6800 XTs are faster than 3080s on the whole, unless you enable Ray Tracing, a feature that provides very little (some would say if any) improvement to image quality in current games.
According to Hardware Unboxed, using an 18 game average:
the 6800XT is 5.9% faster than the 3080 at 1080p
the 6800XT is 2.6% faster than the 3080 at 1440p
the 6800XT is 5.1% slower than the 3080 at 4K
I imagine partner models might alter the numbers by a % or two.
It's a bit of a stretch to say the 6800XT is "faster than the 3080 on the whole" given those figures. "Pretty much the same for all that matters" is somewhat closer to the mark.
Whether Ray Tracing provides a lot or a little improvement is subjective - some might want it, some might not, so to a particular buyer it might provide a substantial reason for choosing one card over another. Similar goes for DLSS, or now FSR for that matter.
I've had Radeon and GeForce cards in the past. I currently have a 3080 FE because I was able to get one at MSRP. I very much doubt I'd be able to get an AMD 6800XT at MSRP but if i had been able to I may well have got one of those instead. If you can't buy it, you'll get what's available.
