The Battle for 8K Dominance: AMD and Nvidia's GPU Showdown

Nvidia recently released its new GeForce RTX 3090 card, which is touted as an 8K gaming solution. However, when put to the test against AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT, it becomes clear that neither company has truly cracked the code for seamless 8K gaming.

In the latest benchmark tests, Nvidia's 3090 outperformed AMD's 6900 XT in every measurable way. The difference was significant, with the 3090 maintaining a 10% lead over the 6900 XT at 6,900 XT. However, it's worth noting that this performance gap is not unique to 8K and is present across a range of demanding titles.

The TLDR (Too Long; Didn't Read) for this showdown is that AMD puts up a valiant effort for the $500 price difference against the 3090, sometimes coming close or even beating it at 8K. However, it still falls short in more demanding titles, even with its greater overclocking headroom. This highlights the importance of technologies like DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and how much not having it is holding AMD back.

The role of GDDR6X memory is particularly significant in this context, as it can significantly impact a GPU's performance at high resolutions. If AMD had equipped the 6900 XT with GDDR6X, it might have been more competitive more often. This makes one wonder how much of a bottleneck it would have been for Nvidia if they had stuck with PCI Express Gen 3.

The question remains: is 8K gaming truly practical for every game today? While it's clear that it's not, the experience can still provide valuable insights into how GPUs will evolve over time. AMD famously squeezed several years of life and performance improvements out of its Radeon 7970, and it appears that they may have a bit more headroom here.

Another interesting aspect of this showdown is the use of anti-aliasing techniques like DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) to enhance gaming performance at lower resolutions. Nvidia's DLSS technology was first introduced as a form of anti-aliasing and has since become a key feature in many games, allowing for high-quality visuals without the need for expensive hardware.

The competition between AMD and Nvidia is fierce, with both companies vying for dominance in the GPU market. The fact that neither can create a GPU that can natively run 8K maxed-out AAA games highlights the complexity of this challenge. However, upscaling tricks are here to stay, and gamers will continue to benefit from these technologies.

Finally, it's worth noting that unless your screen is quite large, 8K has a much smaller impact on gaming experience than say HDR or running at a higher refresh rate for smoother animations. While 8K may not be as impactful on gameplay as some might expect, the technology itself remains an exciting area of innovation.

The Importance of Power Supplies in GPU Testing

As any seasoned gamer or tech enthusiast knows, power supplies are crucial to maintaining the health and performance of high-performance hardware like GPUs. In this context, Seasonic's observation that their test benches were running smoothly even when faced with the 3090's intense power requirements is a testament to the importance of reliable power supplies.

The fact that Nvidia's RTX 1000 GPU handled power surges from its competitors while AMD struggled suggests that a strong power supply can make all the difference in maintaining system stability and performance. This highlights the importance of choosing a suitable power supply for any gaming setup, regardless of whether you're running an Nvidia or AMD GPU.

By understanding the role of power supplies in maintaining stable performance during intense GPU usage, gamers and enthusiasts alike can ensure that their systems are optimized for maximum performance and reliability. With Seasonic's range of high-quality power supplies available to fit any budget, it's easier than ever to choose a reliable solution for your gaming needs.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- The most powerfulgaming CPU on the planet.Is it enough to play modern gameson a massive 8K OLED TVlike this Z10 88 inch from LG?And what graphics cardcould possibly be worthy?To find out,we have the two absolute fastesttop of the line GPU'sfrom both AMD and Nvidia.Representing team redand weighing in at a cool 1500 US Dollarsis the ROG Strix Radeon RX 6900 XTliquid-cooled editionand for team green, we've got the $2,000MSI Nvidia RTX 3090 SUPRIM X.Either one of them alonecosts more than an Xbox Series S, Series Xand PlayStation 5 combinedand is capable of consuming an excessof 700 Watts of powerunder heavy load at stock speedsand today we'll beoverclocking both of themto their absolute limits.Fortunately, our sponsor Seasonichas got us coveredwith their TX-1000 80+Titanium power supply.It's efficient, quiet, fully modularand comes with a 12 year warranty.Let's make this poor thing hurt, shall we?(upbeat music)The MSI RTX 3090UPRIM X is a powerful cardto be sureand at least on paper,it is well ahead of its competitorthe Radeon RX 6900 XT thanks in partto its super fast GDDR6X memorybut here's the thing,AMD pulled off a pretty major surprisewhen the RX 6900 X teammanaged to hold his ownagainst this monsterin traditional rendering at 4K,thanks in large part to it's even fasterbut much smaller Infinity Cache.Also the built-in water coolingon this version of the cardcan't hurt its chances.Actually, both of these areamong the best availablein their class,featuring overkill coolinga factory overclock,triple 8-pin power connectors.Oh, and of course, RGB for that extra FPSand the Radeon actually has another trickup its sleeve that Nvidiadoesn't have supportfor yet,Smart Access Memory.Also known as Resizable BAR supportallows the CPU on our systembecause we're using a Ryzen 5900XTto access all of the GPS memory at oncerather than in the traditional256 megabyte chunks.This would ordinarily speed upmemory intensive games sometimes by a lotbut whether that advantage translatesto 8K remains to be seenjust like my sick LimitedEdition Foil GPU shirtfrom LTDstore.com.Like these GPUs,we can only make a limited number of thisby the way we are expecting themto sell out fast.So go.Anyway, in the meantime,our GPU bench is readyto freaking go herewith the aforementionedRyzen 5950X 16-Core CPU,a fresh install of windowsand of courseour Seasonic Prime TX 1080Plus Titanium power supply.Again, that's to be surethat we're not bottle-necking ourselvesin any meaningful way.We're also gonna be using these toolsfrom Nvidia right hereto monitor our power consumptionin real time as we run our tests.So that's pretty fun.There's no way to pleaseeveryone these days,hey,they want you to test in a closed caseso that you don't give a thermal advantageto some card designs over othersbut the thing about closedcases that it's likeyou can't access the IOwhen you have the powermeasurement stuff looked upand everythingbefore we actually overclock the cardswe're doing some baseline testingat their stock speedsto see how they competed 8Klike AMD technically has the VRM for itway more than the RTX3080 but it's slower.So like that's tough, hey,- That's likealmost half the speed.- Yeah, it seems like it'd be finefor working on large projects,like as a pro-sumer cardbut for actual gaming,then again, we will tryto overclock it later.That's actually not terrible,it's like 50 Plus FPSand remember this is aG-Sync capable display, so..- It is not currently enabled.Oh, did you not enable it?- It's best todisable it for benchmarking.- That's true.Still in terms of the gaming experience55 FPS with adaptive sync, not bad,- Certainly like on a consoleyou wouldn't complain about that.- Nope.On a PC, I wouldn't complain about that.Yeah.Maybe not in this game,in this game I'd like tohave a little bit more.Oh, we're definitelygetting some judder though.You can really see itin those panning shots.- Yeah, with the G-Sync,that wouldn't be such a big deal though.- I wanna get out into a more open areabut I'm getting like75-80 FPS in here, man.This game is so well optimized,it could probably runon like a toasterif you really needed to,how are we doing for powerconsumption, Anthony?- It looks like we've peaked at 461 Wattsand we're averaging about 420.- Nice.Something to note here though,is that while the game is never droppingbelow 60 FPS,Anthony, do you see that?judder and those microbes?- Oh yeah.It's like hitching every,I dunno like every 10 seconds.Yeah.- So hopefully overclocking will help usa little bit with that.Let's see.Oh, it's hot.- Yeah.That back plate is usedactually for cooling.- Yeah, no kidding.Geez.Well it's handling it actually,it looks like Nvidia might nothave the only 8K gaming cardon the market.- What does theframe rate display show?- It shows 55.- Oh wow, that's okay.- Very similarand you know what?I need to get out intoa more open area firstbut it actually doesn'tfeel quite as juddery.How's our power consumption?- Power consumption haspeaked so far at 384and we're in around 311 average- And to be clear,that's just the GPUof the numbers we're talking about,not the entire system.- So yeah, like a hundred Wattsless for similar (indistinct) performance?- It's a lower FPS reported by the gamebut it's actually a littlebit smoother feelingin terms of the frame deliverywhich is not what I actually expected.- Pre-sync isn't on a right?- I could check that.I don't know.I see tearing.I don't think so.Okay, so back to the samething with the pillarslook how much smoother that is.I think we're gonna needto run some more testingand get the peeps some real numbers here.The rest of our games wentabout as you'd expect with AMD trailingNvidia significantlyat about three quartersof the performanceand shadow the Tomb Raiderand it's even worsewith ray tracing enabledand that doesn't even consider DLSS,Nvidia's deep learning super samplingthat runs the game at a lower resolutionthen uses machine learning to upscale it.It's a great featureand in supported games,honestly Nvidia is just untouchable,Red Dead Redemption 2 has a similar storyin minimum frame ratesbut the average closes the gap somewhat,well Forza Horizon brings us much closerat roughly a 10% performance difference,finally, huh, would you look at that,CS GO has AMD winning at stock speeds.Very interesting.This simpler title lendscredence to the notionthat AMD is raw rasterperformance may be higherthan invidious, regardlessof memory throughputand F1 2020 gives usanother win for team red.Yeah, dang. I was worriedthis wasn't gonna be muchof a like ultimate showdownbut it turns out we'vegot a battle on our hands.Now let's get to overclocking,Nvidia's newer versionsof G-Force experience provide a wayto automatically do overclock scanningand set power targets.Unfortunately adjusting the voltageor power target made the OSI scancrashed the system and MSI Afterburnersimilarly either crashed or settledon an unstable overclockwhenever performing a no-see scanfor a while there,we thought our card might already just beat peak performancebut manually overclocking,we were able to bump the coreby about 100 megahertz and 800 megahertzon the memory before westarted losing stabilityand performance to downclockingand Error Correction.In order to do that though, of coursewe have to raise our power limitand apply, as for your core voltage,honestly, increasing it might workagainst you as much as for youbecause you'll be more likelyto hit your power limit.So Anthony says he actually gotabout the same resultswith it cranked as with it,just to add nothing.So you know what?You only live once.Crank it.- YOLO.- YOLO.Something to watch out for here isthat those GDTR six X memory chipsget extremely hoteven under normal circumstancesand they're going to get even hotter now.So the back plateof this card is necessaryfor keeping them cool,so far this actually doesn'treally seem any better.We're getting about 65 to 75 FPSwhich is pretty much what we saw before.I'm also feeling a bit more stutteringthan I did on AMD.That's something that basedon the measurements we took ahead of timewe were not expecting.- Yeah, there'sdefinitely a Judder.- Yeah.See that.Did it look worse thanthe Radeon card too?- I feel like the Radeon didn't haveas severe stutteringat least based on what I'm seeing hereand what's in my memorymaybe I'm just crazybut it looks worse here.- That does not look like70 frames per second period.- Yeah, it lookskind of like 45 or 50.- Yeah, if that and not a smooth 50.- Yeah, it almost reminds meof like the micro starter you'd getfrom multi GPU, frame rate,high consistency, low.- How are we doing for power?- 500 peak and the average lookslike it's floating inaround four 440, 450.So we're up a lot higher.- Yeap, top tire, all right.Half our power supplydedicated just to the GPUand this tool does not measurefine enough time incrementsto see these like micro spikesthat can take place from time to time.Now we'll throw the AMD card back inand I'll try notto plunk myself here andtouch the black plate.We expect it to be evenhotter than last time.AMD's Radeonand software offers overclocking controlsdirectly setting thecard to 2,600 megahertzseems to be about as highas we can go out of the gate any higherand it'll throttle to this speed anyway,just add full voltage and a power targetand then the memory,we're actually able toset as high as possibleand it's possible we couldhave even gone fartherif we had a bit more controlover memory frequency.Okay. So let's trycranking the power limitfor one thing.- And then frequencyyou leave max frequency 2,600and Ram just whoop.You can go advanced controljust to see how much that is.Yeah, 2150.- Okay, applied changes.Okay.It was not my imagination last time.This is noticeably smootherthan the Nvidia experience.Although if the numbersare anything to go byit's a bit of an outlier.What's also a better experiencecompared to Nvidia thoughis the overclocking headroom on this cardat the low endwe still only got about 5% improvementbut on the high end we were lookingat up to 15% faster performance.So that's pretty cool.- This might be my imaginationbut it seems like it isfar smoother than before.- I think it is smoother.I don't know if I woulddescribe it as far smoother.It's definitely smoother though.So we're getting 60 to 70 mid FPS.- We were gettinglike 50 to 60 before,weren't we?- Actually that's true.Isn't it?Okay.Yeahand it is noticeably smoother to operate.I'm surprised AMD comes outwith a pretty clear winat least in due maternal.Although, you know what, AnthonyI am seeing more stuttering nowthat we've overclockedor judder rather.See that how it'll gosmoothly for a little bitand then it'll like,(instructor groaning)like the Nvidia card,now what's our power consumption?- It's looks like 415 Watts maximum.We're averaging around 360, 362 Wattsas far as you know.- Not too shabby,overall neither cardhad terribly impressiveoverclocking headroombut that's not a huge surprise consideringthat both of themalready had factory overclocks applied,for our results,we did eke out a framer to hereand there on both cardsin shadow of the Tomb Raiderbut Ray tracing remains a pain pointfor AMD with minimumsthat are still in the single digits,Red Dead Redemption 2 and Forza Horizonmeanwhile put AMD coupleof percentage pointscloser to Nvidia then stockwhich in Forza puts the6,900 XT within the 10% markand as we might expectCS GO improved by a significant marginmaintaining AMD spot well ahead of Nvidiabut this time in every measurable waythe TLDR then is this,AMD is best puts up a Valiant effortfor the $500 pricedifference against the 3090sometimes coming close or even beating itat 8K but only sometimesit still falls shortin more demanding titleseven with it's greateroverclocking headroomwhich only servesto further highlight the importanceof technologies like DLSSand how much not having itis holding AMD back right nowand not just in Ray tracing eitheroutside of doing eternalwhich surprisingly wasquite a bit smootheron AMD,GDTR six seemsto be helping Nvidia out tremendouslybecause remember 8K isfour times the numberof pixels as 4K.Just the frame buffer alonethat is each frame displayedon the screen is nearly 128 megabytes,which is exactly enoughto hobble the 6,000 series 128 megabytesof ridiculously fast Infinity Cache,leaving them with memorythat's just over half as fast as ampheresfor everything else,with that said, if AMD had a DLSS analogto reduce this memory footprint,AMD might have been morecompetitive more often.So it seems reasonable to suggestthat if AMD had equipped the 6900 XTwith GDDR6X things mightlook quite a bit differentwhich makes me wonder how muchof a bottleneck it wouldhave been for Nvidia.If they had stuck with PCI Express Gen 3this time around,get subscribed for our videobecause we are going to be exploring thatby the way.So then is 8K gaming a lie?Well, it's complicatedwhile I participatedin some of NVIDIA's earlypromotion for 8K gamingon the RTX 3090 and it does workin the same way that a primitive hammercan pound in a nail.It's clear that it's not practicalfor every game todayand as more visuallyelaborate titles trickle outover the next few years,new hammers will be muchmore appropriate toolsto handle them at this resolutionbut this was still an interesting exercisefor a couple of reasons,first because of how demanding it is.Gaming at 8K can give us a glimpseinto how a card is performancemight evolve over time.AMD famously squeezedseveral years of lifeand performance improvementsout of its Radeon 7970and it looks like compared to Nvidiathey may have a bit moreheadroom here again.Oops, the AMD card is over thereand secondwhile you might roll your eyesand say, who cares?Nobody has an 8K monitor.The same was true for 4K a short while agoand even if you only use a 4K displaysuper samplingor running at a higherresolution than nativethen downscaling it is still the best wayto reduce shimmeringand other artifacts while preserving 100%of the detail in an imageand Forex Super Sampling at 4Kmeans rendering at 8K,fun fact to close this out,DLSS, Nvidia's killerapp that allowed themto market this card asan 8K gaming solutionwith a straight face iscurrently used to renderat a lower resolutionand then blow it up toyour displays native resbut that wasn't how itwas first introduced.It was a formof anti-aliasing hence the super samplingin the nameand it's very good at this task.So good in factthat its second iterationit now legitimatelyenables high impactfeatures like Ray tracingto run at a lower resolutionwhile preserving most of the sharpnessand detail of native rendering.This point is especially painfulfor AMD whose Ray acceleratorsalready significantly laggedbehind Nvidia's RT cards.Anyway, the main takeaway is thatneither AMD nor Nvidia is even closeto creating a GPUthat can natively run8K maxed-out AAA gamesand that upscaling tricks are here to stayand by the way, one more takeawayis that unless your screen is this big,8K has a much smaller impactyour gaming experiencethan say HDRor running at a higher refresh ratefor smoother animationsand that last one,you can actually check out our whole videoabout that here.On the subject of smoothness,big shout out to Seasonicfor keeping our testbenches running smoothlyas can be.They have observed these GPU's,both of them actually spiking northof a thousand Watts forvery short durationswhich can wreak havoc onover current protectionsand RTX 1000 handled them like a champ.You can check it outat the link in the video descriptionand of course they've got lotsof other power supplies to fit any budget.\n"