RX 6800 vs RTX 3070 Comparison and Benchmarks

The competition in the best value high-end graphics cards segment has become very fierce with the launch of Radeon RX 6800. It is the third card in the AMD Radeon RX 6000 series as it sits below the Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT. The direct competitor of Radeon RX 6800 is the GeForce RTX 3070 which is the third card in the RTX 30 series from Nvidia. RX 6800 and RTX 3070 are high-end cards that offer incredible performance for the price. The cards are powerful for high refresh rate 1440p gaming and are equally good enough for 4K gaming too. So, if you are confused about which card to get for your next or current gaming rig then here, I am going to compare both these cards on various important parameters.

RX 6800 vs RTX 3070 Comparison

Below is the comparison between RX 6800 and RTX 3070 graphics cards based on their specifications, performance, pricing, power consumption, and features.

GPU Architecture

Radeon RX 6800 is built on the RDNA 2 architecture on a 7nm fabrication process and uses the Navi 21XL GPU chip. The card comes with 3840 Stream Processors and has 60 Ray Accelerators or Ray Tracing Cores. Unlike Nvidia, the card does not come with Tensor Cores or equivalent for Artificial Intelligence processing. On the other hand, RTX 3070 is built on the Ampere GPU architecture on the 8nm process. The card uses a GA104 chip and comes with 5888 CUDA Cores, 46 Ray Tracing Cores, and 184 Tensor Cores for AI processing.

Video Memory [VRAM]

When it comes to video memory then RX 6800 is a clear winner. The card comes with 16GB GDDR6 memory which is twice the RTX 3070. The memory is 256-bit wide and runs at a faster speed of 16Gbps and has an effective bandwidth of 512 GB/s. However, RX 6800 can reach a peak bandwidth of 1664 GB/s (3.25x effective bandwidth) by using the 128 MB Infinity Cache which is an ultra-fast cache memory present on the RX 6800 GPU for accelerating the memory bandwidth for memory-intensive tasks e.g. Ray Tracing enabled in supported game.

Features

The cards support the latest graphics APIs that include DirectX 12 Ultimate, OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan and have their own variable refresh rate technologies (G-Sync/FreeSync) to reduce stuttering in games for a smooth gaming experience. Moreover, both of the cards support PCI-Express 4.0, Real-Time Ray Tracing, HDMI 2.1, AV1 decode, and Microsoft DirectStorage API (to reduce game loading times). There is a lack of multi-GPU support on both the cards which means you cannot use them in SLI or CrossFire configuration. The features that are only present in the RX 6800 XT include a USB Type-C connector and Smart Memory Access (SAM) (with Ryzen 5000 series CPUs and 500 series motherboards) that allow the CPU to access all of the graphics card memory for improved performance in select games. The features that are related to RTX 3070 only are the Nvidia Reflex and DLSS 2.0 (Deep Learning Super Sampling).

Gaming Performance

Here are the gaming benchmarks of these cards at 1440p and 4K resolution.

1440p Benchmarks

4K Benchmarks

From the above benchmarks, we can see that RX 6800 beats RTX 3070 in almost every game by a significant margin. RX 6800 is around 10% to 14% faster than RTX 3070 on average.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of both these cards is almost similar. It is just that RTX 3070 is slightly more power-efficient than the RX 6800 at full load. The power supply recommendation for both these cards is 650W.

Pricing and Availability

RX 3070 is cheaper than RX 6800 by 80 dollars. The MSRP of RX 6800 for the reference model is $579 while the RTX 3070 has an MSRP of $499. The custom AIB models of these cards will cost you extra depending on the overclocking, cooler design, and extra features. You can check the current prices of these cards from the links given below.

Check RX 6800 Price on Amazon

Check RTX 3070 Price on Amazon

RX 6800 vs RTX 3070 Specifications

See also:

• RX 6800 XT vs RTX 3080 Comparison
• RTX 3070 vs RTX 2080 Ti vs RTX 2070 SUPER Comparison
• RTX 3070 Ti vs RX 6800 vs RTX 3070 Comparison & Benchmarks

Final Thoughts

There is absolutely no doubt that the RX 6800 is an excellent product that offers much more even when compared to the less expensive RTX 3070. RX 6800 comes with 8GB extra VRAM that can prove very helpful in upcoming AAA titles even at 1440p resolution. The performance of the RX 6800 is remarkable and it also comes very close to the RX 6800 XT, its bigger brother. RTX 3070 offers very good performance for the price but I think that the 8GB VRAM on a 500-dollar card in the year 2020 is a bit of a letdown. If I have to pick between the two, then I would be picking RX 6800 for sure.