As if you forgot, right? Today, the real next generation in gaming begins, with the release of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 as the first in the desktop Ampere architecture.
Need a reminder of just how ridiculous and powerful the RTX 3080 is? Here's some specs:
| GEFORCE RTX 3080 | |
|---|---|
| NVIDIA CUDA® Cores | 8704 |
| Boost Clock (GHz) | 1.71 |
| Standard Memory Config | 10 GB GDDR6X |
| Memory Interface Width | 320-bit |
| Ray Tracing Cores | 2nd Generation |
| Tensor Cores | 3rd Generation |
| Maximum GPU Temperature (in C) | 93 |
| Graphics Card Power (W) | 320 |
| Recommended System Power (W) (2) | 750 |
| Supplementary Power Connectors | 2x PCIe 8-pin |
Additional details: they will support the latest Vulkan, OpenGL 4.6, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a, HDCP 2.3, PCI Express 4 and support for the AV1 codec.
Stock is expected to be quite limited, especially since they did no pre-ordering and stores will likely sell out quite quickly. Even so, here's a few places where you might be able to grab one. Some of the sites are under quite a heavy load too due to high traffic, so prepare to wait a bit. I've seen plenty of "website not available" issues today while waiting to get links.
UK
USA
Feel free to comment with more and we can add them in.
Driver Support
Along with the release, NVIDIA also put out a brand new Linux driver with 455.23.04. This is a Beta driver, so there may be some rough edges they still need to iron out. It brings in support for the RTX 3080, RTX 3090 and the MX450.
On top of new GPU support, it also has a bunch of fixes and improvements including support for device-local VkMemoryType, which NVIDIA said can boost performance with DiRT Rally 2.0, DOOM: Eternal and World of Warcraft with DXVK and Steam Play. Red Dead Redemption 2 with Steam Play should also see a bug fix that was causing excessive CPU use.
The VDPAU driver also expanded with support for decoding VP9 10- and 12-bit bitstreams, although it doesn't support 10- and 12-bit video surfaces yet. NVIDIA also updated Base Mosaic support on GeForce to allow a maximum of five simultaneous displays, rather than three. For PRIME users, there's also some great sounding fixes included too so you should see a smoother experience there.
Some bits were removed for SLI too like "SFR", "AFR", and "AA" modes but SLI Mosaic, Base Mosaic, GL_NV_gpu_multicast, and GLX_NV_multigpu_context are still supported. There's also plenty of other bug fixes.
What's next?
Today is only the start, with the RTX 3090 going up on September 24 and the RTX 3070 later in October. There's also been a leak (as always) of a RTX 3060 Ti which is also due to arrive in October. Based on the leak the upcoming RTX 3060 Ti will have 4864 CUDA cores, 8GB GDDR6 (no X) memory clocked at 14Gbps with a memory bandwidth of 447Gbps which means even the 3060 is going to kick-butt.
Are you going for Ampere, sticking with what you have or waiting on the upcoming AMD RDNA 2 announcements? Do let us know in the comments.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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If 6800XT is anything like the 5700XT launch:
- October 28th announcement of release November 30th, reference only.
- February 1st AIB cards released.
- March 1st, I can build the kernel and Mesa from git branches to have a somewhat stable experience.
- October 2021 first Ubuntu release that works reliably, April release didn't have everything.
I have bought a few Nvidia cards and they worked with proprietary drivers the week of release with zero issues. I have a 5700XT, the question for me is:
Is there a game that will be released before October 2021 that I will want 2x performance of 5700XT? If there is, I will buy a Nvidia RTX 3080, if not I'll buy a 6800XT most likely.
Games that may make me want to upgrade:
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Vampire the Masquerades: Bloodlines 2 (not looking good)
- Starfield
- New Elder scrolls game
- Avowed
Just to note while I agree on the late oss driver support on distros like *buntu there was nothing stopping you from using AMD's prop driver.
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Hey, AMD! Did you see that? That's how it is done! A driver on a day-1!
I hope you can reproduce this "magic" of delivering on day-1 next time when I update my PC's GPU, as I really want to try your products out. Do not worry, AMD, you have plenty of time to practice yet.
I hope you can reproduce this "magic" of delivering on day-1 next time when I update my PC's GPU, as I really want to try your products out. Do not worry, AMD, you have plenty of time to practice yet.
2 Likes, Who?
Hey, AMD! Did you see that? That's how it is done! A driver on a day-1!
I hope you can reproduce this "magic" of delivering on day-1 next time when I update my PC's GPU, as I really want to try your products out. Do not worry, AMD, you have plenty of time to practice yet.
Like AMD do with their prop driver too you mean
1 Likes, Who?
Well, no. In fact I was thinking of AMD working closer with community or even writing stuff into the Open Source drivers preemptively in order to provide support at day-1.Hey, AMD! Did you see that? That's how it is done! A driver on a day-1!
I hope you can reproduce this "magic" of delivering on day-1 next time when I update my PC's GPU, as I really want to try your products out. Do not worry, AMD, you have plenty of time to practice yet.
Like AMD do with their prop driver too you mean
But if this is not feasible (so much for the Power of Open Source!), then yes, a working proprietary stand-in driver at day-1 is needed. After all, what would I do with an expensive card (let's pretend I made a pre-order or something) if it just refuses to work (even in VESA or framebuffer mode). Look at it? Admire it? Place it on a shelf like a trophy?
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Well, no. In fact I was thinking of AMD working closer with community or even writing stuff into the Open Source drivers preemptively in order to provide support at day-1.
But if this is not feasible (so much for the Power of Open Source!), then yes, a working proprietary stand-in driver at day-1 is needed. After all, what would I do with an expensive card (let's pretend I made a pre-order or something) if it just refuses to work (even in VESA or framebuffer mode). Look at it? Admire it? Place it on a shelf like a trophy?
https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-amdgpu-unified-navi-linux
Wish we had some Linux benchs for the new Nvidia GPUs but seems that Phoronix didn't receive one to bench. So it's kinda difficult to say how "good" is the day-1 support for this new RTX series.
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Hey, AMD! Did you see that? That's how it is done! A driver on a day-1!
They publish their dkms driver (which is open source) pretty much on day one. They can't force upstream kernel release schedule or Mesa release schedule, or llvm and so on.
So you can be in situation when upstream projects are lagging behind, while needed support is already public. What can be improved though, is distros providing their own bundled support in such cases until upstream catches up. But most distros don't care about such use cases.
Last edited by Shmerl on 17 September 2020 at 6:21 pm UTC
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So no reason for me to even think about replacing my 2080Ti. If there'd be a card with same performance & memory and much lower power demands ( -> less heat / noise produced ), I might think about a replacement.
It depends where your bottleneck is with your 2080 Ti. In many ways, the 3070 is going to perform better, if the bottleneck is compute speed rather than VRAM.
While the 2080 Ti has a nominal 250 W TDP, the power cap is configurable with nvidia-smi. If you're happy with the performance of your card but want it to generate less heat you can change that without buying a new card: just lower the power cap. That's what I do for when my machine's folding proteins.
Powercap is unfortunately not an option because of the few cases where there's actually some performance issue (some maps in War Thunder and X-Plane in general with very high quality settings). I try to ignore the fan noise and additional heating then. Otherwise enforcing VSync does reduce the load in most cases a lot, it doesn't make sense to render more frames than your display can handle anyway. And VRAM: for the work related stuff I'm doing with it even the 11GB are sometimes not enough and I have to use system memory too. So a GPU with less memory? No.
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Separating the drivers and having separate releases for them would improve that a lot. It does't make much sense to wait for a big package with dozens of modules to be tested and make it into the stable release/update if all you want is to upgrade a single piece of your hardware which only needs the update of a tiny part of the package. And from a user's point of view it doesn't matter who's to blame. The only thing that matters is: can you use the hardware on release date or not.Hey, AMD! Did you see that? That's how it is done! A driver on a day-1!
They publish their dkms driver (which is open source) pretty much on day one. They can't force upstream kernel release schedule or Mesa release schedule, or llvm and so on.
So you can be in situation when upstream projects are lagging behind, while needed support is already public. What can be improved though, is distros providing their own bundled support in such cases until upstream catches up. But most distros don't care about such use cases.
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Separating the drivers and having separate releases for them would improve that a lot.
Not necessarily. It's a trade off. Having stuff out of tree brings its own issues even if you get the benefit of having an independent release schedule.
At least with ACO, Mesa is less dependent on llvm for Vulkan now.
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Has been working great for me for the better part of a year now. I also game on a 1080p TV and it runs everything I own at maximum settings with power to spare.These cards are all way out of range of what I consider to be acceptable pricing, no matter how good the performance.
What's much more interesting to me is that the rx5700xt numbers are not all that much behind in the reviews (price/performance ratio) and that I am already seeing those cards in the used market for *very* reasonable prices, which I expect to get even more tempting in the coming few months.
have the drivers gotten better for this cards I'm hoping they drop in price when RDNA2 comes out I game on a 1080 tv so I don't need crazy powerful card?
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These cards were all gone in a few minutes. Also, they're going on sale on eBay, which means at least some of the people who bought them were just scalpers.
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Just to note while I agree on the late oss driver support on distros like *buntu there was nothing stopping you from using AMD's prop driver.
I ordered the 5700XT on launch day and used the AMD proprietary driver on 18.04 LTS, there was an update a few weeks after to 18.04 LTS and the driver no longer worked.
Last edited by Breeze on 17 September 2020 at 7:29 pm UTC
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Still running on RX 470 (I didn't even remember and had to lspci for it 
), usually enough for the kind of games I play. Every time there is some new GPU generation announced, I hope for a reasonably priced model that has some lower power consumption and significantly higher performance so I might consider an upgrade. But with every new generation I have the feeling that only monsters are created or budget cards for office scenarios.
I'm sure efficiency must have increased somewhat, my card is now four years old (says the internet). To be honest I don't have any numbers and don't invest much time on it. Usually I take a look what models lie in my desired power range (< 100 W) and then fire up some of those "GPU X vs. GPU Y" comparisons and am disappointed at the not impressive performance gain.
My guts say it's a different story with CPUs. Still running on a X4 860K. Just compared it to a Ryzen 5 3600 which has less TDP (65 vs. 95 W) and, from some benchmarks I found, has 2 to 5 times the performance.
Am I just missing some products here or is the GPU market really evolving so much differently?
), usually enough for the kind of games I play. Every time there is some new GPU generation announced, I hope for a reasonably priced model that has some lower power consumption and significantly higher performance so I might consider an upgrade. But with every new generation I have the feeling that only monsters are created or budget cards for office scenarios.I'm sure efficiency must have increased somewhat, my card is now four years old (says the internet). To be honest I don't have any numbers and don't invest much time on it. Usually I take a look what models lie in my desired power range (< 100 W) and then fire up some of those "GPU X vs. GPU Y" comparisons and am disappointed at the not impressive performance gain.
My guts say it's a different story with CPUs. Still running on a X4 860K. Just compared it to a Ryzen 5 3600 which has less TDP (65 vs. 95 W) and, from some benchmarks I found, has 2 to 5 times the performance.
Am I just missing some products here or is the GPU market really evolving so much differently?
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Mohandevir Sep 17, 2020
Still running on RX 470 (I didn't even remember and had to lspci for it
I'm sure efficiency must have increased somewhat, my card is now four years old (says the internet). To be honest I don't have any numbers and don't invest much time on it. Usually I take a look what models lie in my desired power range (< 100 W) and then fire up some of those "GPU X vs. GPU Y" comparisons and am disappointed at the not impressive performance gain.
My guts say it's a different story with CPUs. Still running on a X4 860K. Just compared it to a Ryzen 5 3600 which has less TDP (65 vs. 95 W) and, from some benchmarks I found, has 2 to 5 times the performance.
Am I just missing some products here or is the GPU market really evolving so much differently?
In fact, the gaming GPU market is driven by two selling points, atm: 4K 144hz monitors and RTX. If you don't plan to jump in those bandwagons, you won't feel as compelled to upgrade your GPU.
Personnally, I have a 24in 1080p 75hz monitor and a 50in 1080p 60hz HDTV that I will keep for the foreseable futur. My GTX 960 4gb is still serviceable, if I accept the fact that I won't play at Ultra settings (Very High in the large majority of cases, medium in DE:MD). So... RTX 3080 has absolutely no appeal to me. Overpriced, overpowered. In fact, I'm I looking for the best RDNA2 GPU (to be ready for Gamescope/Wayland) that fits a 450w PSU. That's what I have in my Cougar QBX.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 17 September 2020 at 8:20 pm UTC
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Waiting for RDNA2, but in any case I'd be looking at the 200€ price range and not the high-end models. I'm not hellbent on switching to AMD, but if they manage to build something with good value for money ratio I'd rather support the underdog than throwing cash at NVIDIA. Open source graphic drivers sound appealing too.
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Just to note while I agree on the late oss driver support on distros like *buntu there was nothing stopping you from using AMD's prop driver.
I ordered the 5700XT on launch day and used the AMD proprietary driver on 18.04 LTS, there was an update a few weeks after to 18.04 LTS and the driver no longer worked.
Well thats not good I admit but you did have day one support so the reply to Breeze is true in which he/she is talking complete bullshit !
Where is Nvidias day one support with there OSS driver? Oh, wait....
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In fact, the gaming GPU market is driven by two selling points, atm: 4K 144hz monitors and RTX.
It doesn't look like it. Only small percentage uses 4K at such framerates and RTX (I assume you simply mean ray tracing) is also not a major feature that's used in practice. The bulk of the market is taken by mid range cards or cards aimed at 2560x1440 / 144 Hz segment.
Something like VR on the other hand could be a driver for most high end segment, but VR is also quite a small use case so far.
I.e. most high end cards are surely quite hyped and talked about, but they are not where most money is at least.
Last edited by Shmerl on 17 September 2020 at 9:05 pm UTC
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Poor xbox. And poor ps5. Brutalized even before leaving the womb.
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Well thats not good I admit but you did have day one support so the reply to Breeze is true in which he/she is talking complete bullshit !
Where is NVIDIAs day one support with there OSS driver? Oh, wait....
There were other problems too. Computer frozen from using GIMP and Firefox, poor performance in some games, random freezes from desktop with no programs open, 2 monitors not working. I can't remember a time where I had Linux completely freeze and not be able to switch to terminal before getting a 5700XT. No one that used the AMD proprietary driver on day one 5700XT would consider it even close to the stability of a typical NVIDIA beta driver release. AMD had "day one support" in that there was a driver to download and install for the first few weeks in 18.04 and you may be able to play a 3D game for a little bit, but not use GIMP. It would be like you ordering a steak and me serving you a rat steak and saying "still technically a steak."
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Despite not even remotely considering Nvidia products for myself,
someone not waiting for AMD's release (soon) before buying a 30XX must be outright crazy. :D
I want to agree with you. But for people who dont care about nvidia vs AMD. For $700 in 1.5 months, AMD is not going to go roll out something noticeably faster than the 3080. They might roll something out at $700 but the same speed, or they might roll something out 20% faster than 3080... but costs more.
And at that point, you've just waited 1.5 months to get something that is roughly equal.
The reason to wait is because rushing into anything is a bad idea, or because you care about open source drivers (most buyers are going to be Windows, so not like AMD is really winning any favor there). I personally am waiting because of open source drivers, so for the moment I'm an AMD "loyalist". This generation is theirs to lose. I'm basically planning on building a new PC with a threadripper 4960x and a radeon 6700xt at the end of the year. If the top tier card of theirs is slower than a 3070, or costs $1000 for less than 3080 performance... I'll go nvidia. But I 100% don't expect to get a better price to performance deal, only better open source drivers.
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