All of which isn't to say that I don't value the RTX 4070's feature set. In my view, DLSS scaling is definitely that little bit sharper and more effective than AMD's FSR. And frame generation in DLSS 3 is a nice feature, even if it's absolutely not the same thing as adding more frames and will do nothing to help the RTX 4070 in those instances when it runs out of VRAM. You could argue that the increased cache of newer GPUs like the RTX 4070 makes memory bandwidth less critical. I'm sure Dave will. And it's true. But the problem with the RTX 4070's stingy 192-bit bus isn't bandwidth, it's the limitations it makes for graphics memory allocation. It's a bit difficult to go hard after AMD for raising prices in this segment given how much cheaper Radeon GPUs are than their GeForce competitors. Of course, AMD would love you to pay more, but they simply don't have the mindshare to get away with it the same way Nvidia can. In other words, AMD is not intentionally doing gamers a favor, but it works out kind of nice for consumers that don't have eyes only for the green team.

It’s hard to find a spot for the RX 6950 XT in the current graphics card market. AMD seems so focused on competing with the RTX 3090 that it forgot to factor in the base RX 6900 XT. Based on my results, the RX 6950 XT is actually a little worse than the RX 6900 XT, though it still manages to beat the RTX 3090. As of January 2022, Radeon Super Resolution is compatible with Radeon RX 5000 series graphics and newer and works with games that support exclusive full-screen mode. AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 22.1.3 or newer is required. GD-197. So while the Nvidia RTX cards are definitely the reigning champs at ray tracing, in many cases you simply won't be using ray tracing, since even on the top-tier Nvidia GPUs, you're still looking at a 4K slideshow without upscaling tech like DLSS and FSR, and not every game has implemented those technologies yet. In the case of most games you will be playing for the next couple of years, you're much more likely to need to lean on rasterization performance as you always have.

One area where AMD and Nvidia differ quite a bit is in their driver user interfaces. Nvidia splits its GeForce driver options into two applications. Nvidia Control Panel handles the GPU settings, such as resolution, texture filtering, vertical sync, low latency mode, power management, and more. The control panel also handles display configuration settings, such as color, rotation, and multi-display setups. Nvidia GeForce Experience handles game settings, driver updates, and includes game streaming and recording features. To access the GeForce Experience features, you have to log in with an Nvidia user account and solve a captcha or provide a 2FA code. Then there's upscaling, which lowers the demands on VRAM, and the extra L2 cache Nvidia's slapped onto its Ada GPUs means it has the bandwidth, too. While AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution is an impressive upscaler in its own right, the company is still playing catchup with DLSS and even more so now that Nvidia has dropped the RTX 40-series' not-so-secret weapon: Frame Generation. It's entirely possible that an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT could have comparable performance to the RX 6950 XT, and it will likely be cheaper, so the potential value of this card is somewhat wasted with so late an entry into the market. Again, it's a shame, because this card has a lot going for it, at least on the gaming front.

TORX Fan 4.0: A masterpiece of teamwork, fan blades work in pairs to create unprecedented levels of focused air pressure. That said, we are only talking about a 3% boost over the RTX 3090 Ti. The Radeon is around 45% cheaper right now though, so that's a win for AMD. When compared to the 6900 XT though we're only looking at a 6% boost, so certainly not worth the premium. The Core i9-12900K has 16 cores and 32 threads. Meaning it can handle multitasking and running multiple applications at once very efficiently. This is important when pairing with the RX 6950 XT, as the card is powerful and requires a CPU that can keep up.The margins remained the same at 1440p. The 6950 XT edged out the RTX 3090 Ti by a tiny margin and boosted performance over the 6900 XT by 11%. Even at 1440p, the Radeon GPUs maintain a decent performance advantage over GeForce competitors and here the 6950 XT was 12% faster than the RTX 3090 Ti, 21% faster than the RTX 3090 and 23% faster than the RTX 3080 Ti. Those are impressive margins, though it was just 5% faster than the original 6900 XT.

In this wishful scenario, AMD and Nvidia would have been evenly matched in terms of performance and value. Looking at the Radeon RX 6800 XT and GeForce RTX 3080 10GB, a slight premium for the RTX 3080 can be seen, but that product probably does command a slight premium. Interestingly, the 6950 XT is slightly better value than the original model at the MSRP, dropping the cost per frame by about 2%, or essentially they are about the same. The RTX 3090 Ti costs 70% more per frame than the 6950 XT based on the MSRP. Now let's move on to real-world pricing... I don't think AMD will totally halt RX 6800 sales, but it has always been a GPU that only exists to take care of yields. If a Navi 21 isn't at least 90% functional on the CUs, and fully functional on the cache and memory controllers, it can't be sold as a 6800 XT. I do wonder if some Navi 21 chips end up as RX 6700 / RX 6750 XT, just because there will inevitably be flaws in the Infinity Cache or memory controllers. But perhaps AMD just doesn't bother with such chips. Overall, roughly three times as many games support DLSS 2 as FSR 2 — and note that all of the DXR games and six of the nine rasterization games in our test suite support DLSS, while FSR2 is only supported in two of the DXR games and three of the rasterization games. In each of those games Nvidia's RTX 4070 will get about a 30–50 percent boost to performance, using Quality mode upscaling. That means a game will typically run significantly faster than AMD's RX 6950 XT if a game only supports DLSS and not FSR2 Getting a good fit for a strong GPU such as the 6950 XT is a difficult task. However, we have given some great options so far. All of them have good pricing but if you’re still looking for a better price, then this is your shot. The Ryzen 5 5600X is a mid-range CPU from Team Red, however, don’t let that fool you. The CPU is strong enough to be a great match for the 6950 XT. You’ll be able to perform the vast majority of activities, with this rig investing as little money as possible.But that's the case even with the RTX 3090 Ti with DLSS on, which only just barely hits 60 fps (ocassionally) in Cyberpunk 2077's benchmark at 4K with the Ultra Ray Tracing graphics preset. And, even then, that's its max frame rate, its average is in the high 40s, while without any upscaling, the RTX 3090 Ti only hits 24 fps on those settings.