Question RTX 3080 10GB vs RX 6800 XT ?

[Gregory2]

Hey guys,
So I'm absolutely torn between RTX 3080 (10GB) and 6800XT. The card will be used for 1080p for now, and maybe 2K in the future. Now I'm using GTX 1080. RTX 3080 looks great, I'm very curious of ray-tracing and DLSS seems to be achieving amazing results. But that VRAM... is 10 gigs by any means sufficient for next at least 2-3 years? Or should I just go with the 16GB 6800 XT, with similiar performance but no bells and whistles in form of great ray-tracing and DLSS? Price of both is exactly the same in my country. Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Metal Messiah.]

VRAM usage will depend on what type of games you actually play. There is a lot of controversy when it comes to VRAM usage.

Not every title eats up a lot of system resources, especially older games, and other Indie/AA titles. 16GB VRAM GPU would be more future proof though, If you plan to play the latest AAA games. Otherwise, even 10GB buffer should be okay for 1080p, at least for now.

How much is the price difference between these 2 cards ? If the 16GB 6800 XT is cheaper then get this instead. You will obviously miss DLSS and other RTX stuff though. But in raw rasterized performance, the RTX 3080 is only slightly faster than the 6800 XT (depends on the game being played as well).

Ray Tracing performance is a different story though. What are your current PC specs ?

 

[Gregory2]

VRAM usage will depend on what type of games you actually play. There is a lot of controversy when it comes to VRAM usage.

Not every title eats up a lot of system resources, especially older games, and other Indie/AA titles. 16GB VRAM GPU would be more future proof though, If you plan to play the latest AAA games. Otherwise, even 10GB buffer should be okay for 1080p, at least for now.

How much is the price difference between these 2 cards ? If the 16GB 6800 XT is cheaper then get this instead. You will obviously miss DLSS and other RTX stuff though. But in raw rasterized performance, the RTX 3080 is only slightly faster than the 6800 XT (depends on the game being played as well).

Ray Tracing performance is a different story though. What are your current PC specs ?

My specs:

MSI B560M PRO-VDH
Intel Core i5-11400f
Patriot Viper Steel 16GB [2x8GB 3600MHz DDR4 CL17 DIMM]
Gainward GeForce GTX1070

I was assured on another forum that bottleneck shouldn't be the problem, but always worth asking again.

When it comes to price difference, it's basically non-existent. I'm aiming at a used card on warranty and in my country both are about the same price, RTX 3080 may be slightly cheaper but it's only a few bucks.
I will probably be playing latest AAA games, but cerainly not all of them. In last few years I've only bought one game on day 1, otherwise I'm playing games with 1-2-3 years "delay" when they get a bit cheaper.

 

[Deleted member 2947362]

Hey guys,
So I'm absolutely torn between RTX 3080 (10GB) and 6800XT. The card will be used for 1080p for now, and maybe 2K in the future. Now I'm using GTX 1080. RTX 3080 looks great, I'm very curious of ray-tracing and DLSS seems to be achieving amazing results. But that VRAM... is 10 gigs by any means sufficient for next at least 2-3 years? Or should I just go with the 16GB 6800 XT, with similiar performance but no bells and whistles in form of great ray-tracing and DLSS? Price of both is exactly the same in my country. Thanks in advance for any help!

Personally I would go for the 6800XT but I'm not bothered about DLSS or Ray Tracing.

Ray Tracing kind of reminds me of the early days when AA first start to appear on graphics cards, it cost to much in performance when you enabled it. So I didn't use it.

 

[Metal Messiah.]

I will probably be playing latest AAA games, but cerainly not all of them. In last few years I've only bought one game on day 1, otherwise I'm playing games with 1-2-3 years "delay" when they get a bit cheaper.

If there is no price difference then get the AMD card instead.

 

[thestryker]

I think it mostly comes down to what's important to you long term. Outside of ray tracing and DLSS (really you should only consider using this to maintain high fps on this tier of card) the 6800XT is a better overall purchase. So if high fps gaming and ray tracing are things you're really interested in get the 3080, but anything else 6800XT.

A note on VRAM: yes it's important, but generally speaking at lower resolutions knocking textures back one is enough to keep things under control and you're unlikely to notice the difference.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Hey guys,
So I'm absolutely torn between RTX 3080 (10GB) and 6800XT. The card will be used for 1080p for now, and maybe 2K in the future.

I'll start by saying that if you're playing at 1080p, you shouldn't choose either of these cards unless you're getting them for some stupidly-low price. Unless you are absolutely positive that you'll be playing at 1400p in the near future, you're wasting your money buying one of these monsters.

Now I'm using GTX 1080. RTX 3080 looks great, I'm very curious of ray-tracing and DLSS seems to be achieving amazing results.

Here's the thing... Ray-tracing is perhaps the most underwhelming frill in gaming today. The RX 6800 XT is quite capable of ray-tracing but it's like, 90% of the time you wouldn't notice and the 10% of the time that you would notice, you wouldn't care. I know because I've tried it in three games (CP2077, Witcher III & Gotham Knights) and my reaction to it was always the same:
"So.... what's the difference other than the performance penalty?"

Now, DLSS is an absolutely fantastic technology but it's completely irrelevant to high-end cards like these (especially at 1080p). Upscalers like DLSS, FSR and XeSS are far more relevant to older cards that can't natively render the resolution that the user wants at an enjoyable framerate.

With either of these cards, by the time you need upscaling for anything, DLSS2 will be nothing more a distant memory. By that time, whatever versions of FSR or XeSS that exist will most likely be far superior to DLSS2. Keep in mind that nVidia has blocked owners of the RTX 3000-series from using DLSS3 so you'd be stuck with DLSS2 forever. As impressive as a technology as it is today, by the time either of these cards needs to use an upscaler, DLSS2 will be considered quaint and will probably not be supported.

Remember, you're talking about using cards that can easily game at 2160p for 1080p gaming. You're looking at many years before you'd even consider using an upscaler for any reason.

But that VRAM... is 10 gigs by any means sufficient for next at least 2-3 years?

Sure, if you never go over 1080p. If you do go up to 1440p or higher, 10GB will not be sufficient for the next 2-3 years.

Or should I just go with the 16GB 6800 XT, with similiar performance but no bells and whistles in form of great ray-tracing and DLSS?

That's what I chose and given the same choice, I would've done it again. I'm much happier knowing that I have 16GB of VRAM because, as I alluded to earlier, ray-tracing is not very impressive, yet. Ray-tracing is the future but we're not even close to that future yet. Current implementations of RT are laughable at how crude and simple they are but they still bring current hardware to its knees. The only card in existence that can run the current crude RT implementations maxxed-out in any game is the RTX 4090.

Neither the RX 6800 XT nor the RTX 3080 is even remotely close in performance to the RTX 4090.

Price of both is exactly the same in my country. Thanks in advance for any help!

Well, here's how I see it. The advantage of the RX 6800 XT is an objective hardware advantage in the way that 6GB of VRAM will definitely make the RX 6800 XT out-live the RTX 3080 by a huge margin. This isn't something screamed by fanboys, this is something that was discovered by professional hardware reviewers like Hardware Unboxed, Tom's Hardware, Gamers Nexus, TechPowerUp, Guru3D, AnandTech, Hardware Canucks and Paul's Hardware.

The advantage of the RTX 3080 is a subjective software advantage because while the software advantage is there, it's not a matter of "the card works or it doesn't". Is DLSS2 superior to FSR2? I would say yes, because every reviewer that I've seen comparing them has said so.

If these were two low to mid-tier cards, then DLSS would be an objective advantage because you'd probably be put in a position to actually use it in its current form, but with cards like these, DLSS2 would be hopelessly passee by the time you could use it.

Objectively, the RTX 3080's graphics engine is far more resilient to FPS loss from having RT turned on. The problem is that RT itself is completely subjective because it's not a concrete thing like VRAM and its value is completely opinion-based. While you do have some rabid nVidia fanboys having orgasms about it, Techspot did a survey of gamers and the vast majority indicated that they were either unimpressed by it or don't care about it. A survey of GeForce owners indicated that, despite the fact that they have RTX cards, they leave RT turned off because it's not worth the performance hit.

Knowing this, you need to ask yourself the following question:
"Just how good could current iterations of RT really be?"

Since the RX 6800 XT's big advantage is one that cannot be argued or denied, that is the card that I would recommend. The fact that the RTX 3080, a card in the enthusiast-class performance tier, only has 10GB of VRAM is a bad joke and you'd be a fool to buy it. I had the same choice that you have now about a year and a half ago and I considered it to be a no-brainer.

I'm still extremely happy with my RX 6800 XT.