GeForce RTX 3070 Ti vs Radeon RX 6800: 52 Gaming Tests

Today we have a big GPU performance comparison for you, this time comparing the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti to the Radeon RX 6800. As next generation GPUs come out and prices return to reasonable levels, we’re left with “new” mid-range graphics cards that may be worthy of your attention.

The Radeon RX 6800 seems to be well stocked these days and can be bought for just under the suggested retail price (currently about 550 dollars). The same goes for the RTX 3070 Ti, which is available now. for 615 dollars. The RX 6800 was not a particularly popular product, although this was largely due to affordability issues that caused AMD to focus on the 6800 XT and 6900 XT during the last few years of the crypto boom.

The first next-generation GPU is the GeForce RTX 4090, which we now know for sure is much faster than any previous flagship, so for those looking for the ultimate in performance, you’re probably better off looking at it while you can afford it. . Meanwhile, as this and other RTX 40 and Radeon 7000 series GPUs are announced, it is likely that prices for current generation GPUs such as the RTX 3070 Ti and RX 6800 will drop.

Also, with GPU mining declared dead, there’s a good chance the used GPU market will eventually be flooded with GPUs, the perfect storm that should finally see gamers rewarded with cheaper graphics card options. While we don’t necessarily recommend that you buy any of these GPUs right now, we’re interested to see how they compare in late 2022 with a range of new games and of course the latest display drivers.

As previously mentioned, Radeon RX 6800 graphics cards are currently available for as low as $540 with most models priced between $550 and $600. Considering the MSRP is $580, you can find some good models for less.

Then we have the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti which has a MSRP of $600 but even today it still sells for a bit more, the cheapest models are listed on $630 although most of them are close to $680.

The Radeon has a slight price advantage, which isn’t bad considering it has twice the amount of video memory (16GB versus just 8GB for the 3070 Ti), with the 3070 Ti offering superior ray tracing capabilities, and DLSS 2.0 currently more. widely supported. So with these factors in mind, you can expect to pay less for a Radeon GPU.

In total, we tested 52 games at 1440p and 4K using a Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor and 32GB of dual-rank dual-channel memory. The BIOS had resizable BAR enabled and we used the AMD Adrenalin Edition 22.8.2 and GeForce Game Ready 516.94 display drivers.

As usual, we’ll look at data from about a dozen of the games we tested to get more information, and then we’ll look at all the games on the same chart. Let’s do it.

Landmarks

Starting with Assetto Corsa Competizione we see very comparable results between these two GPUs at 1440p as the 3070 Ti was only 4% faster. However, upscaling to 4K gave the GeForce GPU an edge: it was 16% faster, averaging 133fps compared to the Radeon 6800’s 115fps, which is a pretty significant performance advantage…

The Outer Worlds isn’t the best game for Radeon GPUs as it uses Unreal Engine 4, but even so the Radeon RX 6800 is competitive enough that we’d say AMD’s latest DX11 optimizations help.

As a result, the RTX 3070 Ti was 5% faster at 1440p, but up to 12% faster at 4K, resulting in over 60fps gains, reaching an average of 67fps.

Resident Evil Village testing was done using the ray tracing preset and at 1440p this gave the RTX 3070 Ti a slight 6% gain, though interestingly upscaling to 4K cleared the gap as both GPUs averaged 79fps. This is one of the best examples of ray tracing for AMD, so let’s look at a less successful example.

This time in Dying Light 2 we turned on the ray tracing preset and here are the results. Neither GPU is particularly impressive, and even with the RTX 3070 Ti, you’ll want to drop the resolution down to 1080p, perhaps at 60fps.

While the 3070 Ti was almost 40% faster at 1440p, it’s a somewhat pointless win. If you like 1080p games and want to enjoy the RT effects in that game, then the 3070 Ti is a must.

However, if you’re not interested in RT effects or don’t think the performance penalty from halving framerates is worth it, then the Radeon 6800 does the job well, delivering 10% more performance than the 3070 Ti at 1440p, and at 15% more. in 4K with the high quality preset enabled. You also see over 80fps at 1440p.

Sniper Elite 5 is a 2022 release that seems to run well on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs. At 1440p, the RX 6800 was only 6% faster, while at 4K that lead was only 3%, or basically the same performance when both hit over 70fps.

That’s a good level of performance considering we’re using the ultra quality preset.

God of War also plays well with Ampere or RDNA2 GPUs, as both the 3070 Ti and RX 6800 showed the same level of performance at both tested resolutions. We’re also looking at 60fps in 4K with an ultra quality preset that delivers an immersive gaming experience.

Here we have another recently released blockbuster Halo Infinite, where both GPUs showed almost the same performance. We’re looking at ~60fps in 4K using the ultra quality preset, which looks great, and for the single player part at least, that’s a satisfying level of performance.

CS:GO is heavily CPU dependent, although it’s interesting to see the RTX 3070 Ti drop 17% in performance from 1440p to 4K, while the RX 6800 drops 6%.

Either way, performance was pretty comparable overall. The RTX 3070 Ti was slightly faster at 1440p, while the RX 6800 was slightly faster at 4K.

Watch Dogs Legion is interesting in that it’s an Nvidia-sponsored game, and yet it runs much better on the Radeon 6800, even at 4K, where 65fps was possible on average.

The difference at 1440p is huge, where the Radeon GPU was 21% faster, delivering an impressive 119fps.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has been tested using the second best quality preset and with the resize bar, the RX 6800 can hit 60fps at 4K and over 100fps at 1440p.

This meant it was 27% faster than the RTX 3070 Ti at 1440p and 33% faster at 4K, so that’s a big win for the Radeon GPU here.

Forza Horizon 5 also works well with Radeon GPUs and benefits greatly from Resizable BAR support. As a result, the RX 6800 was 27% faster at 1440p and 26% faster at 4K.

Performance Summary

Based on the dozen or so games we just reviewed, the RTX 3070 Ti and RX 6800 seem to be very close in terms of performance. There were a few titles that heavily favored one over the other, but for the most part the performance was very similar.

We spent a week testing just over 50 games, so let’s check that data…

Compared to our day one benchmark data, the RTX 3070 Ti was 8% slower than the RX 6800 at 1440p, even though that’s only a dozen games. A little over a year later, with over 50 games, we found the 3070 Ti to be only 5% slower on average.

If we wanted to remove Dying Light 2’s RT-enabled score, which could be considered an outlier, that difference would change by a percentage to 6%, which doesn’t really matter much in the grand scheme of things.

The move to 4K closes the gap even further, and the RTX 3070 Ti is now only 3% slower on average, overall performance is very similar anyway.

It is interesting to note that games where the RTX 3070 Ti performs well over the Radeon 6800 are predominantly based on Unreal Engine 4 such as ACC, Gears 5, PUBG, The Outer Worlds and Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order as prime examples.

Meanwhile, the Radeon RX 6800 can handle games like Doom using the id Tech 7 game engine, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla using AnvilNext 2.0, Forza Horizon 5 using the ForzaTech engine, World War Z using the Swarm Engine, Hitman 3 using Glacier 2 and F1 22 engine with Ego engine. Not a single Unreal Engine game.

Picking a Winner

We last compared the Radeon RX 6800 with the original RTX 3070 (non-Ti model). We found that the Radeon price is too close to the RTX 3070 and the ray tracing performance is lower. DLSS was also a key selling point for GeForce, especially since FSR hadn’t been introduced yet.

Even though the Radeon has twice the video memory, we could give a few examples where it really matters. Even today, the RTX 3070 Ti seems to be able to handle just 8GB of VRAM quite well, but there are other instances where performance drops off, especially with RT effects enabled.

In its current form, the RTX 3070 Ti graphics card will cost you at least 15% more, and other than ray tracing, there are almost no games in which it is 15% faster than the RX 6800. Still, assuming average performance. The RTX 3070 Ti is about 5% slower, so you’re definitely overpaying for a GeForce GPU.

DLSS still outperforms FSR, especially in terms of game support, even though it’s getting better from AMD. In many cases, they are very close in image quality, so most gamers won’t notice the difference. So DLSS is more of a key selling point for RTX graphics cards if the games you play are supported but not with FSR, otherwise they are now on a more even footing since we last compared them. .

Nvidia’s big win is superior ray tracing performance, and AMD’s big win is a huge 16GB VRAM buffer. We think that with relatively similar prices and roughly the same rasterization performance for a large selection of games, you can’t go wrong either way.

If the Radeon GPU were 20% cheaper, it would be the obvious choice for most, but then again, if you want high ray tracing performance or DLSS gaming support, then it might be worth paying a hefty premium. Similarly, if the GeForce GPU was 10-15% cheaper, we think it would be the obvious choice for most gamers.

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