AMD’s new RX 6700 XT and Nvidia’s RTX 3070 are both meant to be $500 graphics cards,
so what are the actual differences in games?
I’ve tested both in 10 games at 1080p, 1440p and 4K resolutions to show you what the differences
are and help you decide which to get.
Here’s what we’re looking at when it comes to spec differences between these two graphics
cards.
The 6700 XT has more memory, however the 3070’s memory is faster, but the Radeon card has
a higher board power.
The 3070 is just $20 USD more based on MSRP, but as we all know that’s a meaningless
number lately due to supply issues, more on that later.
This is the system that I’m using to test both graphics cards in, so overclocked i9-10900K
and 32 gigs of memory are the key specs, and both cards were tested with the latest drivers
and Windows updates.
Unfortunately the VBIOS update that adds resizable BAR support to the Nvidia RTX 3070 Founders
edition wasn’t available at the time of testing, so I’ve tested both graphics cards
with this feature disabled.
As both cards are going to support this feature I don’t think it makes sense for me to test
with just one enabled right now, as we’re just in this awkward transitionary period,
but both will have that feature.
Alright so with that in mind let’s get straight into the 10 games at 3 resolutions, then afterwards
we’ll look at pricing and availability, thermals, power draw and more, or you can
use the timestamps below to time travel to a relevant section.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested using the games benchmark.
I’ve got the 1080p results down the bottom, 1440p results in the middle, and 4K up the
top.
At 1080p the 3070 was only 8 FPS ahead, a 6% difference, however the gap increases as
we move up to higher resolutions.
At 1440p the 3070 is now reaching 15% higher average frame rate, then 26% higher at 4K.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was also tested with the game's benchmark.
This time the 6700 XT was ahead at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions, however the 3070 was
back on top at 4K.
The 6700 xt was reaching 17% higher average FPS at 1080p, and the gap lowered at 1440p
with the 6700 xt around 9% ahead, though much closer in 1% lows.
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested in little China with the street kid life path.
Starting with ray tracing disabled, 4K was only around 30 FPS with either card at high
settings.
Both were able to surpass 60 FPS in this test at 1440p, however the 3070 was reaching 9%
higher average FPS, and then a very similar difference at 1080p too, closer to a 10% boost
with the 3070.
Now although Cyberpunk has ray tracing, it’s currently only supported by Nvidia hardware,
so no results for the 6700 XT here and this is an advantage to team green in this currently
popular title.
Control was tested with and without ray tracing, let’s start with ray tracing off results.
This is a fairly GPU heavy game that in the past I’ve found to favour Nvidia, and that’s
the case here too as the performance difference is above average when compared to the other
9 games I’ve tested.
The 3070 was reaching 18% higher average FPS at 1080p, then around 22% higher at 1440p,
where even the 1% low from the 3070 is higher than the average FPS that the 6700 XT was
able to deliver.
Here’s how things look with ray tracing enabled at the highest setting levels.
The 1% lows from the 3070 are now significantly ahead of the average FPS from the 6700 XT,
so a smoother experience with the Nvidia card with RT enabled.
These were the biggest differences seen out of all 10 games tested, the 3070 was reaching
at least 50% higher average FPS in all cases, outlining the edge that Nvidia currently appears
to have with ray tracing.
DLSS is an Nvidia only feature that this game supports, and this is able to boost the frame
rate on the 3070.
No results for the 6700 XT as it doesn’t currently have this feature.
AMD have said they have a DLSS competitor called FidelityFX coming soon, but this isn’t
available today.
Battlefield V was another game where the 6700 XT was able to outperform the 3070 at both
1080p and 1440p resolutions, however the 3070 was slightly ahead at 4K, granted at just
a 2 FPS difference it’s likely not a change you’d notice.
The differences at 1440p and 1080p weren’t as large as the win the 6700 XT had in Valhalla,
but winning’s winning.
Microsoft Flight Simulator was tested in the Sydney landing challenge.
The differences at 1080p were extremely small, basically the same in terms of average FPS
with slightly more of a difference to the 1% low, though I’d argue you’d be hard
pushed to notice the difference when playing.
The 3070 was further ahead at 1440p with a 10% lead in average FPS, and then at 4K the
difference was much larger, the 3070 now had a 40% lead in average FPS, the second largest
difference out of all games tested.
Fortnite was tested with the replay feature using the same replay file with both cards.
The 6700 XT wasn’t quite at 60 FPS with max settings 4K, though it’s close, but
the 3070 was reaching a 34% higher average frame rate at this resolution.
It still had an above average increase at 1440p too, coming in 24% higher than the average
FPS of the 6700 XT, while the lead was 21% higher at 1080p, so one of the bigger differences
out of all games tested in favour of the 3070 with this one.
Watch Dogs Legion was also tested with the games benchmark.
This test had one of the smaller differences at 1080p and 1440p, but it was still a win
for the 3070 in all cases.
Both graphics cards were able to pass 60 FPS with max settings at 1440p, though the 3070
was hitting 9% higher average FPS, and this gap increased to a 16% lead at 4K.
Second last game before the big comparison.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested with the game's benchmark.
Not quite 60 FPS with max settings at 4K for the 6700 XT, the 3070 was reaching 14% higher
average FPS here, 10% higher at 1440p, and 9% higher at 1080p.
The Witcher 3 is a game I’ve been testing the same way for about 5 years now, so it’s
a good one if you want to compare with my older videos.
The 1% low differences at 1080p were within margin of error, though the average FPS was
still 9% ahead with the 3070, and the 3070 was otherwise in the lead.
These are the differences in all 10 games tested between the RTX 3070 and the RX 6700
XT at 1080p.
The 3070 was around 10% faster on average in these games, though some games like Assassin’s
Creed Valhalla and Battlefield V were doing a better job on the Radeon option, while others
like Microsoft Flight Simulator had no major difference either way.
Control with ray tracing enabled at the top of the graph saw the largest difference by
far, reaching more than 50% higher average FPS.
If we exclude the ray tracing test from pumping up the overall average, the 3070 is instead
5.6% faster at 1080p.
Stepping up to 1440p and the 3070 was now able to reach almost 14% higher average FPS
in these games.
Again the 6700 XT was ahead in a couple of the games, while the control with ray tracing
result was at the top, helping boost the overall average.
Now while I think this is a fair comparison as Control is a popular game that just does
better on the Nvidia card, if you want to treat the ray tracing difference as an outlier
then on average the 3070 is instead 9.6% above the 6700 XT in these 10 titles.
The performance gap increases further with the higher 4K resolution, with the 3070 now
reaching 23% higher average frame rate.
Higher resolutions are typically able to get better use of the GPU which is why the differences
are bigger as we go up.
This time the 6700 XT wasn’t ahead in any of the games that I’ve tested, and Control
with ray tracing was now a massive 60% ahead.
Again even if we disregard the ray tracing result, the 3070 is still 19.3% ahead of the
6700 XT in the rest of the games.
Despite both being two slot cards, the 3070 is physically smaller than my 6700 XT.
Regardless, the 3070 was running a little cooler than the 6700 XT while running Control
at 4K, but it wasn’t much of a difference at all.
These results will of course vary based on the specific card you select as they have
different cooling solutions.
Not only is the 3070 slightly cooler, but it’s doing this while using slightly more
power from the wall, granted both were extremely close together here too.
The power draw increased slightly at lower resolutions with both GPUs.
As the performance gains are larger than the differences in power draw, the RTX 3070 ends
up coming ahead in terms of performance per watt at all three resolutions, with the gap
widening at higher resolutions.
I’ve also tested some content creator workloads to see what the differences are outside of
gaming.
I’ve tested DaVinci Resolve with the Puget Systems benchmark.
This test generally seems to be fairly GPU heavy, and the 3070 was able to score 16%
higher than the 6700 XT.
Adobe Premiere was also tested with the puget systems benchmark, though this time the 3070
was scoring more than 18% higher than the 6700 XT, so the Nvidia card seems better for
video editing with either software suite.
SPECviewperf tests out a bunch of professional 3D workloads.
The 3070 was ahead in most of the tests, however in some of them the 6700 XT really seemed
to have an edge.
Now let’s discuss pricing, you can find updated prices linked down in the description,
of course assuming there’s actually stock of either available, as that has been a pretty
big issue lately.
The 6700 XT is meant to have a $480 USD MSRP, and AMD seem confident in their ability to
have stock, but this wouldn’t be the first time we’ve heard that from them, so we’ll
have to wait and see how that goes.
The 3070 on the other hand is only meant to be $20 more expensive at $500, and it is listed
on Newegg for this, but it’s out of stock.
There are a bunch listed beyond $700, but these are out of stock too.
When making the cost per frame graph I’ve included that $700 price point for the 3070
in the red bars, otherwise the MSRP unobtainable prices are in purple.
The results at 1080p and 1440p were very close, the 6700 XT was offering slightly better value
at 1080p, but then the 3070 was ahead at higher resolutions.
Of course if the 6700 XT ends up being more, which it likely will, then things change.
Unfortunately it’s really hard for me to say right at launch time.
Right now this graph is basically useless, I only included it in the hope of it being
more useful later.
In an ideal magical world where everything can be bought for MSRP, the RTX 3070 is only
around 4% more money than the RX 6700 XT, and I think this easily makes the 3070 worthwhile,
as it’s performance boost in games was higher than this, it uses less power, and it’s
got better features.
Although both cards do technically have ray tracing support, it’s pretty clear that
the RTX 3070 is performing better in ray tracing games compared to the 6700 XT - at least today,
and that’s just because Nvidia has had ray tracing for longer, they’ve got the first
mover advantage.
So for the first example, the RTX 3070 had the biggest advantage over the 6700 XT in
Control with ray tracing on out of all games tested.
Second, Cyberpunk can’t be run with ray tracing at all at the moment with the 6700
XT, and third, Nvidia has DLSS today.
Yeah, there aren’t a whole lot of games that support it just yet, but AMD’s FidelityFX
is still nowhere to be seen, so just looking at all things objectively, I think the 3070
is the clear winner over the 6700 XT.
At least today, the Radeon card does have more memory which could mean the gap between
these two cards decreases in future, but that’s something we’d have to revisit a few years
from now.
I’ll also be comparing the 6700 XT against the older 5700 XT from last generation in
the next video, so make sure you’re subscribed if you’re new to the channel.
Otherwise you can check out some of my other graphics card comparisons over here while
you wait, so I’ll see you over in one of those next.