AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT benchmarks revealed — and RTX 3080 should be worried

(Prototype credit: AMD)

When AMD took the covers off the Radeon RX 6000 series, which includes Big Navi, the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6000, we saw it bring some serious graphical firepower to shoot down Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3000-serial.

Simply Team Red has since posted a suite of benchmarks on its site that actually show how information technology'due south set to be a major threat to Nvidia when information technology comes to 4K gaming. And that's thanks to the performance of the Radeon RX 6800 XT vs the GeForce RTX 3080.

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Testing its new graphics cards in a system running an AMD Ryzen ix 5900X processor, 16GB of RAM, and a loftier-cease motherboard, the Radeon 6800 XT with 16GB of GDDR6 video memory would oft outmatch the GeForce RTX 3080 with its 10GB of faster GDDR6X VRAM. Running games at 4K and maxed out, the $649 RX 6800 XT beats the $699 RTX 3080 in games similar Battlefield V, Borderlands 3, and Gears five. It even beats the $1,499 GeForce RTX 3090.

The Radeon card loses out to Team Green'southward high-stop gaming GPU in titles like Doom Eternal and the Resident Evil 3 remake, but the difference is marginal. That means the Radeon RX 6800 XT is offer a lot of bang for the buck.

As for the $999 Radeon RX 6900 XT, it pretty much wipes the flooring with all other graphics cards other than in a few games where the more expensive RTX 3090 pulls ahead. And in The Division 2, AMD well-nigh powerful consumer graphics bill of fare is beaten by the RTX 3080.

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

The less powerful $549 Radeon RX 6800 does a fine chore too. While it can't outpace the more than powerful GeForce RTX 3000-series cards, information technology still beats the $999 GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, the 1-time leader of Nvidia's graphics card pack.

It'due south worth noting that AMD'south benchmarks had its Smart Access Memory feature enabled, which allows for ameliorate advice between GPU retentiveness and the processor. This is something that's unique to the latest Ryzen processors, so if the tests were carried out using an Intel CPU, they could tell a different story,

And no ray-tracing performance was shown off either. Nvidia'southward graphics cards have defended ray-tracing hardware, so there'southward a good chance that they could still be the superior GPUs when it comes to ray tracing.

Yet, these benchmarks paint a strong picture of how AMD's new Radeon GPUs offering impressive value for the money and inject more competition into the graphics bill of fare arena. That should push Nvidia to offer more than competitive graphics cards and in plough force AMD to retort, all of which means better graphics for PC gamers at more compelling prices.

Roland Moore-Colyer is U.K. Editor at Tom's Guide with a focus on news, features and opinion manufactures. He oftentimes writes nigh gaming, phones, laptops and other bits of hardware; he's also got an interest in cars. When not at his desk Roland tin can be found wandering around London, often with a await of curiosity on his face.