This was the 1st instance of AMD very aggressively clocking cards in the box. While the 290x was faster then the 780 out of the box, the teeny OC headroom left it unable to compete with the 780 .... with both cards overclocked... it was all 780 ... even Linus figured that out.
See 8:40 mark
It gets worse under water...4:30 mark
Aside from these prerelease announcements never living up to the hype ever sinc AMDs 2xx series, there's one thing here that gives me great pause with this announcements.... the name. Now if you want to distinguish your product from the competition because you have a better one, as is taught in Marketing 101 is "distinguish your product". The "RX 3080 XT" ... the copied the RX, they went from 2 to 3 and from 70 to 80 and threw in an XT for "extra" I guess. We saw the same thing with MoBos in mimicking the Intel MoBo naming conventions switching Z to an X. When you mimic the competition, it says "I wanna make mine sound like theirs so they will see RX 3 to their RX 2 ad 80 is bigger than 70 and infer that its "like theirs but newer, bigger, badder, faster". That was nVidias whole goal with the partnering idea ... "we will loosen up restrictions on our cards if you agree that we will lock down the naming so this type of thing won't cut into our sales". Regardless of what the new card line actually does, I wish they'd stake out their own naming conventions.
I do hope that AMD can actually deliver on this kind performance .... But if they gonna push the value claim, let's do apples and apples for a change. Right now the 2060 is faster for 100 watts less ... 100 watts at 30 hours a week costs me $44.20 a year. If the new RX 3080 XT is 100 watts more .... from a cost PoV ...
+100 watts would add +$20 to PSU Cost (Focus Gold Plus)
+100 watts would warrant an extra $15 case fan
+$44.20 a year is $176.80 ... $211.18 total ... I'd rather the pay the extra $170 the 1070.
Now my cost for electricity is way higher than most folks in USA , comparable to many Eurpean countraies and a lot cheaper than many of those. I pay 24 cents per kwh versus average US peep pays $0.11 ...for those folks the cost would be $81.03 over 4 years.
The reality is that most folks won't consider electric cost and if that's the case, the "value' argument is no longer apples and apples. Many live in apartments and it's in the rent, some living at parents house ... but if ya gonna make the "well it's not as fast but it has best value claim", it isn't valid w/o including all associated costs. Those would be mine, others may not mind the extra heat and load / extra inefficiency of on PSU; but whatever they are in each instance, all impacts should be considered.
Now with "apples and apples' having been considered, I would much welcome a card that was comparable in performance, comparable in power usage and comparable in sound and heat generated.... but in each instance only interested in comparisons with both cards were at max overclock. I hope against hope that AMD can deliver one but I'm weary of pre-release fanfare that consistenty fails to deliver. I hop that this time they can manage to out out something that fullfills the promise, but weary of followinmg pre-release news for 6 months only to be disappointed.