nvidia rtx 3080 review
Look Our Prediction
The new Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 is an absolute gamechanger graphics card, coming out with one of the largest generational leaps in GPU history. Anyone who is interested in 4K gaming should pay attention to this graphics card. Yes, that’s true – even if the benefits diminish at lower resolutions.
FOR
- High-Fi Extraordinary Excellent 4K gaming performance
- Low bottleneck, low tempareture
- Plenty of useful non-gaming features
- Price didn’t increase over RTX 2080
AGAINST
- Expensive Graphics card
- The dongle is a little annoying
- There is no USB-C in Founders Edition
The New Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 has taken Nvidia’s older flagship graphics into the mainstream market. In the Last Generation, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti launched at inflated prices, which made very hard to access for most of the users. This time around, Nvidia is clearly thinking about the competition with the rival AMD, so at last, it dropped the price of its predecessor, albeit just a bit, while boosting a much greater performance than the RTX 2080 Ti at nearly half the price.
- Where to buy an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
- A mining rig with 78 Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080s has appeared online
With the powerhouse performance, The Rtx 3080 becomes one of the best 4k gaming GPU. This incredible GPU delivers a boost of 50-80% in performance over the last generation RTX 2080 and 20-30% over the RTX 2080 Ti, which is almost twice as expensive, and better power efficiency. That means that you can now play the latest pc games in 4K without dropping a couple of thousands of rupees.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 is one of the biggest generational leaps in PC graphics we’ve seen in years – perhaps ever. And, it’s worth checking out if you’re serious about gaming.
Price and availability
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 is available on September 17, starting at Rs.62,000 for the Founders Edition. However, as with any major graphics card launch, there will be dozens of aftermarket graphics cards from companies like MSI, Asus, Zotac and more. This cards price higher than 80,000 rupees.you find this graphics card on amazon easily.
Just be aware that some of this aftermarket card may see steep price increases over this Founders Edition, based on things on extra features, like exotic cooling solutions and factory-tuned overclocks.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 has the new Nvidia Ampere graphics architecture, which brings a massive boost to both raw performance and power efficiency. The best fact is that Nvidia has increased the power budget so much over the last generation RTX 2080 while boosting the power efficiency mode means that the overall performance is far above what any Nvidia Turing graphics card was capable of.
It seems that it’s obvious that improvements to the RT and Tensor cores – we’re on the second and third generation, respectively – but perhaps the biggest improvement has been to the rasterization engine.
Through some clever engineering, Nvidia was able to double the amount of CUDA cores present on each of its Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) by making both data paths on each SM able to handle Floating Point 32 (FP32) workloads – it’s a clear vast improvement over Turing, Tuning, where one data path was dedicated entirely to integer workloads. This effectively doubles raw FP32 throughput core for core, though this won’t directly translate into double the frame-rate in your favorite PC games – at least, not for many of them.
It clearly means that, while the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 only has 46% more SMs than the previous generation’s RTX 2080 at 68, it more than doubles the CUDA core count, from 2,944 to 8,704. This translates to nearly three times the theoretical FP32 throughput from around 10 TFLOPs to 29.7 TFLOPs – an absolutely huge and massive generational leap.
When you pair with CUDA cores, with massive boosts to Cache, Texture Units and Memory Bandwidth – thanks to the move to faster new GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit bus – gaming performance seems one of the biggest generational jumps in years, even if it does fall a bit short of that ‘2x performance’ target that we’re sure some folks were hoping for. But more on that later.
Nvidia’s last gens RT cores are also back – that’s why Nvidia has the RTX name, after all – and they also see massive improvements over the past generations. Nvidia Ampere graphics cards, including the RTX 3080 and 3090, include second-generation RT cores, which will function similarly to the first generation RT cores but will be twice as fast and efficient.
When ray tracing begins, the SM will cast a light ray in a scene that’s being rendered, and the RT core will take over from there, where it will do all the processing and calculations necessary to find out where that light ray goes and bounces, and will report that information back to the SM. This means that the SM is left alone to render the rest of the scene. But, we’re still not at a point where turning on ray tracing doesn’t have any impact on performance. Maybe one day comes when.
Nvidia’s Tensor cores are also become twice as powerful this time around, which has led Nvidia to only include 4 in each SM rather than the 8 you would find it in a Turing SM. The main fact is that there are now more SMs in general, the technology called DLSS, its performance also gets a massive boost.
The Graphics cards are not only for gaming, so this generation of graphics cards has brought a couple of new features to the table that will make life better for pretty much everyone with an RTX card. It greatly increases the video editing performance over the last generation.
For instance, Nvidia is ruling the gaming planet for a couple of years. Most of the gamers were already big fans of RTX Voice, and Nvidia has finally brought it out of beta version and worked it into a fully-featured streaming and broadcasting app. While RTX Voice comes with a new technology that filtered the background noise out of your microphone, and you can also set up Broadcaster to filter backgrounds out of your webcam – or even just apply a blur.
The video part is still in beta version, and sometimes we did see some glitches, but it’s a much better solution than placing the green screen behind.
Another feature that we’re most excited to see implemented, however, is Nvidia RTX I/O, which is an API that will work in tandem with Microsoft’s DirectStorage API, to route data straight from computer SSD to graphics card. In next-generation games, this should not only massively reduce loading times but also mirror the groundbreaking I/O performance that has been teased with next-generation consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Far more than high frame rates or pretty graphics, this technology is critically important to future gaming tech.
Unfortunately, this is a technology only available when the game developers implemented in their games, and we weren’t actually able to see what kind of real-world difference it will make. Though it is something we will be actively testing once the technology is widely implemented – and because the consoles are going to be using similar tech, we expect it will have a faster turnaround than ray tracing did.
Newly released Founders Edition graphics card, Nvidia redesigns with new cooler, which is way more powerful and practical than anything it’s ever done with a reference design before. The company used a shorter, multi-layered PCB in order to have the back end of the card just be all heatsink. By doing this, Nvidia was able to mount a fan on the back of the graphics card that will suck cool air through the heatsink and expel it up and out of the case.
Experts are worried about when they first saw this fan design that it would affect both CPU and RAM temperatures, as it’s blowing the hot air directly over these components, but even in our personal rig, where we have a Noctua NH-12UA air cooler on an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, we didn’t observe any difference in performance. We guess it helps that most PC games don’t really stress both the GPU and CPU to the same extreme – not yet at least.
As far as power delivery rises, the new 12-pin power connector is definitely there, and we have some mixed feelings about it. It’s clear that the new PCB design of the Founders Edition card needs this smaller connector to make this new cooler work, we just wish that the 2 x 8-pin PCIe to 1 x 12-pin dongle was a bit longer. As it stands, it’s hard to tie it out of the way to not be immediately visible, but at least sure the aftermarket cards won’t be using it right away. It’s worth noting, though, that Nvidia is making the 12-pin power connector design available to any manufacturer – even AMD – that wants to use it.
The Nvidia’s Founders Edition also has three DisplayPort and one HDMI 2.1 output for displays, which is good. However, we don’t like that Nvidia got rid of the USB-C output here, as creators will definitely still want to use this incredibly powerful card, and many pro-grade monitors out there are, in fact, USB-C monitors.
Despite we have our little issues with the Founders Edition – and despite thinking it was ugly when it was first shown off – it’s an attractive piece of hardware in person. All black with silver accents, the Latest RTX 3080 looks like a monster professional-grade piece of awesome hardware.
The only lighting is the ‘GeForce RTX’ logo on the side of the graphics card in white colour very disheartening, which will surely please any anti-RGB users out there. Plus, gamers that really want to go all-out with rainbow lighting will have that option with third-party cards.
Performance
The only just from Nvidia’s own (overblown) marketing criteria, we were already expecting the Nvidia RTX 3080 to be a fast graphics card, but calling it “fast” is a bit of an understatement it should be “fastest”. From the moment we opened the box, it’s been in our personal machine, running everything from CyberPunk 2077 to Control, only coming out of our personal rig to be plugged into our test bench for actual benchmarking.
Before the 3080, I had an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti in that machine, and the difference that I saw was immediately apparent before we even start measuring performance in a quantifiable way. For instance, one of the games we play the most is CyberPunk 2077 – it’s a problem – and in that game, particularly in the latest expansion, there were moments where the RTX 2080 Ti would drop below 30 fps at 4K. That doesn’t happen with the new RTX 3080. In fact, the game is typically running anywhere from 45-70 fps at 4K with Maximum graphics settings, where in the other side the RTX 2080 Ti typically chilled around the 60 fps mark – a massive jump in performance at around half the price.
This same performance just kept repeating itself over and over no matter what game we played. Metro Exodus maxed out with Ray Tracing and DLSS? Smooth locked 60 fps at 4K. Control with the myriad ray tracing effects? Silky smooth. Even CyberPunk 2077 with all the highest settings steady 60 fps at 4K. Accessible 4K60 gameplay is here – even if we are using the term “accessible” very loosely here.
While the thermals in our benchmarks aren’t too exciting, you should keep in mind that those were recorded on an open-air test bench. In our closed tower, with two 360mm fans serving as intake, temperatures peaked around 60°C – way cooler than the mid-80°C temperatures we would typically see with the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition.
When looking at the actual benchmark results, it’s clear that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 is in a class of its own, standing head and shoulders above even the RTX 2080 Ti. Right off the bat in 3DMark Time Spy Extreme, the RTX 3080 is a whopping 63% faster than the RTX 2080 and 26% faster than the 2080 Ti – a massive generational leap when you consider that the RTX 2080 was only 40% faster than the GTX 1080 when we reviewed it back in 2018.
With RTX 3080’s and In Red Dead Redemption 2, where we basically maxed out every single option that wasn’t MSAA – multi-sample anti-aliasing is very expensive and not worth it – we saw a massive 87% improvement in gen-on-gen performance.
This falls short of that 2x performance leap that was teased in the RTX 3080 revealing time, but it’s surely closer than we thought it would actually get. The New Nvidia RTX 3080, all told, is between 50-80% faster than the last generaiton RTX 2080, while only falling below that in Fire Strike Ultra, where it only managed an only 29% lead – but that’s still a meaty advantage.
That wide gap in performance is only really present at 4K, however, when the graphics card is free of bottlenecks. There are many titles in our testing suite where even the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, paired with 64GB of RAM at 3,600MHz, and with the RTX 3080. This is why, for instance, the RTX 2080 Ti and the RTX 3080 are virtually identical at 1080p gaming in Metro Exodus, but opens up to a 19% performance advantage at 4K.
But, we really recommend buyers anyone actually buys the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 they’re going to be playing at games at 4K, or possibly 3,400 x 1,440 Ultrawide.
The performance of Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 even further widens the gap that exists between Nvidia and AMD rivalry on the high end, more than doubling the performance of AMD’s most powerful consumer graphics card, the Radeon RX 6800 XT in many tests. AMD big lags in Ray Tracing performance compare to Nvidia’s RTX 3080. AMD Big Navi is going to have a big fight on its hands if it wants to try to claim the 4K crown that the RTX 3080 just won.
CONCLUSION
Buy the graphics if….
You want the best of best 4K performance, you should definitely go for the RTX 3080
4K gaming is incredibly difficult to run with the last generation graphics cards, but the latest RTX 3080 is the best graphics card yet for handling it. You’ll be able to max out the settings in every game under the sun at this resolution at or very near 60 fps.
You want next-gen ready performance
With the next generation of games on the horizon, performance requirements are needed at skyrocket. The RTX 3080 is significantly more powerful (at least on paper) than the GPUs in either the PS5 or Xbox Series X.
You have an older graphics card
Because the generational gains between old Nvidia Pascal technology and Nvidia Turing graphics cards were pretty minor, many folks held on to their 10-series cards. If you have one of these older cards, however, you’ll get absolutely massive gains with the RTX 3080.
Don’t buy the graphics it if…
You play games at a lower resolution mainly in 1080p or 720p
Its sure that The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 is a next generation 4K graphics card, and as such, you really shouldn’t pick this graphics card up for gaming at a lower resolution, you’ll run into bottlenecks with even the most powerful CPUs on the market.
You’re on a budget
When last generation Nvidia Turing launched, the RTX 2080 saw a significant price increase over the pascal series GTX 1080. And, while Nvidia didn’t raise the price, it didn’t lower the price back to pre-Turing levels. If you want to get your hands on the powerhouse card MR. NVIDIA RTX 3080, you’re going to be paying a high price – even if it is worth it.