AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 represent two very different philosophies in high-performance computing. The RTX 3090 Ti is a consumer-adjacent flagship aimed at maximum raw throughput, while the MI60 is an early data-center accelerator focused on memory capacity and compute density. Benchmark data shows a clear performance hierarchy, but the MI60's unique specifications carve out a distinct niche that pure compute scores do not capture.

Where Each One Wins

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is the decisive winner in every benchmark category where both cards were tested. Its average benchmark score of 131,938 places it in the 95th percentile of all GPUs, and it leads its nearest rivals by significant margins. In the head-to-head comparisons, the RTX 3090 Ti wins both available tests — Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan — with no contest from the AMD card. The data indicates this card is built for raw computational power, particularly in workloads that leverage its massive shading unit count and dedicated ray tracing and tensor cores. Its 95th percentile ranking suggests it outperforms the vast majority of GPUs ever released, making it a top-tier choice for demanding rendering, simulation, and AI inference tasks.

The AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 wins in a different arena: memory capacity and physical efficiency. While it loses every benchmark, it offers 32 GB of HBM2 memory compared to the RTX 3090 Ti's 24 GB, and it does so with a lower 300 W TDP and a dual-slot form factor. This makes it a more practical option for dense server environments where power density and physical space are constrained. Its 93rd percentile ranking is still impressive, but the data suggests its value lies in specific memory-bound workloads rather than general compute performance. The MI60's 4096-bit memory bus provides 1.02 TB/s of bandwidth, nearly identical to the RTX 3090 Ti's 1.01 TB/s, meaning it can feed its compute units just as quickly in memory-heavy tasks despite having far fewer shading units.

FAQ

Q: Which card has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti scores 131,938 on average, while the AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 scores 92,466. This represents a roughly 42.7% advantage for the NVIDIA card based on the raw average scores.

Q: How large is the performance gap in the Geekbench OpenCL test?

A: The RTX 3090 Ti scores 174,441 compared to the MI60's 92,488, a delta of 88.6%. This is the smaller of the two head-to-head margins, but still a dominant win for NVIDIA.

Q: Does the AMD card win any benchmark?

A: No. Across the two head-to-head tests available (Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan), the RTX 3090 Ti wins both. The MI60 has zero benchmark wins in this comparison.

Q: Which card has more memory, and does it help?

A: The AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 has 32 GB of HBM2, which is 8 GB more than the RTX 3090 Ti's 24 GB of GDDR6X. Despite the larger capacity, the memory bandwidth is nearly identical (1.02 TB/s vs 1.01 TB/s), so the extra capacity does not translate into a compute performance advantage in these tests.

Q: How do the two cards compare in terms of physical size and power?

A: The RTX 3090 Ti is a triple-slot card measuring 336 mm in length with a 450 W TDP and a single 16-pin power connector. The MI60 is a dual-slot card at 267 mm long with a 300 W TDP and uses a 6-pin plus 8-pin configuration. The AMD card is shorter, thinner, and consumes 150 W less power.

Q: What is the percentile ranking difference between the two?

A: The RTX 3090 Ti sits in the 95th percentile of all GPUs, while the MI60 sits in the 93rd percentile. Despite the large score gap, both are in the top 7% of all GPUs ever benchmarked.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The data reveals a stark performance disparity. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 3090 Ti scores 174,441 against the MI60's 92,488. This 88.6% delta means NVIDIA's card delivers nearly double the compute throughput in this general-purpose compute workload. The gap widens further in Geekbench Vulkan, where the RTX 3090 Ti scores 215,633 versus 92,444 for the AMD card — a 133.3% difference. This suggests the NVIDIA architecture has a significant advantage in graphics-oriented parallel workloads, likely due to its 10,752 shading units compared to the MI60's 4,096.

Looking at the broader competitive landscape, the RTX 3090 Ti's average score of 131,938 places it 0.7% above the NVIDIA L4 and 2.4% above both the RTX 4000 Ada Generation and the NVIDIA A10M. It also beats the AMD Radeon PRO W6800 by 2.6%. This shows the 3090 Ti is not just faster than the MI60; it is also at the top of its own performance tier. The MI60, with an average score of 92,466, sits 0.9% ahead of the NVIDIA RTX A4500 and 1.5% ahead of the RTX A4500 Mobile. However, it trails the AMD Radeon Pro VII by 4.8% and the AMD Radeon RX 7900M by 5.2%. This indicates the MI60 is competitive with mid-range workstation cards but falls well short of flagship consumer and prosumer offerings.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ substantially in almost every core specification. The RTX 3090 Ti features 10,752 shading units, 336 texture mapping units (TMUs), and 112 render output units (ROPs). The MI60 has 4,096 shading units, 256 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. This represents a 162% advantage in shading units for NVIDIA, which directly correlates with its higher FP32 compute rate of 40.00 TFLOPS versus 14.75 TFLOPS for AMD. The NVIDIA card also has 84 dedicated ray tracing cores and 336 tensor cores, while the MI60 has none of either.

Memory configuration is another major differentiator. The RTX 3090 Ti uses 24 GB of GDDR6X on a 384-bit bus, while the MI60 uses 32 GB of HBM2 on a massive 4096-bit bus. Despite the bus width difference, bandwidth is nearly identical: 1.01 TB/s for NVIDIA and 1.02 TB/s for AMD. Clock speeds favor NVIDIA as well, with a base clock of 1560 MHz and boost of 1860 MHz, compared to 1200 MHz base and 1800 MHz boost for AMD. The RTX 3090 Ti also has a higher pixel rate (208.3 GPixel/s vs 115.2 GPixel/s) and texture rate (625.0 GTexel/s vs 460.8 GTexel/s).

Architecture Differences

The architectural divide is fundamental. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is built on the GA102 chip using the Ampere architecture, fabricated on an 8 nm process at Samsung. It packs 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die, achieving a transistor density of 45.1 million per mm². The AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 uses the Vega 20 chip with the older GCN 5.1 architecture, manufactured on a 7 nm process at TSMC. It contains 13,230 million transistors on a 331 mm² die, with a density of 40.0 million per mm². AMD's chip is significantly smaller and denser per area, but NVIDIA's larger die allows for more than double the transistors.

The MI60 supports FP16 at 29.49 TFLOPS with a 2:1 ratio to FP32, indicating a throughput advantage for half-precision workloads. The RTX 3090 Ti achieves 40.00 TFLOPS in FP16 with a 1:1 ratio, meaning it does not sacrifice precision for speed. In terms of software support, the RTX 3090 Ti supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, while the MI60 is limited to DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.3. The NVIDIA card also offers more display outputs (1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a) compared to the MI60's single mini-DisplayPort 1.4a, reflecting its consumer-oriented design versus the AMD card's headless compute focus. The RTX 3090 Ti was released on 2022-01-26, while the MI60 launched earlier on 2018-11-17, making the AMD card a significantly older design.