Comparing the AMD RX 6700 XT to the Nvidia RTX 3070

Graphics cards have seen a price hike recently, with the boom of cryptocurrency mining as well as shortages of stock resulting in scalping and re-selling for exorbitant prices. While things are bound to get better with time, the current scenario has made it a lot tougher for gamers looking for a decent GPU for their gaming needs.

Most gamers usually spend around $500 on a new GPU, and the current kings at the price point are the RTX 3070 from Nvidia and the upcoming RX 6700XT from AMD. In spite of retailing at a similar price point, it would be really interesting to pit them against one another to find which is the best of the two.

The RX 6700XT is the latest addition to the RX 6000 series of AMD GPUs. These cards are based on the newest RDNA2 architecture, which is the same as the PS5 or the Xbox Series X/S's GPUs. The RX 6700XT features 40 Compute Units, each running at a Game Frequency of 2424 MHz, and can boost up to 2851MHz. Top that off with a generous 12 GB of GDDR6 memory and a bandwidth of up to 384 GB/s, the RX 6700XT becomes a force to be reckoned with.

Nvidia's RTX 3070 also walks down a similar path when it comes to its specs, which is to be expected from a competitor. Based on the new Ampere architecture, the RTX 3070 packs 5888 CUDA cores each running at a base clock of 1.50 GHz, and can boost up to 1.73 when needed. It also comes with 8 GB GDDR6 memory operating with a bandwidth of 448 GB/s. As much as specs are important to a graphics card, the difference between both architectures calls for a real-world test to make the comparisons a lot easier.

Comparing both the cards against each other isn't possible at the moment as AMD's offering isn't available yet. AMD's official 1440p max settings benchmarks show comparable numbers to the RTX 3070, with both cards trading blows most of the time. The benchmarks seem to have been recorded with RTX turned off, and trends suggest that turning it on will make AMD's 6700XT fall behind considerably. AMD's RX 6700XT comes with an additional 4 GB of RAM when compared to the RTX 3070. This could turn out to be great for the card in the long run, as games continue to get more taxing on the GPU. However, Nvidia's DLSS is no slouch either, which upscales games to high resolutions using deep learning algorithms while ensuring that there is no considerable loss in quality.

With most comparisons out of the way, it's clear that there isn't a definitive answer. Both cards deliver comparable performances and come with their own unique feature sets. The RX 6700 XT has an MSRP of $479 while the RTX 3070 has it at $500. However, finding an RTX 3070 at its MSRP has proven to be a challenge, which has given way to similar concerns for fans waiting on the RX 6700 XT's release. AMD has already reassured that it would be working proactively to meet the consumers' demands, which remains to be seen when it launches on March 18, 2021.