Nvidia’s next generation of GPUs is here. The new Ampere architecture promises significant performance improvements, and Nvidia is making some ambitious claims about its potential for gamers.
The RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 are at the top of the heap and are both extremely powerful cards. But they’re also some of the most expensive mainstream cards Nvidia has ever produced. From performance to features to price, here are our thoughts on how the two devices compare.
Prices and availability
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Both the RTX 3090 and 3080 made their global debut on September 1, 2020, when Nvidia announced slightly pushed back release dates and drastically different prices. The RTX 3080 will be released on September 17th for $699, while the 3090 will go on sale on September 24th for $1,499.
These prices and release dates only apply to Nvidia’s Founders Edition cards. A number of add-on board partners, including MSI, Powercolor, Palit, Gainward and Inno3D, have already announced their own versions of the RTX 3090, 3080 and 3070. With so many options for each of these high-end GPU cards, it’s possible that third-party alternatives will launch alongside or very soon after Nvidia’s Founders Edition options. Their prices will likely be a mix of slightly cheaper and significantly more expensive cards, depending on their cooling and clock speeds.
Specifications and performance
| RTX 3090 | RTX 3080 | |
| GPU | TBD | TBD |
| Interface | PCIe 4.0 | PCIe 4.0 |
| CUDA cores | 10,496 | 8,704 |
| Tensor kernels | TBD | TBD |
| RT core | TBD | TBD |
| Basic class | 1.395 MHz | 1440 MHz |
| Turn up the clock | 1.695 MHz | 1.710 MHz |
| Memory | 24 GB GDDR6X | 10 GB GDDR6X |
| Memory speed | 19.5 Gbps | 19 Gbps |
| Bandwidth | 936 GBps | 760 GBps |
| Memory bus | 384-bit | 320-bit |
| TDP | 350w | 320 W |
Although Nvidia hasn’t directly addressed the possibility, it appears that the 3090 will replace the Titan RTX. The specifications are certainly in line with that. Nvidia’s flagship Ampere GPU comes with a whopping 24GB of GDDR6X memory, matching the Titan RTX. The RTX 3080 is more conservative with 10GB of GDDR6X, but both cards offer improvements in memory speed and bandwidth over the last generation.
Nvidia hasn’t released any benchmarks for the 3090 yet, but the 3080 should outperform the 2080 Super and 2080 Ti. Digital Foundry has had some hands-on time with the 3080 and found that it can offer between 60 and 90% performance improvements over the RTX 2080 (with a slight factory overclock) in a variety of Nvidia-selected games, including Control, Doom Eternal, and Borderlands 3. This was with and without ray tracing on, in 4K resolution and with all settings at maximum. DLSS was still required to achieve a comfortable 60 frames per second at 4K with ray tracing at the highest setting, but even that is an incredible achievement and shows how far the 3080 has come from its Turing predecessors.
The 3090 should be even better. How much? It’s hard to say. It has 20% more CUDA cores, 23% more memory bandwidth and nearly 2.5 times the memory capacity of the 3080. According to Nvidia, this allows the 3090 to deliver 60fps at 8K resolution with DLSS enabled.
This means that the RTX 3090 is likely to be able to deliver 100 fps at 4K without ray tracing or 60 fps at 4K without the need for DLSS.
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With all that said, we’ll have to wait to see how the 3090 performs in independently tested benchmarks and games before making any firm conclusions.
Power supply and cooling
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RTX 3080 and 3090 have higher power consumption compared to the last generation. The cards claim 320W and 350W at stock, respectively, on the reference design, supported by Nvidia’s new 12-pin power connector. Third-party alternatives seem to be doing well with the dual 8-pin connectors, so the need for Nvidia’s new connector design remains to be seen.
Both power-hungry cards sported a new Founders Edition cooler design, which includes a dual push-pull fan configuration and a V-shaped PCB. This new design should help air flow through the case more easily, and Nvidia claims it allows the cards to run at many lower noise levels than previous generations, despite the additional performance.
The new cooler makes the 3080 quite a chunky card — almost an inch longer than the 2080 Ti and a bit taller. The 3090, described by Nvidia as a “BFGPU,” measures 12.3 inches in length and 5.4 inches in height, a full inch taller in each dimension than the 3080. That raises some questions about clearance issues in smaller cases. It also has a three-slot design, so don’t expect to put it in a Mini-ITX case or motherboard.
Despite these improvements, expect alternative third-party cooler designs to be more efficient and quieter—and maybe even bigger.
Ray tracking, DLSS and more
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Ray tracing and DLSS cores are 3080 and 3090. Nvidia’s redesigned RT cores deliver up to 2x Turing performance with ray tracing enabled. Compared to the last generation, both cards deliver higher frames per second with ray tracing and, combined with DLSS, higher resolutions.
To take advantage of any card’s raytracing capabilities, you’ll need to play one of these raytracing games.
Although 4K is currently the focus, both cards support 8K with three HDMI 2.1 ports and only one DisplayPort 1.4a connection. Nvidia’s benchmarks show the 3090 reaching over 60 fps in games like Apex Legends and Fate 2 at 8K with ray tracing and DLSS.
Nvidia Reflex is also new to the RTX 30 series of GPUs. With an RTX 3080 or 3090 and a G-Sync monitor, you can use Reflex to reduce system lag in competitive games. Nvidia’s benchmarks show a decent improvement in overall system latency with Reflex on, and a drastic improvement when combined with a high-refresh-rate display and a 30-series GPU.
The new RTX I/O is also intriguing, as it could use the GPU to handle data decompression from storage, helping to take better advantage of PCIeExpress storage drives for even faster load times and loading in-game assets for reduced spawn. However, it will be available on all Nvidia GPUs from the GTX 10-series onwards.
The 3080 and 3090 are almost identical, with the most notable difference being that the RTX 3090 supports dual-GPU setups through SLI. In contrast, the RTX 3080 does not support this, so it will likely have a higher number of RT and tensor cores.
A BFGPU with a price to match
The RTX 3090’s impressive specs lead us to recommend it over the RTX 3080, but its price means we can’t do so in good conscience. As a replacement for the Titan RTX, the expensive 3090 card is designed more for media creators and data scientists than gamers. This card will be the fastest gaming GPU when it hits stores, but $1,499 is more than most people will pay for an entire rig, let alone a graphics card.
With such a high price tag, the RTX 3090 will probably only be of interest to gamers with the biggest investments.
The RTX 3080 is a capable 4K gaming GPU and a better value at $699. With everything the RTX 3080 has to offer and its reasonable price, this card will most likely be the ultimate high-end choice for gamers. There’s a reason why Nvidia called it their flagship GPU.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn