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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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Dunc Sep 18, 2020
Well, I'm still pretty pleased with my 960. Mind you I got it for free, which gives it an infinite price/performance ratio. Beat that!
emphy Sep 19, 2020
compared the 3070 to the 2080ti, then compared the 3080 to the 2080 (non super). They primed your brain so when you hear "twice as fast" you think "twice as fast as the 2080ti"... Even though 25% faster than the 2080ti is exactly what their graph (shown in the article) roughly says.

interesting I didn't notice the 2080ti at first glance they put it like in furthest part of the graph another marketing technique here??

That is just a consequence of 2080ti's price. For the marketing trick you need to be at the other side of the graph. I'll leave it for you to discover; it's quite subtle.
You mean how the price axis starts at $200?

That's part of it.
TobyGornow Sep 19, 2020
Using Gamer's nexus numbers and comparing 2080 FE vs 3080 FE, we have under Furmark 235 W vs 324 W raw consumption that gives us a 89 w increase ( +38 % increase ), and according to LTT we have a average 30 % increase in fps (in 1440p).

I'm really not impressed, they only cranked up the power to eleven and I don't get the hype...Yeah for 4k players and Vr maybe (respectively 2.24% and 1.7% on steam hardware survey).

What I'm really hoping for is that AMD delivers on their promises on the power efficiency and give us 50% increase (I sincerely doubt it) for the same power consumption as the 5700xt. For me that where they can differentiate themselves with RDNA2 not participating in this stupid race and keeping it reasonable price wise and consumption wise.

Nvidia, a machine for pigs ?

EDIT: Grammar


Last edited by TobyGornow on 19 September 2020 at 12:54 pm UTC
wvstolzing Sep 20, 2020
I see one 'generational leap' on that graph; & it's the Olympic record leap in ridiculous pricing taken by the 2080Ti.
slaapliedje Sep 20, 2020
What I want to see is the performance difference between the 3090 and the rest of the line up. I mean what justifies that price jump? I also find it amusing that some places still list the 2080Ti up to 1900 bucks...
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