RX 7900 XT vs RTX 3080 – is the 7900 XT better?

AMD and Nvidia's cards go head to head to see which wins

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If you’re wondering about your new rig, it’s going to be normal to make comparisons, and comparing GPUs is the main thing an enthusiast must do before anything else. In this post, we will pit the RX 7900 XT vs the RTX 3080, to finally bring light to this subject. How much better is AMD’s last generation over Nvidia´s best sales?

We will make a comparison considering the differences in specs, price, and overall performance. And we will use that data to determine when the RX 7900 XT would be a better fit, or otherwise when the RTX 3080 would be. Also, be sure to check out our RX 7900 XT review for a look at what the card is capable of.

RX 7900 XT vs RTX 3080 specs comparison

When AMD launched its new GPU series, many were surprised it didn’t use the newer and faster GDDR6X memory. This has shown to be incredibly fast and consistent with Nvidia cases. However, AMD ditched the idea because of the high costs this technology would bring to its GPUs.

It balanced out the improvements of the new memory type over the improvements the investment would provide if it just keep upgrading the cache memory capacity. Because of that reasoning, we can see now that the 3080 has faster memory technology, but is not enough to reach AMD’s better performance, thanks to the enhancements of the new series considering the cache improvements.

 7900 XTRTX 3080
Memory size20 GB GDDR6X10 GB GDDR6X
Memory bus320 bit320 bit
Bandwidth800.0 GB/s760.3 GB/s
Base Clock speed1500 MHz1440 MHz
Boost clock speed2394 MHz1710 MHz
Floating-point performance51.48 TFLOPS29.77 TFLOPS
L3 Cache80 MB
TDP300 W320 W
MSRP899 USD699 USD

The 7900 XT has a higher memory size of 20GB GDDR6 compared to the RTX 3080’s 10GB GDDR6X, which means it may be better suited for running high-resolution and memory-intensive applications. The 7900 XT also has a higher base clock speed of 1500 MHz compared to the RTX 3080’s 1440 MHz and a boost clock speed of 2394 MHz compared to the RTX 3080’s 1710 MHz.

On the other hand, the RTX 3080 has a lower TDP of 320W compared to the 7900XT’s 300W, which means that it may be more energy-efficient and run cooler. Additionally, the 7900XT has an 80MB L3 Cache while RTX 3080 doesn’t have any. L3 Cache can help to speed up data access and computation, which can be useful in some workloads.

Overall, the 7900 XT and RTX 3080 are both powerful graphics cards, but the 7900 XT may be better suited for high-resolution and memory-intensive applications, while the RTX 3080 may be more energy-efficient and cost-effective.

RX 7900 XT vs RTX 3080: Price

The RTX 3080 was released with an MSRP of $699, while the RX 7900 XT was launched with a price of $899. This is a $300 price difference in both high-end GPUs. However, the specs comparison shows how unrelated these two GPUs are.

Regardless of the new technologies and architecture the features on the 7900 XT denote a higher-end GPU while the 3080 makes a clear show of a GPU thought to be improved in the future.

However, we can just disregard the price. The RTX 3080 would’ve been better for a budget rig if prices would’ve stayed still but the price changes differently affect Nvidia GPUs than AMD’s. The RTX 3080 can currently be found for $1,000 on average. While the 7900 XT’s price hasn’t changed that much since its release. This leaves us with a price difference of $100 higher in AMD’s favor.

RX 7900 XT vs RTX 3080: Performance

The 7900 XT is better suited for running high-resolution and memory-intensive applications thanks to the 20GB of VRAM. Gaming in 4K resolution would be easier on AMD’s competitor.

Furthermore, the 7900 XT also has a higher base clock speed of 1500 MHz compared to the RTX 3080’s 1440 MHz and a boost clock speed of 2394 MHz compared to the RTX 3080’s 1710 MHz. So on overall performance, the 7900 XT would take the lead over the 3080.

Additionally, the 7900XT has an 80MB L3 Cache which may help to speed up the data access and computation in some workloads. This is exactly the kind of upgrade that makes AMD usually better for gaming scenarios than Nvidia. Team Red has realized how to use cache in its favor and keeps exploiting the issue. On the other hand, Nvidia is more worried about general improvements, which is not a bad thing.

Overall, according to the specs,  the 7900 XT is faster than the RTX 3080. Also, according to public benchmarks and gaming performance comparison, the RX 7900 XT has shown an average 30% improvement in FPS delivery across all games, even with ray tracing and DLSS on. The 7900 XT keeps performing better than the 3080.

Final thoughts

In conclusion, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 are both powerful graphics cards that are well-suited for high-performance gaming and other demanding workloads. However, the 7900 XT has some key advantages over the 3080 that makes it better suited for certain tasks.

One of the main advantages of the 7900 XT is its 20GB of VRAM, which is twice as much as the 3080. This makes it better suited for running high-resolution and memory-intensive applications, such as gaming in 4K resolution. The 7900 XT also has a higher base clock speed of 1500 MHz and a boost clock speed of 2394 MHz, which can provide a slight edge in overall performance. Additionally, the 7900XT has an 80MB L3 Cache which may help to speed up the data access and computation in some workloads.