AMD Radeon Pro Duo vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Comparison

# The Verdict

The data places the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and the AMD Radeon Pro Duo in distinct performance tiers. The RTX 3080 Ti holds a clear overall advantage in the database, with an average benchmark score of 41,187 across all recorded tests, placing it in the 83rd percentile among all GPUs. The Radeon Pro Duo, by contrast, averages 35,860, sitting in the 80th percentile.

The delta between them is substantial in aggregate, but the story changes when looking at individual workloads. The NVIDIA card wins the head-to-head comparison in the sole shared benchmark, Geekbench OpenCL, with a score of 170,037 versus 35,860, a lead of 374.2%. That single result is heavily influenced by the specific compute-oriented nature of the test. The AMD part, despite being an older architecture, still holds its own in raw compute tasks, but the RTX 3080 Ti is the stronger all-around choice for modern workloads. The database verdict is straightforward: for users who want the higher peak performance and the better feature set, the RTX 3080 Ti is the pick. For legacy compute-oriented tasks with specific driver requirements, the Radeon Pro Duo remains a capable alternative, but the data does not support choosing it over the NVIDIA product in a general-purpose role.

Architecture Differences

The two cards come from different design philosophies. The RTX 3080 Ti is built on the GA102 chip, using NVIDIA's Ampere architecture, fabricated on an 8 nm process at Samsung. It packs 28,300 million transistors onto a 628 mm² die, for a transistor density of 45.1 million per square millimeter. The Radeon Pro Duo uses the Capsaicin chip, built on AMD's GCN 3.0 architecture, produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC. It contains 8,900 million transistors on a 596 mm² die, yielding a density of 14.9 million per mm². The difference in density is stark: the NVIDIA part is far more complex, and that complexity allows it to carry significantly more shading units, texture units, and render outputs.

Clock behavior highlights the generational gap. The RTX 3080 Ti runs a base clock of 1365 MHz with a boost of 1665 MHz, while the Radeon Pro Duo does not list base and boost clocks in the database; its memory, however, runs at 500 MHz. The NVIDIA card features a 12 GB GDDR6X frame buffer on a 384-bit bus with 912.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The AMD card uses 4 GB of HBM on a 4096-bit bus with 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory type and bus width are different strategies: the NVIDIA uses a wider, faster GDDR6X arrangement, while the AMD uses a high-bit-width, lower-clock HBM stack. The RTX card has 10,240 shading units, 320 texture mapping units, and 112 ROPs. It also packs 80 RT cores and 320 Tensor cores. The Radeon Pro Duo has 4096 shading units, 256 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, with no ray tracing or tensor cores.

The pixel throughput figures corroborate this: the NVIDIA card processes 186.5 GPixel/s and 532.8 GTexel/s, while the AMD part processes 64.00 GPixel/s and 256.0 GTexel/s. The NVIDIA card has 34.10 TFLOPS FP32 and 34.10 TFLOPS FP16 (1:1), while the AMD card offers 8.192 TFLOPS FP32 and 8.192 TFLOPS FP16 (1:1). The latest part clearly has a larger feature set and compute capability.

The RTX 3080 Ti uses two-slot cooling and a 12-pin power connector, with a suggested 750 W PSU. The Radeon Pro Duo is a dual-slot card with three 8-pin power connectors, also with a suggested 750 W PSU. Both use PCIe 4.0 x16 on the NVIDIA, PCIe 3.0 x16 on the AMD, but the RTX card supports HDMI 2.1 and three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, while the AMD has one HDMI 1.4a and three DisplayPort 1.2 outputs. The NVIDIA card features DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The AMD card supports DirectX 12 (12_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.2.170. Both cards are dual-slot, with the NVIDIA 285 mm long and 112 mm high, and the AMD 277 mm long and 111 mm. The NVIDIA is 40 mm wide, the AMD's width is not recorded.

The production status differs: the RTX 3080 Ti is listed as end-of-life, while the Radeon Pro Duo is end-of-life. The RTX 3080 Ti was released later, and its predecessor was the GeForce 20 series, with a successor in the GeForce 40 series. The Radeon Pro Duo's predecessor was FirePro GCN, and its successor is Radeon Pro Polaris. The launch MSRPs in the database: 1,199 USD for the NVIDIA, 1,499 USD for the AMD.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The recorded benchmarks show a clear pattern. In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti scored 170,037. The AMD Radeon Pro Duo scored 35,860, a delta of 374.2%. This single test result heavily skews the average in NVIDIA's favor. The database also holds a Passmark G2D score of 1,091 for the NVIDIA and a Passmark G3D score of 26,896. The NVIDIA part is 15,282 in Passmark GPU Compute. The AMD card's Passmark scores are not in the database, so the average of the two is driven by the Geekbench result, where the RTX card has a 374% advantage.

In other tests, the RTX 3080 Ti leads in Passmark DirectX 10 with 184 and Passmark DirectX 11 with 223. It also leads in Passmark DirectX 12 with 110 and Passmark DirectX 9 with 274. The AMD card does not have these results in the database. The NVIDIA card's lead in Passmark G2D is 1,091 versus no recorded AMD result. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score for the RTX 3080 Ti is 5,077, which AMD has no recorded score for.

When comparing to the nearest rivals in the overall database, the RTX 3080 Ti's average score is 41,187, which is 0.8% higher than the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 (40,870), 1.2% higher than the NVIDIA Tesla M40 24GB (41,707), and 1.7% higher than the NVIDIA Tesla M40 (41,897). The Radeon Pro Duo's average score of 35,860 is 1% higher than the NVIDIA Quadro GV100 (35,520), 1.2% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile (35,435), 1.2% lower than the NVIDIA T1000 (36,289), and 1.8% lower than the AMD Radeon RX 5300M (36,529). The RTX 3080 Ti sits well above the 80th percentile of all GPUs, while the Pro Duo sits at the 80th percentile, a small but meaningful gap.

FAQ

Q: Which card has higher raw compute throughput?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has significantly higher FP32 and FP16 throughput (34.10 TFLOPS each) compared to the AMD Radeon Pro Duo (8.192 TFLOPS each). The NVIDIA card also has much higher pixel and texture fill rates: 186.5 GPixel/s and 532.8 GTexel/s versus 64.00 GPixel/s and 256.0 GTexel/s.

Q: Which card has the larger memory bus interface?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro Duo has a 4096-bit memory bus, far wider than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti's 384-bit bus. However, the NVIDIA card uses a newer GDDR6X memory type and has 12 GB capacity versus 4 GB HBM on the AMD card. The NVIDIA card has a higher memory bandwidth: 912.4 GB/s versus 512.0 GB/s.

Q: What is the architectural difference?

A: The RTX 3080 Ti uses a modern Ampere architecture (GA102, 8 nm at Samsung, 28,300 million transistors). The Radeon Pro Duo is based on GCN 3.0 (Capsaicin, 28nm at TSMC, 8,900 million transistors). The NVIDIA part includes a substantial number of compute units: 10,240 shading units, 320 tensor cores, 80 ray tracing cores, and 112 ROPs. The AMD part has 4,096 shading units, 256 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, with no tensor or RT cores.

Q: Which card has the higher core count?

A: The NVIDIA card has 10,240 shaders, 320 tensor cores, and 80 RT cores. The AMD card has 4,096 shaders and 256 texture units. The NVIDIA has 112 ROPs, the AMD 64 ROPs.

Q: What is the output configuration?

A: The NVIDIA card has 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a. The AMD card has 1x HDMI 1.4a and 3x DisplayPort 1.2. Each card supports DirectX, OpenGL, and Vulkan: NVIDIA supports 12 Ultimate (12_2), 4.6, and 1.4; AMD supports 12 (12_0), 4.6, and 1.2.170.

Where Each One Wins

The benchmark data shows a clear split by workload. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is the overwhelming choice for any modern, compute-heavy workload. Its 374.2% lead in Geekbench OpenCL is the single largest delta in the database, and it dominates in all DX11, DX12, DX9, and G2D tests. It also carries the full suite of modern features: RT cores, tensor cores, higher texture and pixel throughput, and a newer memory type. It is the card to choose for DX12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4, and high-end rendering workloads.

The AMD Radeon Pro Duo is competitive in one narrow, specific area: raw compute throughput per chip, though even there it is outgunned by the NVIDIA part's FP32 and FP16 count. Its main asset is its high-bandwidth HBM stack with a 4096-bit bus, which was designed for high-performance compute tasks in older GCN-generation software. Its 4GB memory capacity and 512 GB/s bandwidth are a limiting factor in large texture workloads.

For the modern gamer, developer, or AI researcher, the RTX 3080 Ti is the obvious choice. The only case where the Radeon Pro Duo makes sense is a legacy compute workload that is specifically tuned for GCN and does not use NVIDIA's RT/tensor features, and where HBM bandwidth is preferred over the GDDR6X capacity and bandwidth of the RTX card. The data does not support the AMD part as a better general-purpose card.