Yesterday, Nvidia officially revealed their next-generation RTX GPUs, the RTX 3000 series.
This new line-up consists of three GPUs; the RTX 3070, RTX 3080, and the RTX 3090. All-new, all rocking Nvidia’s new graphics architecture, Ampere and all of them beat the pants off anything the company had previously released. Yes, including the two-year-old Turing, and even better is that these new cards cost considerably less than their predecessors.
| RTX 3070 | RTX 3080 | RTX 3090 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Chipset | Ampere GA104-300 | Ampere GA102-200 | Ampere GA102-300 |
| CUDA Cores | 5888 | 8704 | 10496 |
| Boost Clock | 1730 MHz | 1710 MHz | 1700 MHz |
| VRAM Size | 8 GB GDDR6 | 10 GB GDDR6X | 24 GB GDDR6X |
| Memory Bus | 256-bit | 320-bit | 384-bit |
| Bandwidth | 512 GB/s | 760 GB/s | 936 GB/s |
| Memory Speed | 16 Gbps | 19 Gbps | 19.5 Gbps |
| TDP | 220W | 320W | 350W |
| Pricing | $499 | $699 | $1,499 |
| Launch Date | October (TBA) | September 17 2020 | September 24 2020 |
As you can see from the specs above, these new GPUs are powerful and are Nvidia’s biggest leap in graphical technology thus far. Considering that even the RTX 3070 can keep up with an RTX 2080 TI, a GPU that still costs over $1000 and for the fraction of the price. Well, that’s saying something. While the RTX 3080, per Nvidia, is 2X as the RTX 2080, while the RTX 3090 is just a beast. Needless to say, at these prices and specs, most will be in a good position with just the RTX 3070 or the RTX 3080.
I still can’t get over the pricing for these cards. Compared to Nvidia’s price gouging with the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 TI, these GPUs are a blessing for anyone who’s either looking to upgrade or make the jump to PC gaming. That’s not all, as Nvidia will bundle a Ray-Tracing and DLSS enabled version of Watch Dogs: Legion with each RTX 3000 GPU, and a year’s subscription to its cloud streaming service, GeForce Now. I’m not sure why, but I’m assuming this move is to grow the audience for the service.
While Nvidia has revealed it’s founder’s edition cards, multiple 3rd party vendors are already touting their RTX line-up. So far, EVGA, ASUS, Zotac, have announced they will produce their own RTX 3000 series cards. Keep in mind that so far, only Nvidia has plans to use the new 12-pin power connection, while the 3rd party cards will use still the convention 8-pin connections that we’re all accustomed to. That said, you don’t have to worry about changing out your power supply (at least not yet) as Nvidia will be providing an adaptor with each RTX GPU.
The Nvidia RTX 3080 will be available this September 17, 2020, while the RTX 3090 will be available on September 24, 2020. If the RTX 3070 tickles your fancy, you’ll have to wait until October 2020 for that card to launch. As of now, there isn’t any way to pre-order these cards and likely most stores will have limited quantities when these cards are launch. I just hope it’s not like RTX 2000 launch all over again because that was brutal. I know I’ll be waiting patiently to upgrade my gaming and testing PC with the RTX 3080.
C’mon, I gotta get ready for Cyberpunk 2077. Don’t tell me you aren’t thinking the same.
