AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT vs NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti: Which One is Faster in Gaming?

AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XT offers solid raster performance at a stellar price. Its ray-tracing capabilities leave much to be desired, while the power efficiency isn’t all that impressive either. Compared to the previous generation GeForce offerings, it offers superior rasterization but roughly the same ray-tracing capabilities. In this post, we’ll compare the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and the Radeon RX 7900 XT at 1440p and 4K with and without ray-tracing.

Test Bench

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
• Motherboard: ASRock B650E Steel Legend
• Heatsink: NZXT X73
• Power Supply: NZXT C1000

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT vs. NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti 4K Gaming Benchmarks

We tested ten recent titles with and without ray tracing. For the former, the benchmarks were conducted at native resolution, while FSR 2 “Balanced” was used for the latter.

The Radeon RX 7900 XT conclusively defeats the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti across all nine rasterized games. The deltas vary from a mere 10% in “A Plague Tale”, “Hitman 3,” and “Shadow of the Tomb Raider to a whopping 70% in “The Callisto Protocol”. On average, the 7900 XT is 10-15% faster than the RTX 3080 Ti at 4K.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT vs. NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti Ray Traced Gaming Benchmarks

The tables turn with ray-tracing enabled. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is faster than the Radeon RX 7900 XT in seven out of nine titles.

The deltas are minimal in most games, mostly within 10-15%. Far Cry 6 and The Callisto Protocol are exceptions where the Radeon ends up nearly twice as fast as the RTX 3080 Ti.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT vs. NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti 1440p Benchmarks

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Things don’t change much at 1440p. The Radeon RX 7900 XT is 10-15% faster than the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti on average, with certain variances.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT vs. NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti 1440p Ray Traced Benchmarks

At 1440p, the Radeon RX 7900 XT levels with the RTX 3080 Ti in ray-tracing workloads. The Radeon wins in five out of nine games in this scenario.

Generally, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti offers stronger ray-tracing performance with wider deltas. In the few games where it falls short, we see the RX 7900 XT take a marginal lead, mostly within the margin of error.

Conclusion: Decent Performance at a Sound Price

The Radeon RX 7900 XT is essentially a beefed version of the RX 6900 XT. Higher raster performance and higher ray-tracing numbers but a smidge slower than the RTX 3080 Ti (a previous-gen SKU) in the latter. These days the RTX 3080 Ti can be snagged for $900, which also happens to be the MSRP of the RX 7900 XT. The RDNA 3 part offers vastly superior raster performance but slightly worse ray-tracing capabilities, so the winner is a no-brainer.