NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 vs AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT
Side-by-side benchmark comparison, specs, pricing, and value analysis.
Benchmark Comparison
Gaming figures are average frames per second, measured by Tom's Hardware GPU hierarchy. Geometric mean of 15 games, ultra settings, no upscaling. Ray tracing figures are DXR-enabled at 1440p. A dash means the card was not tested at that resolution. Productivity and Steel Nomad are synthetic scores on their own scales and are not comparable to the fps columns.
Specifications
| Spec | GeForce GTX 1080 | Radeon RX 6650 XT |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 8GB GDDR5X | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 320 GB/s | 280 GB/s |
| Shaders | 2560 | 2048 |
| Boost Clock | 1733 MHz | 2635 MHz |
| TDP | 180W | 176W |
| Architecture | Pascal | RDNA 2.0 |
| 3DMark Steel Nomad | 1,561 | 1,854 |
| Best Price | $599 | $399 |
| Value Score | 13/100 | 41/100 |
Verdict
The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT is the clear winner — it offers both better performance and better value.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 vs AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT: Which Should You Buy?
This is not a close race. The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT delivers 54.5 fps at 1440p ultra to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080's 39.4 fps, a 38% gap. Only pick the slower card if it is dramatically cheaper or you need it for a lower resolution.
Pricing settles it: the AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT is both faster and 50% cheaper at $399 versus $599. There is no scenario in this pairing where the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 is the better buy at these prices.
Two things beyond raw speed: the AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT is 6 years newer (2022 versus 2016), so it gets longer driver support and newer upscaling and frame generation features.