NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 vs AMD Radeon RX 5600 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 5600 XT |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 8GB GDDR5X | 6GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 320 GB/s | 288 GB/s |
| Shaders | 2560 | 2304 |
| Boost Clock | 1733 MHz | 1750 MHz |
| TDP | 180W | 150W |
| Architecture | Pascal | RDNA 1.0 |
| 3DMark Steel Nomad | 1,561 | 1,664 |
| Best Price | $599 | $279 |
| Value Score | 13/100 | 38/100 |
Verdict
The AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT is the clear winner — it offers both better performance and better value.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 vs AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT: Which Should You Buy?
The AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT is 7% faster at 1440p ultra (42 fps against 39.4 fps). That is roughly one settings notch — enough to matter if you are chasing a specific refresh rate, not enough to rescue a bad price.
Pricing settles it: the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT is both faster and 115% cheaper at $279 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 5600 XT is 4 years newer (2020 versus 2016), so it gets longer driver support and newer upscaling and frame generation features.