Where is an RX 6800 XT GPU faster than an RX 7800 XT? In Linux gaming, that's where

You wouldn't swap your Radeon RX 7800 XT for its predecessor - that'd be insane, of course - but believe it or not, there is a scenario where the RX 6800 XT beats out the RDNA 3 graphics card, namely in Linux.

2

The RX 6800 XT certainly acquitted itself admirably under Linux (Image Credit: ASRock)

Specifically, in the Ubuntu distro, which was the battleground on which Phoronix organized a shootout between AMD, Intel and NVIDIA GPUs.

This was a test of 1080p resolution gaming on Linux, and the GPU of those picked which topped the rankings was AMD's RX 6800 XT - beating the RX 7800 XT into second place. (The 7800 XT was the most powerful graphics card picked on the AMD side of the equation, which is fair enough for Full HD resolution benchmarks).

The RDNA 2 graphics card was actually about 12% faster than the 7800 XT going by the mean average of all the test results (across a selection of five games, including the likes of Hitman 3 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and a bunch of synthetic gaming benchmarks).

So, why on earth is the equivalent last-gen GPU beating AMD's 7800 XT? (And, in fact, the RX 6800 (non-XT) is almost level pegging with the RDNA 3 card, too).

Well, as you might guess, it's all down to the graphics driver. Because the RDNA 2 card has been around for quite some time, the driver is in a much better finely tuned state on Linux. Whereas for the 7800 XT the driver is still in rougher shape.

Of course, that will change over time, and another evaluation at the end of next year, when more polish has been applied, will likely show very different results for RDNA 3 GPUs.

Overall, AMD dominated the rankings, holding the top six spots, with even Team Red's RX 6700 XT just outdoing NVIDIA's most powerful contender, the RTX 3080.

Intel's Arc graphics cards were all languishing at the bottom of the table, and again, that's not really a surprise seeing as these are relatively new products, and a whole new venture for Team Blue. Even the graphics driver on Windows was pretty shaky for quite some time, although it has made big leaps and bounds in recent times, which is promising for Battlemage (next-gen GPUs that are set to arrive next year at some point).

Interestingly, the new Arc A580 was very close behind both the Arc A750 and A770, with not much at all between these three GPUs. Intel's Alchemist A750 was outperformed by the NVIDIA RTX 3060 to the tune of 18%, so the former wasn't a mile away from the performance of Team Green's GPU on Linux.