RTX 3080 or the RX 6900 XT?

[Daba]

Hi there! I'm going to build a computer and I want to know which graphics card is better? So I can get the RTX 3080 and the RX 6900 XT for around the same price, but I don't know anything about Radeon cards. Is there some kind of DLSS and how about the performance (and also for ray tracing). Which do you guys recommend? Thanks!

[Naijin]

21 minutes ago, Daba said:

Hi there! I'm going to build a computer and I want to know which graphics card is better? So I can get the RTX 3080 and the RX 6900 XT for around the same price, but I don't know anything about Radeon cards. Is there some kind of DLSS and how about the performance (and also for ray tracing). Which do you guys recommend? Thanks!

AMD just released their FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) which is a competitor to DLSS. Raytracing is enabled by software and it works OK, but not as well as the hardware cores for RT by Nvidia. If you look at pure gaming performance without FSR/DLSS and without raytracing, the 6900 XT is the clear winner. If you do really want to play everything with raytracing, go with the 3080.

 

AMD's FSR is open source and it's just a matter of time before more developers implement it in their games. It works quite well and I would prefer FSR above DLSS if not enabling raytracing.

[MultiGamerClub]

6900 XT if you dont care about ray-tracing too much, FSD is there but its not good enough for sharpening from the few tests ive seen.

 

In my opinion, the 6900 XT is a better card.. But im basing this of my brothers 6800 XT thats really.. really cooled/cold/chill. (Triple fans but somehow reaching only 66c max?!)

 

Assuming the 6900 XT is just even better at that with 16 gb of memory, certantly beats my own 3080 ti that has 12 gb

[leclod]

Just read something about needing a ryzen 5000 and a X570 board to enable Smart Access Memory on the 6900XT

[SavageNeo]

11 minutes ago, leclod said:

Just read something about needing a ryzen 5000 and a X570 board to enable Smart Access Memory on the 6900XT

you can do that on some intels boards. also you can do that with all b550 boards and some x470 and b450 boards too

[Daba]

Thanks everybody! I'm going to look in to it

[Daba]

Is there any chance that a driver's update will improve the FSR and or RT?

[kevintinple89]

I have one powercolor red devil ultimate 6900xt (bought at $1199) and one evga ftw3 ultra 3080 ti (bought at $1549) coming today. And I am deciding which one to keep. I have a Ryzen 9 5900x + x570 board.

If FSR can uplift 6900xt's ray tracing performance on par with 3080 ti, I'd probably keep the red devil as it presents better value.

Otherwise I'd probably keep 3080 ti 

[Gohardgrandpa]

2 hours ago, kevintinple89 said:

I have one powercolor red devil ultimate 6900xt (bought at $1199) and one evga ftw3 ultra 3080 ti (bought at $1549) coming today. And I am deciding which one to keep. I have a Ryzen 9 5900x + x570 board.

If FSR can uplift 6900xt's ray tracing performance on par with 3080 ti, I'd probably keep the red devil as it presents better value.

Otherwise I'd probably keep 3080 ti 

Those powercolor cards are nice. Chunky cooler and cool design. 

[kevintinple89]

29 minutes ago, Gohardgrandpa said:

Those powercolor cards are nice. Chunky cooler and cool design. 

I know! They look really nice!

Now they are both in front of me and I am really not sure which one to open up and which one to return.

[Gohardgrandpa]

1 minute ago, kevintinple89 said:

I know! They look really nice!

Now they are both in front of me and I am really not sure which one to open up and which one to return.

Is the 3080ti worth the $350 difference to you? Idk what you do with the PC but you've got a tough choice to make my friend 

[c00face]

11 hours ago, Daba said:

Hi there! I'm going to build a computer and I want to know which graphics card is better? So I can get the RTX 3080 and the RX 6900 XT for around the same price, but I don't know anything about Radeon cards. Is there some kind of DLSS and how about the performance (and also for ray tracing). Which do you guys recommend? Thanks!

No. 3080 hands down. All this talk about FSR it's bonkers. FSR will be enabled for the 3080, even down to the 1000's nVidia GPU series. The 3080 can make use of all FSR games including DLSS games (AMD can't.) In terms of FPS wise, 6900 XT wins, but only slightly. Nvidia still owns the market in terms of a more powerful GPU, although AMD is catching up (but quite not there yet.) There 6900 XT series card just feels like a re-used 5000 series imo. I might also be biased because I've had bad experiences with AMD cards, except for the RX 570.

[Mister Woof]

You get the one you can get at MSRP

 

While I agree NVidia's feature set is better, (Ray tracing, DLSS, + FSR), none of that matters if you have to blow a bunch of extra money to get it.

[Bobbysixjp]

As many have already stated, if you care about ray tracing then get a 3080. With a 3080 DLSS only becomes relevant if you enable ray tracing in games. Yes AMD has FSR but it also works on Nvidia cards. 
Whether ray tracing is worth it is totally subjective. Hardware Canucks did a great review of RT in 2021 and if you watch the video it basically says that RT is good when you can see the difference but it tanks FPS in games so therefore you need DLSS to increase the frame rate. 
if I were you I would go with the Nvidia card (and this is coming from a 6800 XT owner). If you are planning to keep your GPU for a few years then the extra features (RT, DLSS) might come in useful. 
Or if you really want to go with an AMD card, then consider the 6800XT as it is within 10% of the 6900 XT and is cheaper. 

[Nets]

i had a 3080 and replaced with my 6800 xt.. at 1080p or 1440p 6800xt is faster than 3080 and to be honest you wont notice the diffrence,  in many titles shows on benchmarks even faster than  a 3090... so 6900 xt is even better.... i would get 6900 xt without look back

FSR or DLSS??? dont look to that, DLSS can be a bit better but not that much, probably since works in any card in the future you will see way more tittles supporting FSR than DLSS so is pointless to look on that..... also  if you have one of this cards unless you go 4k+raytracing  you wont need eather DLSS or FSR....

about ray tracing well i dont care about it didnt saw any game that actualy worth having it on...  anyway its my personal opinion, but if well most of benchmarks that we see around was when came out, more recent tittles doesnt show that big difference anymore... 

for future my guess is that AMD will do way better .... in the time you will need to low ur settings to play some game for sure you will turn ray tracing off, so without it AMD is better, also the extra 5gb can be usefull.

other thing  i notice is the power my 6800xt (msi gaming x ) have a powerdraw between 260 -270W  the 3080 was over 320W only on that i would pick again 6800xt... 3080ti will draw even more power... 6900xt doesnt draw much more power than 6800xt...

[Nets]

also check ur psu for 6900xt 750W is enough 3080ti if you have a decent cpu you will need 850W psu

 

[Bobbysixjp]

16 minutes ago, Nets said:

i had a 3080 and replaced with my 6800 xt.. at 1080p or 1440p 6800xt is faster than 3080 and to be honest you wont notice the diffrence,  in many titles shows on benchmarks even faster than  a 3090... so 6900 xt is even better.... i would get 6900 xt without look back

FSR or DLSS??? dont look to that, DLSS can be a bit better but not that much, probably since works in any card in the future you will see way more tittles supporting FSR than DLSS so is pointless to look on that..... also  if you have one of this cards unless you go 4k+raytracing  you wont need eather DLSS or FSR....

about ray tracing well i dont care about it didnt saw any game that actualy worth having it on...  anyway its my personal opinion, but if well most of benchmarks that we see around was when came out, more recent tittles doesnt show that big difference anymore... 

for future my guess is that AMD will do way better .... in the time you will need to low ur settings to play some game for sure you will turn ray tracing off, so without it AMD is better, also the extra 5gb can be usefull.

other thing  i notice is the power my 6800xt (msi gaming x ) have a powerdraw between 260 -270W  the 3080 was over 320W only on that i would pick again 6800xt... 3080ti will draw even more power... 6900xt doesnt draw much more power than 6800xt...

It’s interesting that you went from a 3080 to a 6800XT because I was think of going the other way (6800 XT to a 3080). Would it be possible to give more information about your experiences with both cards? 

[Nets]

Just now, Bobbysixjp said:

It’s interesting that you went from a 3080 to a 6800XT because I was think of going the other way (6800 XT to a 3080). Would it be possible to give more information about your experiences with both cards? 

sure, well when i do bought they were out of stock everywhere and i ended getting the 2 of them... and well my 2 main reasons to swap were this: 

- power draw 260-270W on 6800xt and 320+ on 3080 
- junction temps, gddr6x got rly hot 

about the rest well, its pretty simple i play on 1440p or 1080p  screens and im not big fan of ray tracing and so without ray tracing 6800xt is faster but that isnt noticiable.. about ray tracing ye 3080 gives u a bit more fps in control (only game i tested ) but you can play it on 6800xt to...  in godfall 6800xt is better with ray tracing but for me the games bouth looks way better without ray tracing.

anyway with any of this cards, you wont have any trouble for a long time
 

[Nets]

14 minutes ago, Bobbysixjp said:

It’s interesting that you went from a 3080 to a 6800XT because I was think of going the other way (6800 XT to a 3080). Would it be possible to give more information about your experiences with both cards? 

iv seen ur topic and in ur case , disable the fps cap, enjoy ur games... you have a pretty nice setup, use it as it is and keep ur money... any change u do on ur pc at this momment you give you any noticiable diffrence 

[Bobbysixjp]

3 hours ago, Nets said:

iv seen ur topic and in ur case , disable the fps cap, enjoy ur games... you have a pretty nice setup, use it as it is and keep ur money... any change u do on ur pc at this momment you give you any noticiable diffrence 

Indeed - I think that I will stick with the 6800 XT for now unless I can get a great deal on a new 3080 ( which is unlikely right now).

[Action_Johnson]

Personally, I went with AMD because it feels like everyone and their grandmother has an Nvidia card, plus I really like AMD's VSR, the in-game overlay, and the sharpening used for when I supersample some games to 4K like MSFS, Doom, Far Cry 5, RDR2 etc...

 

I have a 6700XT, but at 1080p, Doom Eternal with RT on runs totally fine, usually hanging out around 90fps, which is a great place to be. 

 

Ray Tracing is still in the tech-demo phase, in some games like Doom Eternal, you kind of have to look real hard to notice it. I think RT right now, is in a similar place as Pixel Shaders were with the GeForce 4 Ti 4600, or the Radeon 9700 Pro.

 

 Personally I think more VRAM is WAAAAAY more important than RT or DLSS. Even my old 5700XT I noticed 8GB wasn't really enough in some cases, despite the core being able to drive the frames...

 

 

[MadPistol]

Big Navi will never be able to match the Ray Tracing performance provided by the RTX 3080 or 3090. DLSS only makes it faster. There have been several videos I've seen between FSR and DLSS, and the conclusion is always the same; FSR creates a more blurry image, but DLSS seems to sharpen certain details at the "Quality" setting. Overall, for the time being, DLSS is the better solution.

So the question now is, which do you prioritize?

6900 XT: Raw rasterization power house.
RTX 3080: More advanced features (Ray Tracing, AI upscaling).

Choose whichever fits your use case better.

[Nets]

59 minutes ago, MadPistol said:

Big Navi will never be able to match the Ray Tracing performance provided by the RTX 3080 or 3090. DLSS only makes it faster. There have been several videos I've seen between FSR and DLSS, and the conclusion is always the same; FSR creates a more blurry image, but DLSS seems to sharpen certain details at the "Quality" setting. Overall, for the time being, DLSS is the better solution.

So the question now is, which do you prioritize?

6900 XT: Raw rasterization power house.
RTX 3080: More advanced features (Ray Tracing, AI upscaling).

Choose whichever fits your use case better.

i wouldnt be so sure about that... to many changes will happen around ray tracing plus the normal reflections are getting so good that RT in many games just makes a mess.... 
also this ray tracing aproach wont last long... pointless the huge impact on fps..so this aproach we know of ray tracing at this moment might not be the same that we will use in the future and then we dont realy know wich one will work better or if it will work at all... 

FSR VS DLSS same shit while playing you wont notice anything.... you  notice when you zoom to 200 or  300%, and on top of that you dont need any of those technology with these cards... it looks better if down RT settings to normal than use DLSS, that iv tested myself when i had my 3080 

[Mister Woof]

DLSS enabled cards are simply more versatile than those that aren't, because AMD chose to allow FSR to work cross-platform, which allows Nvidia cards to upscale in more games. And when DLSS is implemented, it is usually better.

 

As far as AMD Ray Tracing vs Nvidia 3000 series Ray Tracing...it's not comparable. The AMD cards physically just have less potent and numerous Ray Tracing hardware. 

 

If these features are important to you, then the only option at all is Nvidia.

 

But again, none of that matters if availability isn't there. This has been the biggest problem with AMD. They have consistently not had MSRP stock available, and even if they were better across the board, there's still going to be more people buying Nvidia cards simply because there's more available.

So yes, everyone and their grandma has Nvidia, but mostly because there really wasn't an option otherwise.

[MadPistol]

1 hour ago, Nets said:

i wouldnt be so sure about that... to many changes will happen around ray tracing plus the normal reflections are getting so good that RT in many games just makes a mess.... 
also this ray tracing aproach wont last long... pointless the huge impact on fps..so this aproach we know of ray tracing at this moment might not be the same that we will use in the future and then we dont realy know wich one will work better or if it will work at all... 

FSR VS DLSS same shit while playing you wont notice anything.... you  notice when you zoom to 200 or  300%, and on top of that you dont need any of those technology with these cards... it looks better if down RT settings to normal than use DLSS, that iv tested myself when i had my 3080 

There was also a massive hit to performance when the following items were introduced.

• Pixel Shaders
• Real-time lighting and shadows
• Tessellation
• HDR lighting

Performance will improve over time. Ray Tracing is the holy grail of lighting models; there's no chance of it going away.

As far as RT performance on RTX 3000 vs RX 6000 cards, it is literally impossible for the RX 6000 cards to match the RTX 3000 cards on Ray Tracing performance. The RTX 3000 cards are already on their 2nd generation Ray Tracing hardware (RTX 2000 was 1st gen), and they simply have more of it. No amount of driver optimization will change the hardware differences.