Question RTX 3060ti vs RX 6700XT

HarryGRGamer

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Nov 21, 2014
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I've never had an AMD GPU before, and for the first time in a decade I'm considering switching to team red and upgrading my GTX 1070.

The RX6700XT is about the same price as the 3060ti in my country. The only thing holding me back from buying an AMD card is DLSS 2. However I've also heard that FSR 2 is mainly the same, I don't care that much about Ray Tracing aside from the Portal RTX demo which I thought it looked cool, but I don't know if I'll use it in every game.

I was pretty disappointed with the launch of the 4060ti, I don't think I want to wait for the 16gb version in July since it will be out of my budget.

I don't want to waste more of your time, so I'll underline my main issues in bullet points

  • How well do drivers fare for AMD in 2023, is it an old myth that most drivers are unstable
  • Is 8GB of VRAM enough for 1080p or 1440p
  • Which card draws the most power, kinda minor but still
  • How well does AMD's encoder compare to Nvidia's for streaming, and rendering. I love the usage of Cuda cores for programs such as Davinci Resolve, Topaz AI.
Thanks in advance.
 
I've never had an AMD GPU before, and for the first time in a decade I'm considering switching to team red and upgrading my GTX 1070.

The RX6700XT is about the same price as the 3060ti in my country. The only thing holding me back from buying an AMD card is DLSS 2. However I've also heard that FSR 2 is mainly the same, I don't care that much about Ray Tracing aside from the Portal RTX demo which I thought it looked cool, but I don't know if I'll use it in every game.

I was pretty disappointed with the launch of the 4060ti, I don't think I want to wait for the 16gb version in July since it will be out of my budget.

I don't want to waste more of your time, so I'll underline my main issues in bullet points

  • How well do drivers fare for AMD in 2023, is it an old myth that most drivers are unstable
  • Is 8GB of VRAM enough for 1080p or 1440p
  • Which card draws the most power, kinda minor but still
  • How well does AMD's encoder compare to Nvidia's for streaming, and rendering. I love the usage of Cuda cores for programs such as Davinci Resolve, Topaz AI.
Thanks in advance.
The drivers for AMD are just fine. I've been running an AMD card in my desktop since 2013, started with an old HD4750, and they have been stable the entire time.

8GB VRAM is enough for 1080p at Ultra Settings without RT. That said in modern games there is very little difference in quality going from High > Ultra and using High will save VRAM. For 1440p Ultra 8GB is probably enough but that might change soon. Again going to High quality settings will help VRAM usage and you probably won't notice a difference. However, going to 12GB RAM solves any of those issues. Enabling RT at 1440p could eat up 12GB VRAM but that isn't assured.

The 6700XT will draw about 10W, 5%, more power during gaming but is about 5% faster than the 3060Ti.

AMD's encoders have been getting better, however, for things like Adobe Premiere the consumer AMD cards are not officially supported unlike the consumer nVidia cards. IIRC Davinci Resolve does support consumer AMD cards but Topaz AI I don't know.

I personally have the ASRock Challenger RX6700XT and it is a great GPU. FSR 2 works quite well and the difference between FRS 2 and DLSS 2 are minimal.
 
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Can’t speak to encoding but I’ve got a 6700xt, have also owned a 6600xt and 5700xt. Only major issues I had was because I had one card that defective which could happen with nvidia as well. But driver wise I’ve got no real complaints. It’s actually nice they seem to put everything within the drivers instead of going to 2-3 places.

Vram, 8 gb might be enough barely but if things keep progressing what about a year or two? To be honest after seeing the benchmarks of the 6700xt vs the 4060ti I think I’ll stick with my 6700xt a bit longer.

Also check out the 6750 xt, basically the same card as the 6700xt with a bit of an overclock. If you can snag one for closer to the same price as the 6709xt get it. But if more than 30 bucks or so get the 6700xt imo.
 
The RX6700XT is about the same price as the 3060ti in my country. The only thing holding me back from buying an AMD card is DLSS 2. However I've also heard that FSR 2 is mainly the same, I don't care that much about Ray Tracing aside from the Portal RTX demo which I thought it looked cool, but I don't know if I'll use it in every game.
I believe that you won't need DLSS or FSR for a good long time and by the time you do, they'll probably be about the same. Right now, there's no question that DLSS is better but you'll only have access to DLSS2 because nVidia only allows RTX 4000-series cards to use DLSS3.
I was pretty disappointed with the launch of the 4060ti, I don't think I want to wait for the 16gb version in July since it will be out of my budget.
The MSRP of the RTX 4060 Ti will be about the same price as an RX 6800 XT, a card that just crushes it when it comes to graphics performance.
I don't want to waste more of your time, so I'll underline my main issues in bullet points
  • How well do drivers fare for AMD in 2023, is it an old myth that most drivers are unstable
The last time that I had any driver issues with a Radeon card was years ago with my R9 Fury. It was a scaling bug that would sometimes occur (but not often) and it was easily fixed by toggling GPU Scaling in the Radeon Control Panel. I've had no driver issues with my RX 5700 XT nor with my RX 6800 XT. They've been perfectly solid and you have nothing to fear. Just be sure to run DDU before installing the Radeon driver package and also before installing driver updates.
  • Is 8GB of VRAM enough for 1080p or 1440p
For the most part, 8GB would be fine for 1080p (but there are one or two instances where you'll have to turn settings down) but it seems like newly-released games need more than 8GB for 1440p. This will only get worse over time so you should avoid all 8GB cards that are meant for more than just basic 1080p gaming, including the RTX 3060 Ti. The only 8GB card that I would currently recommend would be the RX 6600 because it's really cheap and a great value. I believe that 8GB cards have their place, but that place is far below the price-point of the RTX 3060 Ti.

Getting an 8GB card isn't the end of the world as long as you're not paying much but it definitely makes the RTX 3060 Ti not worth it. In fact, I would recommend the RTX 3060 over the RTX 3060 Ti because of this. Of course, the RTX 3060's performance isn't that great so I always recommend the RTX 6700 XT at that price point.
  • Which card draws the most power, kinda minor but still
According to the TechPowerUp GPU Database:
The RTX 3060 Ti has a TDP of 200W
The RX 6700 XT has a TDP of 230W
  • How well does AMD's encoder compare to Nvidia's for streaming, and rendering. I love the usage of Cuda cores for programs such as Davinci Resolve, Topaz AI.
In the new generation of RX 7000 and RTX 4000, they use the same AV1 encoder but they were different in the generation that we're discussing here.

From what I understand, in that generation, the GeForce encoder is superior to the Radeon encoder, although I don't know how much better. I'm not a video editor so I can't competently answer that question but I do know of someone who can.

There's a gentleman who runs a YouTube channel by the name of Daniel Owen. I've come to respect his word and he has a video in which he does talk about his experiences when using a Radeon RX 6800 XT (same encoder as the RX 6700 XT) and I so he would be better to speak to you about it than I would:

For gaming, I can definitely say that I would recommend the RX 6700 XT over the RTX 3060 Ti 100 times out of 100 but your use-case may push you in the other direction. If it does, I would recommend the RTX 3060 12GB over the RTX 3060 Ti because I cannot in good conscience recommend the RTX 3060 Ti for any reason.

Having only 8GB of VRAM on a card like the RTX 3060 Ti is inexcusable and only serves to highlight the contempt in which nVidia holds its customers. It only gets worse when you consider that the RTX 3070 and RTX 3070 Ti also have only 8GB of VRAM while the Radeons that compete with them have 12GB-16GB despite being generally less expensive.
 
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