NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 vs AMD Radeon RX 6950 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 RTX 5080 | Radeon RX 6950 XT |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 16GB GDDR7 | 16GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 960 GB/s | 576 GB/s |
| Shaders | 10752 | 5120 |
| Boost Clock | 2617 MHz | 2310 MHz |
| TDP | 360W | 335W |
| Architecture | Blackwell 2.0 | RDNA 2.0 |
| 3DMark Steel Nomad | 8,762 | 4,221 |
| Best Price | $999 | $1,099 |
| Value Score | 46/100 | 30/100 |
Verdict
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is the clear winner — it offers both better performance and better value.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 vs AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT: Which Should You Buy?
This is not a close race. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 delivers 138.4 fps at 1440p ultra to the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT's 110.1 fps, a 26% gap. Only pick the slower card if it is dramatically cheaper or you need it for a lower resolution.
Pricing settles it: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is both faster and 10% cheaper at $999 versus $1,099. There is no scenario in this pairing where the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT is the better buy at these prices.
Two things beyond raw speed: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is 3 years newer (2025 versus 2022), so it gets longer driver support and newer upscaling and frame generation features.