Featured image credit: NVIDIA
On September 1st 2020, NVIDIA’s CEO, Jensen Huang, unveiled the company’s new GeForce RTX 30 Series lineup of consumer GPUs, which he said it will deliver the “greatest generational leap in company history”.
According to Huang, the new generation of graphics cards should be able to deliver up to 2x the performance and 1.9x the power efficiency compared to the first-generation of GeForce RTX GPUs.
Besides demonstrating new software technologies powered by NVIDIA GPUs, Huang introduced three new graphics cards – the flagship GeForce RTX 3080, the GeForce RTX 3070, and the enthusiast-oriented GeForce RTX 3090. In this article we’ll take a deeper look into these new graphics cards, and examine their specifications closely.
GeForce RTX 3080 & GeForce RTX 3090 Specifications
According to NVIDIA and Wccftech, both RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 will feature the NVIDIA GA102 GPU flagship gaming chip which will feature a die size of 628 mm², and will pack a total of 28 billion transistors. The GA102 GPU on RTX 3090 will feature 41 texture processing clusters (TPC) or 82 stream multiprocessors (SM), while the GeForce RTX 3080 will come with 34 TPCs or 68 SMs. Overall, the RTX 3090 will feature a total of 10,496 CUDA cores, while RTX 3080 will feature 8,704 CUDA cores. The RTX 3090 will also come with 24GB of GDDR6X ultra-fast memory, while the RTX 3080 will come in two variants – one with 10, and one with 20 gigabytes of GDDR6X memory.
GeForce RTX 3070 Specifications
For mainstream users, NVIDIA prepared a GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, which will feature the GA104 graphics processing chip. This is the second-fastest gaming chip in Ampere lineup, and is also built upon Samsung’s 8 nm process node, just like the GA102 chip. Due to the chip’s die size of 395 mm², the RTX 3070 will feature 17.4 billion transistors, 46 stream multiprocessors, and 5888 CUDA cores. The GPU will also come with 46 next-generation Ray-Tracing cores, and 184 Tensor cores. The RTX 3070 will feature a 256-bit memory bus, and will also come in two variants – one with 8, and the other with 16 gigabytes of GDDR6 memory.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Graphics Card Specifications
| Graphics Card Name | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microarchitecture | Ampere (GA104) | Ampere (GA102) | Ampere (GA102) |
| Fab Process | 8 nm | 8 nm | 8 nm |
| Transistor count (million) | 17,400 | 28,300 | 28,000 |
| Cores/TMUs/ROPs | 5888/TBA/TBA | 8704/272/96 | 10496/TBA/TBA |
| Tensor/RT Cores | 184/46 | 272/68 | 328/82 |
| Memory Size & Type | 8/16 GB GDDR6 | 10 GB GDDR6X | 24 GB GDDR6X |
| Base/Boost Clock (MHz) | 1500/1730 | 1440/1710 | 1400/1700 |
| Memory Bus/Interface | 256 bits/PCIe 4.0 x16 | 320 bits/PCIe 4.0 x16 | 384 bits/PCIe 4.0 x16 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 448 GB/s | 760 GB/s | 936 GB/s |
| FP32 Compute | 20 TFLOPs | 29.7 TFLOPs | 36 TFLOPs |
| TDP | 220 W | 320 W | 350 W |
| MSRP | $499 | $699 | $1499 |
RTX 30 Series Performance Compared to RTX 20 Series
When speaking about performance, the new Ampere NVIDIA GPUs will come with enormous performance boosts. According to Jensen Huang, the RTX 3080 will offer up to 2x times the performance of RTX 2080 for a suggested retail price of only $699. The GeForce RTX 3070 represents another bombshell, as it will offer faster performance than the current most powerful NVIDIA’s GPU – the RTX 2080 Ti – for a suggested price of only $499.
The RTX 3080 is considered to be a true 4K gaming graphics card, as it will be able to deliver 4K 60 FPS gaming to wider audiences. The RTX 3070 will also be a 4K-capable graphics card, but will offer absolutely amazing performance at 1440P resolution. Thanks to the Samsung’s 8 nm manufacturing process, the RTX 3070 will have almost 50% smaller die size than the RTX 2080 Ti, with almost the same amount of transistors.
The RTX 3090, on the other hand, is going to be an absolute monster of a graphics card. It will be 8K-ready, and will feature massive triple-slot cooling system, along with new 12-pin power supply connector. To put into perspective, the upcoming RTX 3090 is going to be 1.5x faster than the Titan RTX.
Release Date & Pricing
The RTX 3080 will be released on September 17th, and will be the first Ampere graphics card that will hit the market. Since this card will be the new NVIDIA’s flagship GPU, it will be put upfront before other Ampere-based graphics cards. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price for Founder’s Edition of RTX 3080 is $699 in United States, but will probably cost more in other countries due to import taxes. Many AIB partners are already preparing RTX 3080 graphics cards with custom cooling solutions and additional features, so this will also increase the card’s final price.
The enthusiast-oriented RTX 3090 will be released on September 24th, and will cost $1,499. This card will essentially function as a widely available NVIDIA Titan card, and will be produced in small amounts, partly due to its expensive circuitry, partly due low demand for a such product.
One of the most exciting graphics card coming to the market will be RTX 3070. For a price of $499, this card will offer RTX 2080 Ti performance level, and will be available in various editions made by NVIDIA’s AIB partners. The release date of this card is still undefined, but according to already published info, it will be somewhere in October 2020.
Overall, the upcoming NVIDIA’s Ampere graphics card look very appealing and affordable, and we are looking forward to experience their full potential once they are released. We are a bit skeptical of RTX 3070 offering the same performance as RTX 2080 Ti for only $500, but we sure hope so it will deliver that kind of performance which Mr. Huang promised to us.
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