Mostly, though not always.
Not a design choice I really like, but it is how it is, and working as designed.
At any level, witcher gear is probably the best overall, with some relics coming close (or having better combinations of stats for what you want to accomplish).
After that consideration Relic gear has higher numbers of rune slots, and biases slightly higher in damage and soft stats than a non-relic weapon, but there isn't too much in it except re-sale value and repair costs, "level" overwhelms all other stats when more than a handful of levels different (though... burning, freezing, stunning etc are valuable if they trigger often enough, as they stunlock their targets - overall not worth the loss of too much damage for though).