RX 6800 XT vs RTX 3080 Comparison and Benchmarks

AMD has finally caught up with Nvidia with the release of their Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards. In this RX 6000 series, Radeon RX 6800 XT is the second most powerful graphics card and it sits below the RX 6900 XT and above the RX 6800. The direct competition of this card is with the GeForce RTX 3080 which is the second most powerful graphics in the RTX 30 series lineup. Both of them are powerful high-end graphics cards that can run any latest AAA game on maximum settings at 4K resolution easily. These cards are evenly matched when it comes to performance but they differ in many aspects which I will be discussing here so that you can make an informed decision on choosing the right card for your needs.

RX 6800 XT vs RTX 3080 Comparison

Below is the comparison between RX 6800 XT and RTX 3080 graphics cards based on their specifications, performance, pricing, power consumption, and features.

GPU Architecture

Radeon RX 6800 XT is built on the RDNA 2 architecture on the TSMC 7nm manufacturing process. It uses Navi 21 XT GPU and comes with 4608 Stream Processors. The card supports real-time ray tracing and comes with 72 Ray Accelerators or Ray Tracing Cores. On the other hand, RTX 3080 is built on the Ampere GPU architecture that is manufactured on Samsung’s 8nm fabrication process. The card uses the GA102 GPU chip and comes with 8704 CUDA Cores. In addition to 68 RT Cores, the card also possesses 272 Tensor cores for Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads, which the RX 6800 XT lacks.

Video Memory [VRAM]

When it comes to memory then RX 6800 XT is clearly ahead of the RTX 3080. Radeon RX 6800 XT comes with 16 GB GDDR6 memory that runs at 16 Gbps and has a bus width of 256-bit. On the other hand, RTX 3080 comes with 10 GDDR6X memory which is faster at 19Gbps and has a wider bus width of 320-bit. The effective memory bandwidth offered by RX 6800 XT is 512 GB/s which is significantly less than 760 GB/s offered by RTX 3080, but the peak memory bandwidth in RX 6800 XT can reach up to 1664 GB/s (3.25x effective bandwidth) by using 128MB Infinity Cache, which is an ultra-fast cache memory present on the RX 6800 XT GPU.

Features

Both these cards support the latest APIs that include DirectX 12 Ultimate, OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan and support variable refresh rate technologies (G-Sync/FreeSync) to reduce stuttering in games for a smoother gaming experience. Moreover, both of the cards support PCIe 4.0, Real-Time Ray Tracing, HDMI 2.1, AV1 decode, and Microsoft DirectStorage API. These cards lack multi-GPU support which means you cannot use them in SLI or CrossFire configuration. The features that are exclusive to 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 exclusive to RTX 3080 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 at 1440p resolution, RX 6800 XT and RTX 3080 perform almost the same. It is only at 4K that RTX 3080 is slightly faster (around 5% on average) than RX 6800 XT in almost all the games.

Power Consumption

Radeon RX 6800 XT consumes less power than the RTX 3080. The rated power consumption of RX 6800 XT is 300W while the RTX 3080 consumes 320W. In real-world gaming and workload too, RX 6800 XT consumes significantly less power and runs cooler than the RTX 3080.

Pricing and Availability

Radeon RX 6800 XT is cheaper than RTX 3080 by 50 dollars. The reference model RX 6800 XT is priced at $649 and RTX 3080 is priced at $699. The Custom AIB models of these cards may cost more depending upon the cooler design, overclocking, and features offered. You can check the current prices of both these cards from the links mentioned below.

Check RX 6800 XT Price on Amazon

Check RTX 3080 Price on Amazon

RX 6800 vs RTX 3080 Specifications

See also:

• RX 6800 vs RTX 3070 Comparison and Benchmarks
• RTX 3080 vs RTX 2080 vs RTX 2080 Ti Comparison
• RX 6800 XT vs RX 6900 XT vs RTX 3090 Comparison
• RTX 3080 12GB vs RTX 3080 vs RTX 3080 Ti Comparison

Final Thoughts

Well, RX 6800 XT is no doubt a serious contender to the RTX 3080 and has many advantages over it. The performance of these cards is almost the same and only at 4K, RTX 3080 does have a slight advantage. However, RX 6800 XT comes with 6GB more memory that will come in very handy in future AAA titles. Also, it runs cooler, has better power efficiency, and costs less than the RTX 3080. Both these cards are neck and neck and if I have to pick between these cards then I would pick the RX 6800 XT over the RTX 3080.