Nvidia today announced its next generation RTX 30 series of graphics cards. Based on the new Ampere architecture, the three new cards being announced today — the RTX 3090, RTX 3080, and the RTX 3070.
Nvidia is promising big performance with the RTX 3080, up to two times that of the RTX 2080, and faster than even Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Ti card. The card will ship with 10GB of GDDR6X memory and will be priced at $699 when it ships on September 17th. Nvidia is using 8,704 CUDA cores on the RTX 3080, combined with a 1.71Ghz boost clock.
The RTX 3090 has 24GB of GDDR6X memory, same capacity as the Titan RTX but faster. It also has a new triple slot design with dual axial fans that claims to be 10x quieter and runs 30 degrees cooler than the Titan RTX.
The RTX 3090 is priced at $1499, which is more expensive than the launch price of the $1299 RTX 2080 Ti. However, it is cheaper than the $2499 launch price of the Titan RTX. It will be available starting September 24.
Next is the RTX 3080 the practical flagship for most people. With this card, Nvidia is promising up to 2x performance improvement over the RTX 2080. It features 10GB of the new and improved GDDR6X memory running at 19Gbps and Nvidia claims this card can do 4K 60fps consistently.
The new cards will also feature RTX IO. This enables rapid GPU-based loading and game asset decompression, accelerating I/O performance by up to 100x compared with hard drives and traditional storage APIs. RTX IO also works alongside Microsoft DirectStorage for Windows API to offload CPU tasks over to the GPU.
The cards from Nvidia will feature a unibody design with dual-axial fan design that claims to offer 2x the cooling performance. The cards will also feature the new 12-pin power connector that Nvidia recently revealed and is compatible with existing 8-pin connectors on power supplies using adapters.
RTX 30 series cards will be available in stock and factory-overclocked variants from OEMs such as ASUS, Colorful, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, MSI, Palit, PNY, and Zotac. Nvidia itself will also be selling the Founders Edition models on its website. The cards will also feature in pre-built systems from companies.
