RX 6950 XT vs RTX 3090 vs RX 6900 XT Comparison & Benchmarks

Radeon RX 6950 XT is one of the newer graphics cards released by AMD in its Radeon RX 6000 series lineup. It is a refresh of RX 6900 XT and comes with higher GPU and memory clock speeds while other specifications remain almost the same. The card sits above the RX 6900 XT in the Radeon RX 6000 graphics card series and is now the most powerful AMD graphics card based on the RDNA 2 GPU architecture. The main competitor of RX 6950 XT is the GeForce RTX 3090 from Nvidia and the card also faces the competition from RX 6900 XT itself. So, if you want to know how the mighty RX 6950 XT performs against its major competitors then in this post, I will be comparing the card against the RTX 3090 and RX 6900 XT based on various important parameters along with the gaming benchmarks.

RX 6950 XT vs RTX 3090 vs RX 6900 XT Comparison

Below is the comparison between RX 6950 XT, RTX 3090, and RX 6900 XT graphics cards based on their specifications, performance, pricing, power consumption, and features.

GPU Architecture

RX 6950 XT and RX 6900 XT cards are powered by RDNA 2 GPU architecture and are built on the 7nm manufacturing process. Both the cards use Navi 21 GPU chip and come with 5120 Stream Processors, 80 Ray Accelerators, or Ray Tracing Cores. The GPU Boost Frequency of RX 6950 XT is 2310 MHz and of RX 6900 XT is 2250 MHz.

On the other hand, RTX 3090 is built on the Ampere GPU architecture on the 8nm manufacturing process. The card uses a GA102 GPU chip and comes with 10496 CUDA Cores, 82 Ray Tracing Cores, and 328 Tensor Cores for AI (artificial intelligence) processing or tasks such as DLSS in gaming.

Video Memory [VRAM]

RX 6950 XT and RX 6900 XT come with 16GB GDDR6 memory having a 256-bit interface but having different speeds. The memory of RX 6950 XT runs at 18 Gbps delivering a memory bandwidth of 576 GB/s while that of RX 6900 XT runs at 16 Gbps delivering a bandwidth of 512 GB/s. Both the cards come with 128MB Infinity Cache, an ultra-fast cache present on the GPU that is used to achieve a higher peak memory bandwidth. On the other hand, RTX 3090 comes with whopping 24GB GDDR6X memory having a 384-bit interface. The memory runs at a speed of 19.5Gbps and produces a bandwidth of 936 GB/s, which is significantly higher than the two Radeon cards if we only take into account effective memory bandwidth.

Features

All three cards are quite similar in most of the features and support almost all the latest technologies. All of them support DirectX 12 Ultimate, OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan, PCI-Express 4.0, Real-Time Ray Tracing, HDMI 2.1, AV1 decode, Resizable BAR, Microsoft DirectStorage API (to reduce game loading times), variable refresh rate technologies G-Sync/FreeSync to reduce game stuttering. RTX 3090 supports SLI multi-GPU scaling technology but RX 6950 XT and RX 6900 XT do not officially support CrossFire multi-GPU technology. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 supports DLSS 2.0 (Deep Learning Super Sampling) which is a next-generation AI rendering and image scaling technology to increase gaming performance or FPS in supported games without any major compromise in image quality.  On the other hand, RX 6950 XT and RX 6900 XT support AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) which is an AMD implementation of image scaling technology to improve performance in games by slightly compromising the image quality.

Gaming Performance

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

4K Benchmarks

From the above benchmarks, we can see that RX 6950 XT is the fastest card and beats RTX 3090 in almost all games. On average, it is around 3% faster than RTX 3090 and 10% faster than RX 6900 XT.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of RX 6950 XT stands at 335W, RX 6900 XT at 300W, and RTX 3090 at 350W. RX 6900 XT is the most power-efficient card here while RX 6950 XT and RTX 3090 are super power-hungry.

Pricing and Availability

The base MSRP of these cards is as follows; RX 6950 XT is priced at $1099, RX 6900 XT at 999, and RTX 3090 at $1499. The custom models of these cards may cost more depending on the features offered and the cooling solution used. You can check the current prices of these graphics cards from the links given below.

Check RX 6950 XT Price on Amazon

Check RTX 3090 Price on Amazon

Check RX 6900 XT Price on Amazon

RX 6950 XT vs RTX 3090 vs RX 6900 XT Specifications

See also:

• RX 6900 XT vs RTX 3090 vs RX 6800 XT Comparison

Final Thoughts

RX 6950 XT is no doubt a great card for 4K gaming as it is both faster and cheaper than RTX 3090. However, the only downside that can be said for RX 6950 XT is its considerably higher power consumption compared to RX 6900 XT. The card’s practical or real-time power consumption is even higher than RTX 3090 even though the claimed theoretical figures state otherwise. I think RX 6950 XT is probably the best 4K gaming card right now if we neglect the power efficiency figures. If you have anything to say or ask then let me know in the comment section below.