Greetings!
Between the two when it comes down to gaming at 4K which is the better option to go with? I don’t really understand the major differences between the two other than reading the 3090 can do ray tracing and DLSS. Seeing as I’ve never experienced either of those been considering for my next build which GPU I should aim for.
Thanks!
Strictly speaking between these 2
The 3090 would better if you just want the performance and having ray tracing as an option.
For the general mass in todays market and if you can careless about ray tracing, the 6900 xt will be better.
The 3090 isn’t miles ahead better, they trade blows if you don’t include ray tracing.
What does ray tracing do and do you think future games will make use of this technology?
Ray tracing renders light differently making it more realistic. I’d suggest googling some games that has it. I think it will be more widely used but most likely a few more years down the line.
Though the games that does have it today might spark your interest.
I’ve had an EVGA 3080 Ti FTW3 in my desk machine for a few months now and a Sapphire 6900XT Nitro+ SE in the living room machine for the past few days.
The 3080 Ti is for most practical purposes a 3090 with less VRAM, and for the things I’ve been doing both perform very well. The 6900XT has a harder job overall though, because it’s pushing 4k60 most of the time since it’s hooked up to a TV, whereas the 3080 Ti is hooked up to a 2560x1440 high refresh rate monitor with Gsync (so more frames are being pushed, but the resolution is lower and frame drops don’t matter as much).
So far both have been champs, but this particular 6900XT doesn’t even ramp its fans for a lot of things whereas the 3080 Ti gets huffy a good deal more easily, despite seeing similar thermals in benchmarks like Time Spy. This may be due to differences in the heatsinks/fans between the two but I think the 6900XT may just be a cooler-running card.
Bottom line, I don’t think you can go wrong with either. They’re both monstrous cards. Just make sure you have a PSU to back them (Seasonic FOCUS Plus Platinum 850W and 750W have been good for me on the 3080 Ti and 6900XT respectively) and good airflow in your case.
Both cards are pretty subpar with what’s in the pipeline.
The next gen cards are so massive in perf uplift that the 3090 TI and 6900 XT will be eating dust against next gen cards. The 4090 IT (or w/e it’ll be called) is rumored to be 250% faster than a 3090 and the 7900 XT (or w/e it’s called) is rumored to be 300% faster than the 6900 XT. We haven’t seen this kind of perf uplift in like forever.
If you need something asap then get whatever you can get/fits your budget. Overall both the 3090 and the 6900XT’s are a bad buy right now imo.
Edit:
Rumor mill for the 4090 TI is 500W and the 7900XT is 350W so get ready for some high end liquid coolers.
The power requirements and non-optional liquid cooling on the next gen cards make them incredibly unattractive to me despite the muscle they’re rumored to offer. I’m not too happy to have to upgrade perfectly good barely aged PSUs just to accommodate a GPU. If I were to buy anything from the next gen it’d be the entry-to-midlevel models, assuming they have better power consumption and heat output than current gen cards for similar or better performance.
That’s for the highest tier cards. AMD’s target of 350Watt (if true) is already on par with what’s in high end cards now. Nvidia failed at multi-chip so they are jacking up to 500W+ to try and complete supposedly.
Even a if lower tier is 1/3 the speed of the top tier next gen, it’ll be on par with a 3090 and 6900xt at much lower power consumption. We’ll see about price though…
6900 XT reference
One important thing to remember here is if you ever use programs the benefit from using Cuda cores such as Adobe or other rendering programs then the Nvidia is going to be much better. It’s really not even a contest at that point
However if you are using it for gaming only? I’d still shoot for the Nvidia but the 6900 XT is an amazing card. For just gaming you cant go wrong with either