AMD Radeon RX 6800 could pummel Nvidia RTX 3070 — here’s how

(Image credit: AMD)

AMD has publicly shown off the graphical firepower of the Radeon RX 6000 series, but a leaked benchmark has revealed how the RX 6800 could beat the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070.

The leak claims to show the RX 6800 deliver a score of 16,775 in the 3DMark TimeSpy benchmark, and comes courtesy of a Twitter user called PJ, who’s an editor and tester at PC-centric publication Uniko’s Hardware. We don’t know much about the leaker, so we’ll have to take this with a pinch of salt, but according to TechRadar the score beats the RTX 3070 by a healthy 23% margin.

The best gaming PCs to buy now
Everything we know about the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
Plus: This big PS5 accessory isn't coming at launch — here's why

In tests conducted by the likes of HotHardware and Guru3D, the RTX 3070 delivered a respective TimeSpy score of 12,864 and 13,622, showing that the Radeon RX 6800 outperforms it, in a synthetic benchmark at least.

In the leak, the RX 6800 was tested in a machine with an AMD Ryzen 5 3500X, a reasonably powerful current-generation processor. It’s unclear how much of an effect this might have on the benchmark results, and we’ve yet to see benchmarks with an RDNA 2-based Radeon GPU paired with an Intel processor.

R5 3500x + RX 6800, 16775 gp ts 250~280w pic.twitter.com/SZXWBu7EIoOctober 31, 2020

Nevertheless, this still shows that the $549 Radeon RX 6800 could be quite the powerhouse graphics card, even though the likes of the Radeon RX 6900 XT, aka Big Navi, and the Radeon RX 6800 XT have stolen the limelight.

However at $499, the GeForce RTX 3070 undercuts the Radeon RX 6800, something that’s a little unusual in the AMD vs Nvidia graphics battle; on the higher-end, AMD’s GPUs are noticeably cheaper than Nvidia’s. And we’ve yet to see AMD pit its new Radeon RX 6000 cards against the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000-series in ray-tracing tests, as that’s where Team Green’s GPUs might beat Team Red’s cards.

This is an interesting time for PC graphics, as anyone planning to make a new gaming PC now has a selection of powerful and compelling graphics cards to choose from. And this renewed competition should see more competitive graphics cards get released from both AMD and Nvidia.

Roland Moore-Colyer a Managing Editor at Tom’s Guide with a focus on news, features and opinion articles. He often writes about gaming, phones, laptops and other bits of hardware; he’s also got an interest in cars. When not at his desk Roland can be found wandering around London, often with a look of curiosity on his face.