Hype for the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 is massive right now. This could be the best GPU release from Nvidia in years and will no doubt AMD will be worried.
Currently, it is speculated that AMD will announce their Big Navi GPUs on or near the 7th of October, likely just before the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 launches that month. That may give us some idea on what sort of performance to expect from AMD, likely wanting to compete with or better the RTX 3070.
Lots of big claims have been made about the new RTX 30-series, including the RTX 3070 being better than the RTX 2080 Ti. At £469 it will no doubt be the most popular card for gamers offering more than enough performance for sub-4K gaming at high refresh rates with ray tracing on.
With the RTX 3090 priced at around £1400, it is being positioned more as a RTX Titan replacement, leaving the RTX 3080 as the most sensible choice for enthusiast gamers wanting the best performance possible.
Recently, Eurogamer managed to snag some exclusive access to test the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 giving us some idea of the performance gains to be had. The results are impressive to say the least.
With this being exclusive access granted by Nvidia, they had to conform to lots of rules, including the games testing and the settings used. So, the likelihood these are all best-case scenario to make the cards look as good as possible.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 vs RTX 2080ti Specification Comparison
| RTX 3090 | RTX 3080 | RTX 3070 | RTX 2080 Ti | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CUDA Cores | 10496 | 8704 | 5888 | 4352 |
| Base Clock | 1.40GHz | 1.44GHz | 1.50GHz | 1.35GHz |
| Boost Clock | 1.7GHz | 1.71GHz | 1.73GHz | 1545MHz |
| Memory Clock | 19.5Gbps GDDR6X | 19Gbps GDDR6X | 16Gbps GDDR6 | 14Gbps GDDR6 |
| Memory Bus Width | 384-bit | 320-bit | 256-bit | 352-bit |
| VRAM | 24GB | 10GB | 8GB | 11GB |
| Single Precision Perf. | 35.7 TFLOPs | 29.8 TFLOPs | 20.4 TFLOPs | 13.4 TFLOPs |
| Tensor Perf. (FP16) | 285 TFLOPs | 238 TFLOPs | 163 TFLOPs | 114 TFLOPs |
| Ray Perf. | 69 TFLOPs | 58 TFLOPs | 40 TFLOPs | ? |
| TDP | 350W | 320W | 220W | 250W |
| GPU | GA102? | GA102? | GA104? | TU102 |
| Transistor Count | 28B | 28B | ? | 18.6B |
| PCIe Interface | 4.0 x16 | 4.0 x16 | 4.0 x16 | 3.0 x16 |
| Architecture | Ampere | Ampere | Ampere | Turing |
| Manufacturing Process | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | TSMC 12nm FFN |
| Launch Date | 24th September | 17th of September | October 2020 | 20th September 2018 |
| Launch Price | MSRP: $1499/£1399 | MSRP: $699/£649 | MSRP: $499/£469 | MSRP: $999 |
Using the previous table I posted, we can see that the RTX 3080, on paper, offers a significantly improved specification compared to last years flagship GPU, the RTX 2080ti.
While the 10GB memory is slightly less, the number of CUDA cores has doubled base and boose frequencies have increased considerably and the GDDR6X offers higher bandwidth. Compared to the RTX 2080 with 2944 CUDA cores you get a 195% improvement.
For single-precision performance in teraflops, we see a 122% improvement going from 13.4 TFLOPs to 29.8 TFLOPs. Compared to the RTX 2080 with 10.1 TFLOPs that’s a 195% improvement.
For tensor performance (FP16) the numbers are almost as impressive with a 108% improvement over the RTX 2080Ti.
Gaming Results – RTX 3080 vs RTX 2080
| RTX 3080 vs RTX 2080 | 4K/Max Settings Perf Boost |
|---|---|
| Borderlands 3 | 81.6 |
| Doom Eternal | 84.2 |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 69.8 |
| Control | 77.6 |
| Ray Tracing: Quake 2 RTX | 92.3 |
| Ray Tracing: Control/High RT/DLSS Perf | 77.6 |
Due to the conditions EuroGamer were given I would assume all these figures are the more positive results that are achievable by the cards. We will have to wait and see what results are achieved across multiple games at different settings to get a real idea of how good these are.
However, those are some impressive numbers, with the worst result being a 69.8% improvement moving from the GeForce RTX 2080 to RTX 3080.
With Ray Tracing in Quake 2, the 2x improvement that NVIDA claim is almost accurate with a 92.3% improvement in the results achieved.
It already looks like the RTX 3070 may beat the RTX 2080 Ti in some, if not many games. So with the RTX 3080 I would be hopeful that this can easily beat the RTX 2080 Ti in almost anything, which is amazing considering the pricing.
Pricing
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 has a launch price of $699/£649 and will be available on the 17th of September.
Currently the cheapest GeForce RTX 2080 Ti on Scan is £1,054.99, the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER can be had for the same price as the RRP of the RTX 3080 starting at £649.79.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti eBay Pricing
This has led to RTX 2080 Ti to crash in pricing on eBay, but if the performance of the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 is accurate, there is little reason to buy one.
The cheapest I can find, pre-owned buy it now is £550 for an EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti with no box with a broken warranty seal as it was water cooled.
Then there is a MSI GeForce RTX 2080ti Gaming X Trio also at £550 which includes the box but lacks a support bracket.
