AMD RX 6700 XT Specs Comparison Vs RTX 3070 and 3060 Ti: Which Card is Best?

AMD announced its $479 RX 6700 XT graphics card Wednesday afternoon, sending crypto miners and gamers alike into a frenzy. Officially billed as the "sweet spot" for 1440p PC gameplay, the 6700 XT hardware was advertised as a staunch competitor to the $499 RTX 3070 and well-advantaged over the $400 RTX 3060 Ti. Given the available benchmarks, however, is that claim really true? In this explainer, we break down the numbers and offer our thoughts on where the 6700 XT truly ranks among the competition.

AMD RX 6700 XT barebones specs

Before getting to our assessment of the card itself, it helps to establish a baseline by taking a gander at the kit's official specs as described by AMD during the 6700 XT reveal presentation on March 3. Here are the brass tacks.

• Compute Units: 40
• Memory: 12GB GDDR6
• Game Clock: 2.42 GHz
• Boost Clock: Up to 2.58 GHz
• MSRP: $479

Now let's take a look at the specs of the 6700 XT's two closest competitors: NVIDIA's RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti.

RTX 3070 Specs

• Memory: 8GB GDDR6
• Game Clock: 1.5 GHz
• Boost Clock: 1.73 GHz
• MSRP: $499

RTX 3060 Ti Specs

• Memory 128GB GDDR6 (38 CUs)
• Game Speed: 1.41 GHz
• Boost Clock: 1.67 GHz
• MSRP: $399

Performance Benchmarks

Looking at the raw numbers it would appear the RX 6700 XT has a clear advantage over its contemporaries, but what really matters is how the latest hardware performs while playing games. Based on AMD's official benchmarks from Wednesday, here's what we know based on 1440p gaming with maximum settings.

• Assassin's Creed Valhalla: 10 percent performance advantage over the 3070, 24 percent advantage over the 3060 Ti.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War: seven percent advantage over the 3070, 16 percent advantage over the 3060 Ti.
• Cyberpunk 2077: three percent increase over the 3070 and 10 percent increase over the 3060 Ti.
• Dirt 5: 39 percent increase over the 3070 and 57 percent increase over the 3060 Ti.
• Watch Dogs Legion: 21 percent less than the 3070 and 11 percent less than the 3060 Ti.
• Gears 5: Seven percent below the 3070 and 18 percent better than the 3060 Ti.
• Hitman 3: 10 percent better than the 3070 and 18 percent better than the 3060 Ti.
• Average of all titles: 6.25 percent over the 3070 and 18 percent over the 3060 Ti.

What does it all mean?

It's obviously interesting to see that the 6700 XT fares so well while playing many top-tier games, but it's important to read the data carefully. After all, given that this information was provided by AMD directly as part of a product reveal, it's designed to make the new card look as potent as possible. Many of the listed results do position the 6700 XT as a suitable replacement for the 3070, but the stats for Watch Dogs Legion are potentially telling. It shows that, even under the very best circumstances, the SKU does perform below even the 3060 Ti at times.

In other words, given the general variation in PC builds and the reality that almost no piece of hardware performs precisely as well as its manufacturer claims, it's a safe estimate to conclude the AMD RX 6700 XT will probably fall somewhere below the RTX 3070 and above the 3060 Ti. It also doesn't have the benefit of additional NVIDIA tools such as DLSS and Active Reflex. Features like Radeon Anti-Lag and AMD FidelityFX may be substitutes for the improved visuals and reduced latency those NVIDIA tools offer, but they haven't yet proven to be quite as transformative.

According to the chart, it's also not clear if the tested games had ray tracing enabled or not. While one might assume ray tracing is on since the RX 6700 is a ray-tracing card, that may not be the case. If this isn't a measure of ray-traced performance, then NVIDIA's presumed edge stands to increase even more. The RX 6700 XT still sounds like an incredible value, but we wouldn't be surprised if it fell short in future third-party benchmarks against 2070.

The AMD RX 6700 XT releases March 18 for $479.

Will you be buying the AMD RX 6700 XT later this month? Can it really go toe-to-toe against the 3070? Tell us in the comments section!