Conclusion
It doesn’t get any better than this right now. In this review, we pitted NVIDIA’s flagship video card with AMD’s flagship video card. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is the fastest consumer video card out for gamers right now on the PC from NVIDIA. This is the top-of-the-line gaming performance. On the AMD side is the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT. These two video cards are as good as it gets.
The only thing that can make these two GPUs better is to overclock them, therefore that is exactly what we did in today’s review. We overclocked both video cards as high as we could and compared them to each other to see how overclocked versus overclocked performance compares. The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Overclocked versus Radeon RX 6950 XT Overclocked.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti has an MSRP of $1,999.99, while the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT has an MSRP of $1,099.99. The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti packs 84 SMs, 10,752 CUDA Cores, 112 ROPs, 336 Texture Units, 84 RT Cores (2nd Gen), and 336 Tensor Cores (3rd Gen). It has a Boost Clock of 1860MHz and 24GB of GDDR6X at 21GHz on a 384-bit bus providing 1008GB/s of bandwidth with a TDP of 450W.
The AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT packs 5,120 Stream Processors, 80 Compute Units, 80 Ray Accelerators, 128 ROPs and 320 TMUs, and 128MB of Infinity Cache. It has a Game Clock of 2100MHz and a Boost Clock of 2310MHz. It has 16GB of GDDR6 at 18GHz on a 256-bit bus providing 576GB/s of memory bandwidth with a TDP of 335W.
Performance
In Dying Light 2 at 4K and the highest in-game settings both overclocked, video cards provided almost exactly the same performance. They both provided 64-65FPS at 4K, with only 1% difference between them. This means both have the same gameplay experience and they were both playable in these settings. Each one could enable upscaling, and even with DLSS or FSR performance was still within 5% of each other. Upscaling certainly improves performance, but in our evaluation, DLSS does have an image quality advantage.
In Rainbow Six Extraction the Overclocked GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE had a 28% performance advantage over the Overclocked Radeon RX 6950 XT. However, the performance was still very high on the Overclocked Radeon RX 6950 XT at 101FPS, therefore both provided a similar gameplay experience and were very playable at 4K. The RTX 3090 Ti FE can enable DLSS, which improves performance to nearly 200FPS in this game.
In Forza Horizon 5 it was the Overclocked Radeon RX 6950 XT that was 12% faster than the Overclocked GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE Overclocked. However both were still at very high FPS and very playable at 80+ FPS at 4K, the 6950 XT had a 10FPS advantage. In Far Cry 6 we saw the Overclocked Radeon RX 6950 XT outperform the Overclocked GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE by only 4%. They were nearly similar in performance, both playable, and both providing the same gameplay experience. With FSR they both maxed out at the same performance.
In Cyberpunk 2077 the Overclocked GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE had the performance advantage. However, both were so slow at 4K “Ultra” that the game wasn’t playable anyway without upscaling. When upscaling was used, they were very close in performance, with DLSS providing 58FPS and FSR 61FPS. They provided a similar performance, though DLSS did look better. In MS Flight Sim 2020 both provided a playable experience, but the Overclocked RTX 3090 Ti FE did have a slight performance advantage. Finally, in Watch Dogs Legion both video cards performed exactly the same and provided a playable similar experience.
In terms of Ray Tracing performance, there is no question that the Overclocked GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE has a Ray Tracing performance advantage. However, it does vary from game to game, and there are some games where Ray Tracing is playable on the Overclocked Radeon RX 6950 XT just fine. In Dying Light 2 the Overclocked GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE was 63% faster. However, with FSR enabled Ray Tracing was playable on the Overclocked Radeon RX 6950 XT. In Cyberpunk 2077 the Overclocked GeForce RTX 3090 Ti was 66% faster and playable with DLSS. However, the Overclocked Radeon RX 6950 XT wasn’t quite up to the task, even with FSR.
In Watch Dogs Legion the Overclocked GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE was 29% faster. However, the Overclocked Radeon RX 6950 XT still managed a decent performance level and was playable. The same was true in Metro Exodus Enhanced. Though the Overclocked GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE was faster, the Overclocked Radeon RX 6950 XT was still able to pull off a playable experience.
Final Points
Either way you slice it, both flagship video cards from NVIDIA and AMD offer up a lot of performance, and both can be overclocked to squeeze out more. We saw positive gains and improvements in performance overclocking both versus default performance. For our Overclocking GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE review you can click the link and read that. To check out our full SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 6950 XT PURE review you can click the link and read that. In today’s review, we put both together head-to-head in overclocking performance, with both maxed out, to see how they line up.
When it comes to raw rasterized performance, non-Ray Tracing, we find many games produce a very similar performance. In the cases where the performance is not the same, they at least both provide a playable and similar gaming experience in games at 4K. Both of them allowed very high settings to be playable in a lot of games at 4K with high framerates, 60FPS+ in many cases, save for the most demanding games. Even in those demanding games, when upscaling is supported like DLSS or FSR that makes up the difference and allows the game to be playable at 4K.
The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is stronger in Ray Tracing performance and generally allows it to be very usable. Though there are plenty of games where Ray Tracing is at least at a playable level on a Radeon RX 6950 XT, but you will be finding yourself lowering the resolution or having to use upscaling like FSR. If Ray Tracing is your bag, and your priority when it comes to game settings, then the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is what you want for that. It just simply has the best Ray Tracing performance. If you casually use Ray Tracing or play a game that performs well with it, the Radeon RX 6950 XT will get you usable RT in certain cases.
When it comes down to raw performance, with both video cards performing very well when overclocked the key factor will come down to what is available, and how much they will cost. Right now prices are falling, and you can actually buy these video cards at MSRP, or even below. Since that is the case, whichever one you can find for the cheaper price is probably your best bet and best value for right now, and with the raw MSRP difference between them, it could end up being the Radeon RX 6950 XT. It offers amazing raw performance for the price compared to the higher MSRP on the RTX 3090 Ti and has the most overclocking headroom.