Nvidia officially unveiled its latest graphics cards tonight, the RTX 30-series based around its new Ampere architecture. The new cards are the RTX 3090, RTX 3080 and RTX 3070, and all will be available in a Founders Edition configuration – some with a radical new dual-sided fan design. Nvidia claims that the new architecture is up to 2x as performant and 1.9x as energy-efficient as its predecessor, Turing, as the result of the new 8nm process. Here’s what you need to know about Ampere, the three new graphics cards and everything else Nvidia announced today – including pricing.
Update: Our hands-on RTX 3080 benchmarks are live here!
While all three of the graphics cards sound like powerhouses, the Titan-grade RTX 3090 looks set to be particularly insane. The card is capable of running games at 8K resolution – which has four times the pixel count of 4K – and at 60 frames per second with the help of DLSS. 4K is already hard enough to run for most PCs – even the RTX 2080 Ti manages only 69fps at 4K in our average of nine recent games – so a card that can actually grapple with 8K is unheard-of.
The 3090 is assisted by 24GB of GDDR6X memory and a beefy three-slot “flow-through” cooler, which the company claim keeps the card up to 30°C colder than the Titan RTX while delivering 50 per cent more performance. Pricing for this card has been set at a whopping $1500/£1400/€1500 – firmly out of “consumer-grade” territory.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Early Look: Ampere Architecture Performance – Hands-On! Watch on YouTube
The RTX 3080 takes the place of the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Super as the high-end card that enthusiasts might actually buy, with a price point of $700/£650/€700 – lower than some rumours suggested. It uses GDDR6X memory rated at 19Gbps and Nvidia claim it performs up to twice as fast as the outgoing RTX 2080 Ti – a $1200 card. Faster ray tracing performance means that it can hit 4K 60fps in most titles with ray tracing engaged, although it’s not clear whether that’s with performance-boosting DLSS enabled also. It’ll debut on September 17th, so we don’t have too long to wait!