In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 MSI Gaming X 8GB Edition are massively better than the AMD Radeon RX Vega 8.

The GTX 1080 has a 777 MHz higher core clock speed and 80 more Texture Mapping Units than the RX Vega. This results in the GTX 1080 providing 198.8 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 1080 has a 777 MHz higher core clock speed and 32 more Render Output Units than the RX Vega. This results in the GTX 1080 providing 79.5 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The RX Vega was released over a year more recently than the GTX 1080, and so the RX Vega is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 1080.

The GTX 1080 has 4096 MB more video memory than the RX Vega, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 1080 also has superior memory performance overall.

The RX Vega has 35.1 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 1080, which means that the memory performance of the RX Vega is noticeably better than the GTX 1080.

The Radeon RX Vega 8 has 1280 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 1080 MSI Gaming X 8GB Edition has 2560. However, the actual shader performance of the RX Vega is 841 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 1080 is 6383. The GTX 1080 having 5542 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 1080 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the RX Vega.

The RX Vega transistor size technology is 2 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 1080. This means that the RX Vega is expected to run very slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 1080.

The GeForce GTX 1080 MSI Gaming X 8GB Edition requires 180 Watts to run but there is no entry for the RX Vega. We would recommend a PSU with at least 400 Watts for the RX Vega and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 1080. The GTX 1080 has been recommended a PSU with 100 Watts more than the RX Vega. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 1080 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the RX Vega.