The real question for me is:
@Dan_D going to continue his hunt for a RTX 3090 or switch to a RX 6900 XT?
What a good looking question.
It's actually a difficult question for me to answer. First off, AMD's claims must be verified. While AMD has been very honest on the CPU side, it hasn't built up quite as much credibility on the GPU side. That being said, the honesty didn't start until Lisa Su took over, so it might extend to the GPU side. Even if we can take AMD's numbers at face value, that's still only a small sampling of games and likely the ones that show AMD in the best light. It doesn't cover titles that I play, such as Ghost Recon Breakpoint or Destiny 2. It also doesn't cover potential titles I might or will play in the near future such as Cyberpunk 2077.
That's the first thing. Secondly, I'm in a predicament as I run a G-Sync hardware based monitor presently. Specifically, an Alienware AW3418DW. I don't believe it can do FreeSync at all. At least, not officially. That leaves me in a position of having to buy a new monitor if I go AMD. An equal or better monitor that can do FreeSync is going to be fairly expensive. I won't go with a smaller display, though I'm not hung up on ultra-wide displays. However, if AMD's numbers are correct or even if the RTX 3090 wins by a small percentage over the 6900XT, I'd still be inclined to go with AMD due to the price difference.
Now, I had planned to go to a 4K 120Hz monitor anyway. So far, I haven't liked some of my options but even if I do find something I want, actually getting it will depend on several factors. First and foremost, 2020 has been a hellish piece of **** of a year and my house has been the house from the Money Pit. (A film from the 1980's that some of you should remember.) I have some upcoming expenses coming up like possible foundation work. I will grab a new video card for sure, but whether or not I can do a monitor, CPU and video card is a long shot and its looking less likely every day.
I have to look at my total upgrade costs which would mean paying for an RTX 3090, even at full price the cheaper overall option. It's $500 more than the Radeon 6900XT, but a likely upgrade on the monitor front would put me a couple hundred dollars above that easily. NVIDIA could also lower its prices on the 3090's. Though, in my opinion I think that's doubtful. That's not what I think will actually happen.
Speculation:
I do not often engage in speculation and I've gone most of my career without commenting too much on rumors beyond debating how interesting or plausible I think they might be. I think NVIDIA was well aware of what AMD had up their sleeves and always had a response planned. In my experience, these companies are usually aware of what the others are doing and are rarely flat out blind sided. I think NVIDIA is definitely going to respond to AMD by releasing a 3080 Ti which will be be as fast or faster than the 3090. I suspect that's probably what the RTX 3080 20GB was always intended to be in the first place. The price will likely be slightly higher than the 6900XT, or the same to force the 6900XT to come down.
If that were to happen, I'd probably go that route but timing would be everything on that. Unless such a card absolutely smashes the 3090, I'd probably still opt for that as I really want to make my purchase before the end of the year.
