AMD’s upcoming Radeon 6000 graphics cards may perform (somewhat) on par with Nvidia’s RTX 3000-series.
The company plans on unveiling the new GPUs on Oct. 28. But during today’s Ryzen 5000 CPU event, the company also previewed a benchmark for an unspecified Radeon 6000 card running three games at 4K resolution on the highest graphics settings.
We decided to compare the stats alongside benchmarks journalists have been posting when testing Nvidia’s RTX 3080 card for 4K gaming.
For Borderlands 3, the Radeon 6000 was able to obtain 61 frames per seconds, according to AMD's benchmark. The reviewers at Hexus ran the same game on an RTX 3080 and found it was able to achieve 59 fps.
For Gears 5, the Radeon 6000 hit a 73 fps rate on ultra quality, which is a bit lower than the average 81 fps the reviewers at Eurogamer found when running the game on the RTX 3080.
Finally, for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the Radeon 6000 achieved an 88 fps. But again, the benchmark was slightly lower than the average 101 fps the reviewers at Wccftech got when using the RTX 3080 to render the game.
None of this is an exact apples-to-apples comparison, since we don't know the exact graphical settings AMD used for each game. Gaming performance can also depend on what CPU is being used and the software drivers.
The chipmaker also declined to say much else about the GPUs. So we’re still in the dark about the specs, and what configurations will be available for the Radeon 6000 series, including whether an even more powerful Radeon card is in the mix.
The real deciding factor will be the price. If this unspecified Radeon 6000 card teased today costs less than the $699 RTX 3080, then we may have a real GPU war on our hands—assuming the AMD-supplied benchmark is legit.
The other factor is availability. The RTX 3080 and 3090 cards are sold out across major retailers, and Nvidia expects the shortages to persist for the remainder of the year. So AMD has a chance to provide a competitive alternative for PC gamers desperate to obtain next-generation GPU technology.
During today’s event, AMD also revealed it will call the new Radeon 6000 cards “Big Navi” after PC gamers came up with the name. “(The card) is absolutely gorgeous and by far the most powerful gaming GPU we have ever built,” AMD CEO Lisa Su added.