AMD RX 6800 XT leads the RTX 3080 by up to 14% in Hitman 3 with latest drivers

AMD has released new Radeon drivers, Adrenalin 2020 Edition 21.1.1, which promise to deliver a significant performance boost in IO Interactive's latest videogame, Hitman 3. By our reckoning that's enough of an improvement for the AMD RX 6800 XT to take the lead over rival Nvidia's RTX 3080, where it had been lagging behind on older driver versions.

A hop to our test bench and the intensive Dartmoor benchmark scene and the latest drivers have beefed up our RX 6800 XT's performance by 18 percent at 4K. From 93fps to 110fps—no small improvement, then. 

At 1440p, that drops to a more modest but very welcome six percent boost. And down at 1080p we're getting anything from a positive percent or two to a few frames lower. so we suspect performance may not change all that much at lower resolutions for some.

That boost is enough to see the RX 6800 XT lead the RTX 3080 by 9 percent at 4K, which is a tentative win for AMD in the two companies' constant back and forth for gaming domination.

But there is a possible catch: Nvidia is yet to release its own graphics driver, which could see Nvidia gain a little once it's 'Game Ready'. It's a little odd we've not seen an Nvidia Game Ready driver for the game's launch, it must be said.

We've reached out to Nvidia to find out whether there are plans to release a bespoke driver for Hitman 3 in the pipes and will update if we hear anything back. Certainly wouldn't be all that surprising to find Nvidia drops a driver in the near future.

And if you weren't already looking to update on good PC housekeeping alone, AMD's new 21.1.1 drivers also offer up official support for Quake II RTX and a heap of bug fixes. Quake II RTX was functional on RX 6000-series GPUs with the necessary Ray Accelerators beforehand, but now it's got the official green light from AMD.

Fixed Issues

• The recording and streaming overlay indicator may sometimes reset itself to the default position.
• Performance Metrics Overlay size may intermittently reset or may not match values that are set in Radeon Software after performing a task switch.
• The Radeon Software installer screen can sometimes display the incorrect release date of the Radeon Software version you are installing.
• Performance Metrics Overlay may flicker during video playback on displays with HDR enabled.
• Reflections in Grand Theft Auto V may fail to appear when ‘Reflection MSAA’ is enabled in the game settings.
• PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds session timer may continue in Radeon Software even after the game has been exited.
• DOOM Eternal may experience an application crash while gaming and having Steam overlay enabled.
• Recorded content from Radeon Software may appear cropped or recorded at an incorrect resolution on Radeon RX Vega series graphics products.
• The Samsung Odyssey G9 C49G95T may experience display or corruption issues when set to 5120x1440@240hz.
• Anisotropic Filtering in Radeon Software graphics settings is not taking effect in DirectX9 applications on RDNA graphics products.
• Some displays such as the Sceptre C series or Samsung Odyssey G9 series may experience an intermittent black screen on Radeon RX 6000 series graphics products.
• Oculus Link users may experience intermittent crashes on Polaris and Vega series graphics products.

Known issues

• Brightness flickering may intermittently occur in some games or applications when Radeon FreeSync is enabled, and the game is set to use borderless fullscreen.
• Display flicker or corruption may be experienced when two displays are connected to Radeon RX Vega series graphics products with at least one display set to a high refresh rate.
• Metro Exodus may experience intermittent application crashes with DirectX Raytracing enabled.
• Radeon recording and streaming features may fail to enable on AMD Radeon HD 7800 series graphics products.
• Screen flickering might be observed when using MSI Afterburner.
• Enhanced Sync may cause a black screen to occur when enabled on some games and system configurations. Any users who may be experiencing issues with Enhanced Sync enabled should disable it as a temporary workaround.

That Oculus Link fix is sure to come as a welcome surprise to those hoping to use the standalone VR headset tethered to their PC, and if I was the proud owner of Samsung's G9 ultrawide, I'd sure want that to run at its best too.

You can download the latest AMD drivers over on its support site.