Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 can run old favorites better than the AMD Radeon 6700 XT
Long live the graphics king
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If you’re lucky enough to be stuck choosing between theGeForce RTX 3070and theRadeon 6700 XT, you may have a new reason to push you over to Team Green. Fans of games that still use theDirectX 11 graphicsAPI may want to know that there looks to be a fairly large difference between whatAMDandNvidia’s latest generation of graphics cards can offer.
The evidence was collected byPCMag, who noticed that the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT and6800 XTsuffered when playing DX11 games. To test this further they decided to put AMD’s 6700 XT up against Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3070, by measuring the frames per second (FPS) each can achieve in various titles at the same graphical settings.
DirectX 11 – otherwise known as DX11 – is what is known as an application programming interface, or API. This interface essentially helps youroperating systemto ‘talk’ to your components such as graphics cards, memory, and sound cards, allowing them to work together and produce what you see onscreen.
The results from this experiment were pretty stark. When testing the graphics cards with more modern games that runDirectX 12, the FPS performance differences were negligible. Swapping over to DirectX 11 shows an entirely different picture.
In some cases, when testing games likeSleeping Dogs, the Nvidia card managed an average FPS that was 70% more than what the AMD card could achieve. For games that could utilize eitherDX11 or DX12 – such as F1 2020 – the AMD 6700 XT performance improved by nearly 50% with the more modern graphics technology at times.
Why does this matter?
For some titles, at specific resolutions, there was a much smaller difference between AMD and Nvidia’s graphics cards. However, AMD’s GPUs were still outperformed every time when running DirectX 11.
This is bad news if you like playingApex Legends,Destiny 2, orFinal Fantasy XIV, as these each still run on DirectX 11. Modern classics like theDark Soulsfranchise andHalo: The Master Chief Collectionare also stuck on the older graphics API.
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So unfortunately for AMD fans, it looks like Nvidia still looks to have some serious advantages over Team Red, especially given we’re still waiting for the release of Fidelity FX Super Resolution to rival the popular DLSS feature available on GeForce RTX cards. We’ll have to wait and see if AMD can address these issues, otherwise, Nvidia GPUs like the RTX 3070 andRTX 3080might become even more elusive due to demand.
Hamish is a Senior Staff Writer for TechRadar and you’ll see his name appearing on articles across nearly every topic on the site from smart home deals to speaker reviews to graphics card news and everything in between. He uses his broad range of knowledge to help explain the latest gadgets and if they’re a must-buy or a fad fueled by hype. Though his specialty is writing about everything going on in the world of virtual reality and augmented reality.
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