 3080 probably b/c of ray tracing

Ray Tracing still has a massive impact on performance in 2021. You shouldn't make any purchase decisions based on it for another few years.

[AndreiArgeanu]

I feel like the 3080ti would probably be better whenever/if it comes out, it has the extra memory, and it should match the 6900xt in performance, that is if rumors are anything to go by. So if you can get your hands on one it would be ideal.

When it comes between the 6900xt and the rtx 3080, I'd say the 6900XT is better in pure rasterization and may be the card you want to stick to but the RTX 3080 does have much better ray tracing performance plus DLSS which can give it a one-up in titles that support the technology.

[silentassassin1989]

8 minutes ago, OfficialTechSpace said:

The 6900XT is AMD's RTX 3090 equivalent. It's without-a-doubt faster than your 3080.

 

It's up to you which GPU you'd rather have installed, but I'd recommend the 6900XT.

 

Selling the 3080 wouldn't be a terrible option either, they go for about $2500 USD on eBay.

Ray Tracing still has a massive impact on performance in 2021. You shouldn't make any purchase decisions based on it for another few years.

I host LAN parties and one of the organizers lives in Finland and flies out here so I need to have a PC at the ready for him, which I will put the other card in so selling the card isn't really an option (unless I stock it with my old RX 580).

 

Money isn't really the issue here and I was actually thinking about trying to get the RTX 3080 Ti when it comes out. But it's quite a bit of sniping work to get cards for MSRP these days. 

With most of the games I play I leave Ray tracing off anyways, mostly because I want to be able to enjoy my games at 144fps (my screen's refresh rate) because I like smooth graphics more than sheer detail. A smoothly rendered scene is more satisfying to me than a not-so-smooth pretty picture. So with regard to that your answer makes sense and I should use my 6900XT for the foreseeable future.

[Chris Pratt]

For your use case it's a toss up, really. The three killer features for Nvidia are RT, DLSS, and NVENC. If you don't care about ray tracing, that's a wash. Running at only 1440p (especially without ray tracing), both cards are overkill, anyways, so DLSS isn't necessary. You didn't mention streaming, but if you don't do that NVENC isn't as important.

 

The 6900XT has much better raster performance, but it's like deciding between overkill and even more overkill for your gaming requirements. If you ever want to do 4K, actually use RT at some point, or have designs on getting into streaming, the 3080 wins hands down. Otherwise, you might as well just keep whichever you like the looks of better for all it really matters.

[silentassassin1989]

1 minute ago, Chris Pratt said:

For your use case it's a toss up, really. The three killer features for Nvidia are RT, DLSS, and NVENC. If you don't care about ray tracing, that's a wash. Running at only 1440p (especially without ray tracing), both cards are overkill, anyways, so DLSS isn't necessary. You didn't mention streaming, but if you don't do that NVENC isn't as important.

 

The 6900XT has much better raster performance, but it's like deciding between overkill and even more overkill for your gaming requirements. If you ever want to do 4K, actually use RT at some point, or have designs on getting into streaming, the 3080 wins hands down. Otherwise, you might as well just keep whichever you like the looks of better for all it really matters.

I do the very occasional stream but when I do I use h264 fast and it's all fine. My 5800X handles it very well with almost no FPS loss. I know NVENC rocks at 6mbit and AMD's solution is horrible at 6mbps (I tested it).

I only play at 1440p, I find 4k very unpleasant to watch. I had a 4k monitor but returned it because it just hurts my eyes. Not because of the visual quality but the resolution is just too high. Maybe this changes after I get eye surgery but so far I'm sticking with 1440p for a while.

 

The thing that has me on the fence it the low amount of VRAM in the 3080 to be honest. The visual style of 6900XT matches my build better but the 3080 FE is gorgeous in almost any build :). 

[Chris Pratt]

21 minutes ago, silentassassin1989 said:

I do the very occasional stream but when I do I use h264 fast and it's all fine. My 5800X handles it very well with almost no FPS loss. I know NVENC rocks at 6mbit and AMD's solution is horrible at 6mbps (I tested it).

I only play at 1440p, I find 4k very unpleasant to watch. I had a 4k monitor but returned it because it just hurts my eyes. Not because of the visual quality but the resolution is just too high. Maybe this changes after I get eye surgery but so far I'm sticking with 1440p for a while.

 

The thing that has me on the fence it the low amount of VRAM in the 3080 to be honest. The visual style of 6900XT matches my build better but the 3080 FE is gorgeous in almost any build :). 

10GB of VRAM is more than enough, even for 4K, and especially at 1440p. The only reason you would need more is if you're doing some sort of machine learning or similar productivity workload, that actually uses large amounts of VRAM. However, then, I'd say even the 6900XTs, 16GB probably would be enough. Basically, 10GB of VRAM is either fine, or you should get a 3090. It's not a factor in favor of the 6900XT really either way.