Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition review: Staggeringly powerful - whytewithem1953

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card symbolizes why we tell people to wait for the second generation when bleeding-bound technology appears.

The chemical group new-attend Alan Turing GPUs inside Nvidia's GeForce RTX 20-serial publication packed all sorts of up-to-date technologies designed to usher in real-clock time re trace, a long wanted-after goal for the gaming industry. Non exclusive did Turing bring out specialized RT cores dedicated to processing ray tracing tasks, it also debuted tensor cores, devoted hardware that uses machine learning to help denoise ray traced visuals and enable AI-enhanced tools like-minded the fantastic Deep Learning Fantastic Sampling (DLSS) technology. Turing's improvements also extended to the traditional shader cores, introducing an overhauled processing grapevine better equipped to handle games made-up exploitation the newer DirectX 12 and Vulkan graphics APIs. All of these were large departures from the average.

But new doesn't always mean great. While the RTX 20-series so birthed a new ray-traced era, games that supported ray tracing or DLSS were a few and far between over its lifetime. Worse, the RTX 20-series card game offered essentially the same performance in traditional games as their older GTX 10-series predecessors at the Sami Mary Leontyne Pric peak. The initial reception (and sales) weren't glowing.

The $699 GeForce RTX 3080 and Nvidia's raw Ampere GPU architecture changes altogether that. This thing freakin' smokes. It's a massive upgrade over the older $699 GeForce RTX 2080, significantly faster than the former $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti flagship, and if you've been holding onto your older GeForce GTX 1080? The GeForce RTX 3080 absolutely crushes IT. This is an superior graphics card for 4K and ultra-fast 1440p gaming—if you can open it when information technology launches on Sept 17.

Editor's note: This comprehensive review of the GeForce RTX 3080 goes yearner than most as information technology's our first evaluation of an Ampere-powered GeForce RTX 30-series graphics card. Check out Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 tested: 5 key things you need to cognize for upper-level takeaways of this in-deepness info, or use this contents to hop between the respective sections of the review.

GeForce RTX 3080: Specs, features, and Ampere
Founders Version design
Our screen system
Gambling benchmarks
Ray trace and DLSS benchmarks
Power run, thermals, and noise
Should you buy the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Variant?

GeForce RTX 3080: Specs, features, and Ampere

Before we dive into what's new in the GeForce RTX 3080, here's a high-level consider the Founders Edition card's specifications. You can retrieve to a greater extent information about how it stacks up against the previous contemporaries in our GeForce RTX 30-serial vs. RTX 20-series spec comparison.

CUDA cores: 8,704
Boost clock: 1.71GHz
Memory: 10GB GDDR6X at 9500MHz
Memory bus: 320-chip
Memory bandwidth: 760GB/s
RT cores: 68 (2nd-gen)
Tensor cores: 384 (3rd-gen)
NVLink SLI: No
PCIe: Gen 4
HDMI: 2.1
HDCP: 2.3
Display connectors: 1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4
Length: 11.2 inches
Width: 4.4 inches
Height: 2-slot
Maximum GPU temp: 93
Art card power: 320W
Recommended world power supply: 750W
Power connectors: 2x 8-immobilize (with supplied 12-pin adapter)

Got it? Reputable. Now we'atomic number 75 expiration to get geeky for a bit. Skip to the next section if you aren't interested in several deeper details on how the tech inside the GeForce RTX 3080 works.

The beating heart inside the GeForce RTX 3080 is Nvidia's new GA102 "Ampere" GPU. Ampere is stacked using Samsung's 8nm central processing unit lymph node, moving up from the TSMC 14nm and slightly modified 12nm nodes utilised for the GTX 10- and RTX 20-series cards, so this is a people leap for Nvidia. The sunset time Nvidia leaped a node, the GeForce GTX 10-series demolished their engineer predecessors. It's no different this prison term around, as you'll soon figure.

ga102 block diagram final2 sm — Inside an RTX 30-series Ampere SM.

While Alan Turing shook up GPU design, International ampere builds along Turing's foundations. Turing's simultaneous multiprocessors (SMs)—the building blocks of the GPU—received a significant overhaul, adding a current integer pipeline (INT32) alongside the floating point pipeline (FP32) traditionally used to process shading. The new pipeline let Nvidia's GPU handle whole number instructions at the equal metre every bit traditional FP instructions, freehanded Turing-based artwork card game a big focal ratio boost in games that leaned heavily happening those tasks—namely, well-optimized Vulkan and DirectX 12 games. Performance in traditional games stayed largely stagnant in the RTX 20-series artwork cards, however, part because FP32 is generally more important for gaming workloads.

Ampere both builds happening Turing and scales back that design by doubling the identification number of CUDA cores in for each one SM. The new architecture keeps a information course dedicated exclusively to those of the essence FP32 tasks, while the secondment way posterior unconscious process either INT or FP tasks, rather than dedicated them to INT only. That makes Ampere much faster at traditional plot rendering.

Line that overall game operation doesn't scale up perfectly with CUDA core counts, especially because INT instructions rear immediately potentially fret the total FP throughput on that second path. Dead all, information technology's a good, reasonable pick off. To fertilize the beasts, Nvidia doubled the bandwidth and partition size of the L1 cache in each SM, along with adding 33 percentage more L1 capacity.

Those specialized RT and tensor cores also received upgrades—the RT cores to a 2d-generation version, and the tensor cores to the third gear generation. There are more RT cores crammed into the RTX 3080, and fewer tensor cores. Only these third-gen tensor cores are very much more capable than their predecessors, sanctioning higher performance despite the reduced count.

The RT cores also gained the ability to interpolate triangle position. This in particular helps in scenes with motion blur, possibly speeding improving ray traversal by 8X. Overall, Nvidia says its new RT cores are 1.7X faster than before, while the tensor cores are 2.7X more efficient—though again, that doesn't scale perfectly to literal play performance.

Those gains are boosted even further by Amp's newfound ability to escape tasks happening the tensor and RT cores simultaneously. In Turing, ray-traced tasks ran alongside shader functions, but the GPU needed to finish that ray of light-traced task and hand it to the tensor cores for denoising and DLSS in front spitting out the closing image. In Ampere, tensor cores can run DLSS to upscale one frame while the shader and RT cores work at the next cardinal, all tierce process tasks operative at the same time. Paired with the improved shader capabilities, a skeletal system that took up to 13 milliseconds to run connected Alan Turing with ray tracing and DLSS enabled can now be patter out in 6.7ms with Ampere. Hot damn.

Rear short letter? Improvements in the Ampere GPU architecture consecrate a big encouragement to carrying into action in both traditional games as well as games that leverage Nvidia's RTX capabilities.

But the GeForce RTX 3080's gains don't ejaculate only from the new Ampere architecture. Like the GTX 1080 and RTX 2080 before it, Nvidia's latest flagship introduces up-to-date memory, too. This time around, the GeForce RTX 3080 (and forthcoming RTX 3090) tap Micron's blazing-fast GDDR6X memory modules. Micron's memory rolls stunned "PAM4" signaling applied science, which lets them send quartet possible values per cycle, up from the traditional two. That lets GDDR6X move data twice As blistering as previous incarnations. The 10GB of GDDR6X memory in the RTX 3080 sends that information over a 320-bit bus, for a total store bandwidth of 760GBps. By comparison, the GeForce RTX 2080 Big's 8GB of non-X GDDR6 used a 256-bit bus for 496GBps of overall bandwidth.

nvidia gddr6x — Time-honored GDDR6 vs. the RTX 3080's GDDR6x store.

Nvidia also tweaked how the memory full treatmen to meliorate its efficiency—a good thing, as the 320W GeForce RTX 3080 draws noticeably more power than steady the previous-gen RTX 2080 Ti flagship. The company added 250mV voltage steps and new "Georgia home boy transition avoidance coding" to take advantage of the four-signal PAM4 memory without having the chips swing wildly from the lowest to highest values, which could cause energy arcs. Nvidia also gave the graphics core and memory system their have dedicated power rails, letting the GPU calibrate the power levels of each separately for greater efficiency. Previous chip designs used a shared exponent revile for the two.

Now that we're talking mogul, it's a great time to shift gears to the design of the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition.

GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition design

The GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Version differs wildly from Nvidia's past in-house nontextual matter card game. A lot of the variety likely stems from the increased power demands of Ampere.

Turing's flagship, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, topped come out at 260 Watts. The GeForce RTX 3080 is rated for 320W, and the step-up RTX 3090 hits 350W. Moving upbound a process knob, like Amp does, sack offer the same performance at much greater efficiency, offer much performance at the Same power, or fall somewhere between those two extremes. Ampere is Thomas More efficient than Turing—Nvidia claims the 220W GeForce RTX 3070 offers the same performance as the 260W RTX 2080 Ti—but it's clear that Nvidia put the pedal to the metallic-looking a bit heavily hither.

Pay close aid to the power cater requirements, which now hit 750W for both the 3080 and 3090 Founders Edition cards. When introducing its ROG Strix variants of the RTX 30-serial publication GPUs, Asus even warned that "as a final result of increased power demands, users whitethorn need to re-evaluate the power rating of their PSUs." A mightiness supply that's toiled hard for years mightiness not have the voltage rule required to deal with fast load changes. Monster GPUs indigence to be well-federal official.

Such a powerful GPU paired with such powerful memory requires muscular cooling, too. Everything from the PCB design to the power connector design to the radical tank itself is different in the GeForce RTX 3080.

It all revolves around the new-look cooler. Prior to the GeForce RTX 20-series, whol Nvidia Founders Edition and reference card game misused a electric fan-style tank that shoots empty words out the back of your system. With the RTX 20-series, Nvidia sick to a twofold-mechanism fan design traditionally found in custom boards. The GeForce RTX 3080 splits the difference.

nvidia geforce rtx 30 series cooler flow

Nvidia's new Founders Edition design deploys a unique advertize-pull "flow-through" design. The winnow at the rear of the system corset in its normal rank, integrated in the shroud at the bottom of the carte. The front buff moves to the top of the nontextual matter card, where you'd normally see a backplate or bare PCB.

The rear fan functions like a traditional cetacean-style tank, pushing hot vent of the batting order's I/O bracket. The top-mounted head-on fan, however, pulls in air at the bottom of the GPU and through the fan atop the card, exhausting it into the top of your system. The fans at the uppermost or rear of your case and so pull along the vent. Nvidia says this method also keeps the intake-to-exhaust airflow in your system more consistent, rather than disrupting everything with a bountiful honking dual-axial card between your cause fans.

In effect, the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Variant puts part of the cooling burden on the lie of your system. We'll need to conduct more than examination to see whether this scheme affects your CPU and memory functioning. Be in for your casing is equipped with a back end outtake fan, as not whol cases include one.

The rest of the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition bristles with large, short, black heatsink fins, and a wraparound metal tack that looks surprisingly silken in an progressive way. The visiting card also feels significantly heavier in your paw than the RTX 20-series Founders Edition models. It's dense. But the new design works really well, keeping the beastly Ampere GPU decently cool piece also creating furthermost less randomness than the last-gen duple-axial design. It Crataegus laevigata non work well in small organise factor PCs, however.

The pewter-hued metal exterior of that shroud gets very warming to the touch after you incumbrance up the card for a few hours, though. Suchlike the final-gen Founders Edition designs, the RTX 3080 FE's heavily integrated design looks like a nightmare to disassemble, besides.

In its reviewer's notes, Nvidia PR pointed kayoed that the card is "unique in some its design and meeting place," and warned that "dismantlement without damaging the card requires some spear carrier attention" while posting "special 'engineering-approved' book of instructions." Don't expect to take this gorgeous graphics card apart really easily. Update: Gamers Nexus has posted a GeForce RTX 3080 tear-down video you'll want to watch earlier prying yours open.

ampere 3080 3qtr front right pcb — The GeForce RTX 3080 FE uses an exotic custom PCB to fit in its group ice chest.

Of course, you can't push hot aerate through a PCB. In other departure for Nvidia, the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Version uses a custom PCB rather than a reference board, and it's really custom. As you can see to it from the image above, this card uses a teeny-weeny-tiny PCB with a long, angular notch taken murder the farther end, giving information technology a calculate somewhat reminiscent of Pac-Man with monstrous teeth. That cut-out leaves room for the funky new lover to suck air up and through the heatsink, though water pulley support will probably be slim pickings for DIY liquid enthusiasts.

Shrinking the PCB's size of it requisite invulnerable engineering—and compromises. Rather than using time-honoured 6- or 8-pin superpowe connectors, the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Variant uses an Nvidia-created 12-pin power connexion that's not very much larger than a single 8-fall, then turns it vertically to save a ton of footprint space on the PCB.

Nvidia's 2×8-pin to 12-pin magnate transcriber

The company includes a 2x 8-pin to 12-pin adapter in the box so you can use the new card with traditional power cater hookups. It's a nifty bit of mechanical applied science. Nvidia says information technology submitted the project for standardisation, so we may see it kill au fait rival cards in the future tense.

The 12-pin power connector is enclosed in the metal-looking fins happening the butt on of the GeForce RTX 3080 FE because of its short PCB.

The nifty 12-pin idea turned bent on be less than ideal in actual mathematical product terms, at least if you care about cable direction. The included adapter ISN't very womb-to-tomb, and the shortened PCB means the 12-tholepin connector itself is positioned close to the center of the GPU's long edge. In practice, you'll have the ugly 8-PIN number connections looking cluttered straw man-and-center through your case's side window. The odd three-quarter angle of the 12-pin connection besides makes IT very hard to keep the arranger's dual prongs from application whatever of the illuminated "GeForce RTX 3080" logo on the lateral.

The 12-pin power adapter doesn't look good in your event.

I don't like-minded information technology. On the plus side, some power supply manufacturers are offering specialized standalone cables that plug into the 12-pin connected one end and dual 8-pin connections at your power issue, removing the need for an adapter at some extra price (if one rolls out for your fussy PSU, that is). Virtually all custom GeForce RTX 3080 art card away third-company vendors like EVGA, MSI, and Asus gravel to a conventional reference board with normal 8-pin connectors, sol you can look that way of life as well if the adapter bothers you.

The GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition comes equipped with a single HDMI connection, and in a eldest for graphics cards, it supports HDMI 2.1, which lets you connect an 8K display with a only cable. Previously, you necessary quaternity HDMI cables or a DisplayPort-to-HDMI 2.1 adapter to achieve the same thing. The card also packs three DisplayPort 1.4 connections. On the video recording technologies frontmost, the RTX 30-serial publication GPUs are the first to support AV1 decode (a boon for streaming 8K capacity) and the ability to record 8K HDR video natively at 30 fps, without the want to invest in a discrete video capture card.

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 30-series likewise upgrades to PCIe 4.0, which is presently supported solitary connected AMD Ryzen 3000 systems with an AM4 X570 or B550 motherboard. Intel does not support the blazing-fast interface. While that sounds corresponding a conundrum, Nvidia representatives counseled that PCIe 4.0 moves performance only by a "few percent" in best-case scenarios, and CPU selection matters much more. The company measured its own performance benchmarks in an Intel Gist i9 system. Fear not: Your 9900K rig isn't dead yet.

What's non included on the 3080 FE is also noteworthy, though irrelevant to most gamers. The RTX 20-series Founders Variant graphics cards enclosed a VirtualLink association to supply audio, visual, and information to VR headsets over a single USB-C port. While VirtualLink was backed past some of the biggest names in the business, it ne'er appeared happening whatever of the Major VR headsets, and the initiative's web site is in real time dead. You'll no yearner bump the port on the RTX 3080 FE.

Too missing: SLI connectors. Nvidia is limiting NVLink support to the GeForce RTX 3090 alone for this generation, slamming the final nail down in multi-GPU's coffin. It's effectively been departed for years, though. Games just preceptor't support it anymore, and information technology's usually janky in the games that do. Modern GPUs are also incredibly powerful compared to earlier ones that required SLI to hit their best frame rates.

All in entirely, nevertheless, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Variant is a gorgeous, cleverly engineered graphics bill of fare that looks not bad while staying cool and quiet. Too bad about that adapter, though.

Gallimaufry

Nvidia's also supporting the GeForce RTX 30-series found with a few things outside the scope of this review.

Nvidia Automatic combines GPU and game engine optimizations to greatly improve your latency in games that support Nvidia's API. Energizing IT zeroes out the usual GPU render queue, soh the GPU renders frames fed to that past the CPU as quickly as likely, reducing latency-inducing "backpressure" happening your system processor. As Nvidia's graph above shows, simply flipping it along in a supported game instantly lowers rotational latency, piece upgrading to many brawny artwork cards and faster monitors drop it even further.

Nvidia Innate reflex is an cunning way to sell the insane speeds provided away this parvenu generation of artwork cards. This isn't precisely for RTX 30-series cards, either; Nvidia says Reflex will work with to the highest degree cards from the GeForce 900-serial connected up. I'm sounding forward to testing it more than extensively in the future.

Call of Tariff Warzone, Valorant, Fortnite, andDestiny 2 will be among the first games to stick out Nvidia Reflex when it launches this month. IT'll likewise be future day toSquall of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call in of Responsibility: Black Ops Cold State of war, andApex: Legends.

If you're willing to pass high for the best esports experience, Nvidia's monitor partners are also rolling 360Hz G-Sync displays with hardware built-in to measure your boilersuit system latency. Single low-pitched-latent period Reflex-supporting mice will collision the streets soon, too, though the system will also work with standard peripherals.

Just as exciting is RTX IO, an innovative new technology that taps into Microsoft's DirectStorage API to let your NVMe SSD funnel data direct to your GPU, removing the potential drop bottlenecks of a slammer CPU and arrangement memory. It sounds like the bilgewater-worthy repositing tech inside the next-gen Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles. Read our article on how Microsoft and Nvidia design to kill gritty-load times on PCs if you want to know more. (We also expect AMD's "Banging Navi" Radeon RTX 6000-series graphics cards to support Microsoft DirectStorage someway when they're revealed on October 28.)

Finally, DLSS and ray tracing denoising isn't all that tensor cores can brawl. The New Nvidia Disperse app leverages that AI computer hardware to provide streamers with all sorts of nifty on-the-fly effects, ranging from the magical RTX Video noise-cancellation feature to video effects that include adjustable background blur, greenscreen-style background replacement, and automatic head-tracking effects. They looked pretty darn moving in the present, but we harbor't had time to test the suite ourselves yet.

Phew! That was a good deal of information. Let's get into how this hot-rod rides. Spoiler: It's fast.

Our test system of rules

Our dedicated graphics card mental testing system is a few geezerhood over-the-hill, merely IT's packed with some of the quickest complementary components available to put any potential performance bottlenecks foursquare along the GPU. Near of the hardware was provided by the manufacturers, but we purchased the cooler and warehousing ourselves.

Intel Core i7-8700K processor ($300 happening Amazon) overclocked to 5GHz all cores
EVGA CLC 240 closed-curl liquid ice chest ($105 on Amazon)
Asus Maximus X Torpedo motherboard
64GB HyperX Predator RGB DDR4/2933 ($355 on Amazon)
EVGA 1200W SuperNova P2 power supply ($352 on Amazon)
Corsair Crystal 570X RGB casing, with front man and overstep panels separate and an extra rear fan installed for landscaped air flow
2x 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSDs ($70 each on Amazon)

We were visaged with a dilemma ahead of this review. Arsenic we mentioned in the former plane section, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series upgrades to the cutting-edge PCIe 4.0 interface, which could potentially improve performance in limited, ultra-demanding scenarios. But only AMD Ryzen 3000 systems with an AM4 X570 or B550 motherboard support PCIe 4.0. Intel does not support the blazing-fast interface yet, merely information technology holds the single-thread public presentation crown thus crucial to most games. What to practise, differently groan about Intel's failure to underpin it?

Nvidia representatives say PCIe 4.0 adds only a "few percentage" more than carrying into action in the limited scenarios where it would make whatsoever remainder. They title that C.P.U. prize matters to a greater extent for general performance. Nvidia's own benchmarks were conducted on an Intel Core i9 scheme with PCIe 3.0.

Thereupon info in hand over, we distinct to follow our habitual test bench for now. Our overclocked 5GHz Burden i7-8700K goes toe-to-squared-toe with even the Core i9-10900K in gaming performance, as TechSpot's testing proved endmost month, so it shouldn't be a bottleneck here. Piece AMD Ryzen has greatly closed the gap with Intel on single-thread performance, it's smooth a bit behind the Nub chips. We feel we'd follow more likely to see performance impacts from slower single-threaded performance than from lacking PCIe 4.0 support. If the young "Zen 3" Ryzen processors debuting in October equal or top Intel's various-rib execution, we'll likely switch to that platform for proximo tests to get the best of both worlds. But it remains to be seen what AMD's next-gen chips volition tender.

We're comparison the $700 GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition against a bunch of strange FE card game: Nvidia's $800 GeForce RTX 2080, $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti, and the older $700 GTX 1080. (MSRP prices for the 1080 and 2080 started at $100 less, but Nvidia charged a premium for the FE models.)

Because indeed many owners of the $700 GTX 1080 Ti decided to skip over the lustreless performance increase in the similarly priced RTX 2080, we're also including the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2 in our roundup. Our GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition died years ago, the but Nvidia GPU e'er to expire in our hands.

Why no Radeon comparisons? Unlobed: Nvidia is in a class of its own with flooding-last GPUs. Only the just-on hand Radeon Sevener ever managed to come close to matching the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti's performance, and the 1080 Ti is now 3.5 years old. The Radeon RX 5700 XT isn't in the same ballpark either. Big Navi might change that, but Nvidia has defined enthusiast-separate GPUs for eld now. The clip investment to benchmark AMD GPUs ahead of this launch, only for them to look way at the fundament of the charts, wasn't worthwhile.

We test a mixture of games spanning various engines, genres, and graphics Apis (DirectX 11, DX12, and Vulkan). Apiece game is tried exploitation its in-game benchmark at the highest possible graphics presets unless otherwise noted. We disable VSync, frame rate caps, period ray tracing or DLSS effects, and FreeSync/G-Sync, along with any separate vendor-specific technologies the like FidelityFX. We've also enabled temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) to push these cards to their limits. We run each benchmark leastwise three times and list the median consequence for each essa. We tested the older card game using Nvidia's in public available 452.06 Game Ready driver, and the RTX 3080 FE exploitation a 452.16 driver provided archean to reviewers.

Let's go.

GeForce RTX 3080 gaming benchmarks

Horizon Zero Dawn

Yep, Sony exclusives are striking the Personal computer now. Horizon Nil Dawn hit Steam with some performance issues, but the most egregious ones have been mostly cleared up thanks to hard work from the developers, and the game topped the gross revenue charts for weeks afterwards its release. It also seems to respond somewhat to PCIe 4.0 scaling, which will make this an interesting inclusion when we sack to a PCIe 4.0-supported system in the future.

Horizon Zero Dawn runs on Insurgent Games' Decima engine, the equal engine that powers Death Stranding. Ambient Occlusion can still offer iffy results if set to Ultra, so we test with that setting at Medium. Every other visual choice is maxed out.

Hardly consider that. The GeForce RTX 3080 flies. At 4K information technology's a ludicrous 81 percent faster than the RTX 2080, its direct predecessor. Information technology's too 34 per centum faster than the former RTX 2080 Ti flagship, and a monstrous 151 percent faster than the GTX 1080. If you've been sitting tight since spending $700 connected the GTX 10-series, it's definitely safety to upgrade, as these benchmarks will remain to establish.

The GeForce RTX 3080 dominates even at lower resolutions. The lead narrows as you move down to 1080p operating room 1440p, settings that commit more of the burden on the CPU rather than the GPU, comparable 4K does. That'll be a trend in most, but non all games as we continue through these.

Gears Tactics

Gears Tactics puts information technology own brutal, fast spin connected the XCOM-like genre. This Fantastic Engine 4-steam-powered game was built from the ground up for DirectX 12. We love being able to work a tactics-mode game into our benchmarking cortege. Better yet, the game comes with a overplus of graphics options for PC snobs. More games should commit such loving care to explaining what flipping altogether these visual knobs miserly.

You keister't use the presets to benchmark Gears Tactics, every bit it intelligently scales to turn best on your installed computer hardware. That means "Ultra" on one graphics card can load different settings than "Ultra" on a weaker card. We manually set all options to their highest likely settings, and handicap the minimum/maximum frame range options.

Fun fact: The GeForce RTX 3080 FE is the only graphics card that doesn't generate a "Your GPU can't handle this" warning when enabling Lustrous Reflections. Only the 3080 and the RTX 2080 Ti lack that warning for Planar Reflections. Told you these card game are monsters.

Those especially strenuous options hammer these GPUs, causing the RTX 3080 to attain a narrower just even so substantial 55 percent margin of triumph over its predecessor at 4K. The RTX 3080's extra oomph carries ended to 1440p every bit well, where it's 50 percentage faster than the RTX 2080, 30 per centum faster than the 2080 Ti, and 89 per centum faster than the GTX 1080.

More interesting is the opening 'tween the GTX 1080 Ti and RTX 2080. The two card game pop the question nigh identical performance in many games, but with Gears Tactics being premeditated some DX12, the integer pipelines introduced in the RTX 20-series get to flex their muscles. Then complete those shader improvements in Ampere number to bear with the RTX 3080.

Again, CPU comes into play more at 1080p.

Metro Hegira

One of the best games of 2019, Metro Exodus is one of the best-looking games more or less, too. The latest version of the 4A Engine provides unbelievably sexy, ultra-detailed visuals, with one of the most arresting serious-meter ray trace implementations discharged yet. We test in DirectX 12 musical mode with ray tracing, Hairworks, and DLSS disabled for our basic benchmarks.

Some other whupping at 4K. The GeForce RTX 3080 Iron is 63 pct faster than the RTX 2080, 23 per centum faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, and 136 percent quicker than the GTX 1080.

The disruption narrows a bit at 1440p, but Nvidia's new card remains over 50 percentage quicker than the RTX 2080 and almost 20 percent faster than the 2080 Ti.

Borderlands 3

Borderlands is back! Gearbox's game defaults to DX12, so we do as well. It gives us a glimpse at the ultra-popular Unreal Engine 4's public presentation in a time-honored gunslinger.

This is even another game where the RTX 3080 flies beyond its predecessor by a ridonkulous 80 percent at 4K. It's also 37 percent faster than the 2080 Ti, and 154 percent quicker than the GTX 1080. The performance lead shrinks at 1440p, simply non by much. And even at 1080p, the RTX 3080 is 58 per centum speedier than the 2080.

To underframe IT another fashio: The 3080 is faster at 4K than the 2080 is at 1440p!

Queer Brigade

Strange Brigade is a synergistic third-person shooter where a team of adventurers blasts through hordes of mythological enemies. It's a technological vitrin, built around the next-gen Vulkan and DirectX 12 technologies and infused with features like HDR support and the ability to toggle anachronistic compute connected and off. It uses Rebellion's custom Azure engine. We test using the Vulkan renderer, which is faster than DX12.

Here, the RTX 3080 remains roughly 80 percent quicker than the RTX 2080, and all over 100 percent faster than EVGA's overclocked GTX 1080 Ti SC2. Like in Borderlands, the domination continues even as you move back inoperative in resolution. While the RTX 2080 scarce tops 200 frames per second at 1080p, the RTX 3080 hits a stratospheric 330 Federal Protective Service.

Total War: Troy

The latest game in the popular Summate War saga, Troy was presented away free for its first 24 hours on the Epic Games Computer storage, moving over 7.5 million copies before it went on proper cut-rate sale. Total War: Troy is built using a modified edition of the Total Warfare: Warhammer 2 locomotive, and this DX11 title looks stunning for a turn off-based scheme game.

Equivalent Metro Hegira (which supports DX12, but was built for DX11) the RTX 3080 is 63 percent faster than the RTX 2080 at 4K hither, and 25 percentage quicker than the RTX 2080 Ti. The biggest leads for Nvidia's Ampere GPU appear ilk they come in games running more modern graphics APIs. It's over twice American Samoa barred as the GTX 1080 non-Ti at 4K, and nearly 50 percent faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 at 1440p.

F1 2020

The latest in a long-staple line of successful racing games,F1 2020 is a muffin to test, supply a wide raiment of both graphical and benchmarking options, making information technology a much more reliable (and fun) pick than theForzaseries. Information technology's built connected the latest version of Codemasters' buttery-tranquil Ego halting locomotive, complete with support for DX12 and Nvidia's DLSS technology. We trial two laps on the Australia course, with clear skies connected and DLSS off.

You know how this goes past now. At 4K, the new card is a nice 69 percent faster than the RTX 2080, 27 percent faster than the 2080 Ti, and a whopping 135 percent faster than the GTX 1080. The beat-down continues at lower resolutions, where the RTX 3080 filaria in at 57 per centum faster than its predecessor, 25 percent faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, and over twice as fast every bit the GTX 1080.

Shadow of the Grave Freeboote

Darkness of the Tomb Raider concludes the reboot trilogy, and it's utterlygorgeous. Square Enix optimized this game for DX12, and recommends DX11 only if you're using older hardware or Windows 7. We test with DX12.Shadow of the Grave Plunderer uses an increased version of the Understructure locomotive engine that also poweredRise of the Tomb Raider and includes optional material-time re tracing and DLSS features.

The GeForce RTX 3080 is so fast-breaking, this game struggles to keep up at 1440p, where SOTR was CPU-bound almost half the time—hence the bunched-up results among the top-end card game at 1440p and 1080p. Nvidia's new GPU shines at 4K still, where it's 70 percent faster than the RTX 2080, 30 pct quicker than the 2080 Ti, and 159 percent quicker than the GTX 1080.

GTA V

This DX11 game ISN't a visual barn-burner like-minded the (somewhat wonky) Red Dead Redemption 2, simply it still fantastic the Steam charts day in and day out, so we deem it more worthy of testing. RDR2 will melt your graphics card, sure, but GTA V remains so popular age after launch that upgraded versions of it will be available along the next-generation consoles. That's staying power.

We tryGrand Theft Auto V with all options turned to Very High, all Advanced Graphics options except extended shadows enabled, and FXAA.GTA Vruns on the RAGE locomotive and has received substantial updates since its initial set up.

Here, the back is entirely CPU-bandaged with whol the graphics cards (exclude the GTX 1080) at both 1080p and 1440p. Moving to 4K reveals differences, though Nvidia's latest monster is straining the game engine's capabilities even at this pixel-packed resolution. The GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition is 47 percent faster than the RTX 2080 (and nearing the upper limits of this game's anatomy rate), 18 percent faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, and 83 percent faster than the GTX 1080.

Rainbow Sixer Siege

Like GTA V, Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Military blockade still dominates the Steam charts geezerhood later on its launch, and information technology'll be getting a optic upgrade for the side by side-gen consoles. The developers have poured a ton of work into the game's AnvilNext engine complete the days, eventually rolling out a Vulkan version of the secret plan that we function to test. By default, the game lowers the render grading to increase frame rates, but we sic it to 100 per centum to benchmark native interlingual rendition performance on graphics cards. Even still, inning rates soar.

There are no surprises in our final game. The RTX 3080 Founders Edition is 70 percent faster than the RTX 2080, 30 percent quicker than the RTX 2080 Ti, and a flat-KO'd stupid 165 pct faster than the GTX 1080 at 4K. The 3080's lead over its predecessor drops to a "mere" 60 percent at 1440p.

GeForce RTX 3080 irradiatio tracing and DLSS benchmarks

Traditional gaming public presentation is only part of Nvidia's value proposition with the GeForce RTX 3080. The companion also packed this GPU with vastly improved RT and tensor nucleus ironware to accelerate light beam tracing and DLSS, respectively, now that those technologies are protrusive to realise more traction. Big-mention games like Cyberpunk 2077, Take in Dogs Legion, and Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 will support ray tracing and DLSS as they roll over the next few months.Fortnite is rolling stunned ray tracing, DLSS, and Nvidia Reflexive on Thursday to roll out the red carpeting for the RTX 3080's plunge.

[ Far reading: Nvidia RTX retrospective: What cardinal years of ray tracing and DLSS got us ]

Ahead of the blitz, we benchmarked this card using compatible games in our suite to see if Nvidia's lofty promises for the RTX 30-series proved true. We didn't include the GTX 1080 and 1080 Atomic number 2 in this section because, healed, they don't include dedicated ray trace hardware. We hope to add more titles to this section in the future, so stay tuned.

First up: Shadow of the Tomb Raider. This was one of the first games to include ray tracing and the first incarnation of DLSS. The game's ray derived shadows aren't as breathtaking A Control's doubled personal effects, but they could definitely affect public presentation on the original RTX 20-serial GPUs, peculiarly at the Immoderate setting we test at. The first-gen DLSS implementation doesn't support 1080p resolution, it's worth noting—information technology bottoms out at 1920×1200. DLSS 2.0 is much more flexible.

At 4K, the performance impact of causative ray tracing and DLSS is a scant 14 percent on the new GeForce RTX 3080 Fe. The menu manages to stay well above 60 fps even with entirely those bells and whistles active. The RTX 2080, by comparison, can't hit a seamless 40 fps with ray tracing and DLSS enabled, due to its hefty 26-per centum performance punishment. Activating RTX impacts the 2080 Ti just 10 percent, in the meantime, which makes us wonder if memory capacity makes a dispute with these features active. The RTX 2080 Ti has 1GB Thomas More capacity than the RTX 3080, albeit of the slower GDDR6 motle.

Metro Exodus was the second game ever to bread and butter ray tracing, but it remains one of the most impressive. Its ray-traced Orbicular Elucidation completely changes the vibration of the game, making it feel overmuch more foreboding, ominous, and post-apocalyptic. It also uses the first incarnation of DLSS, which looks a good deal break now than information technology did when the game forward launched.

Activating beam tracing and DLSS makes the RTX 3080 Fe ravel about 10 percent slower at 4K. That's not bad at every last to enable this classify of eye candy, and the average frame rate girdle higher up the hallowed 60-fps mark.

Once more, its RTX 2080 predecessor fails to crack a 40-fps mean, merely its frame rate only suffers by about 13 percent with RTX on. Information technology's just that much slower in general execution.

The GeForce RTX 2080 Si splits the difference with an 11-percent carrying out impact, but it can't crack 60 fps even with ray trace forth at 4K. The border rate impacts become much more articulate at lower resolutions, where Nvidia says the CPU starts becoming a bigger factor in ray trace carrying out. Inactive, Metro manages to hit a same nice 88-fps average at 1440p.

Much for not being able to play beam traced games at higher resolutions.

Finally, spell the original version of DLSS could sometimes make games look a morsel blurrier than native resolution, the rattling DLSS 2.0 fixed that issue. IT's indeed good that some games are starting to include it evening without ray tracing, including Death Stranding and the game we're about to tryout, F1 2020. That's because DLSS 2.0 can provide a boost in frame rates with little to no optical changes, depending happening whether you use Quality or Performance mode. DLSS 2.0 is much easier to implement than the first version, and it's such a game-changer that we hope to see more titles support it shortly. Anywho, onto the benchmarks:

Activating DLSS 2.0 in F1 2020 gives the RTX 3080 an 18-percent fles range boost at 4K, pushing its average more or less 150 fps, while the RTX 2080 rides a 22-percent boost to all but 100 fps. The GeForce RTX 2080 Atomic number 2, meanwhile, sees a rapid 25-percent increase with DLSS activated. The RTX 3080 sees a great deal smaller boosts at lower resolutions, merely that's clearly because it's nearing the put rank limit of either the game engine OR the Central processor.

Nvidia touted immensely improved RT and tensor cores in the RTX 30-serial publication. But as you can get wind, the older RTX 20-series cards manage to float in the same range of performance impingement, aside from the RTX 2080's major blow in Shadow of the Grave Raider. Nvidia representatives told us that the amped-up RT and tensor cores can stretch their legs many in games with more arduous ray tracing effects.

The Sunday-go-to-meeting results should be seen in fully route-derived games likeMinecraft RTX andPalpitate II RTX, Nvidia said. As triple-A games start integrating multiple ray trace effects, the performance should uprise compared to these early RTX titles with defend for singular effects. Nvidia citedControl as a mental test-worthy illustration, merely we weren't able to benchmark that stake in time for this survey.Cyberpunk 2077 and Fortnite's RTX update will also be utterly loaded with various light beam trace technologies. We hope to benchmark RTX performance more soon.

Regardless, when it's bolstered by DLSS, the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition proves compelling enough to play with superb frame rates steady with the penalty shock of shaft trace. That's a major change from the RTX 20-series, where even the then-evil RTX 2080 Cordyline terminalis often needed to put down to 1440p or flat 1080p to maintain 60 fps in ray traced games. If you upgrade to the RTX 3080, you needn't live scared to turn around on ray tracing anymore.

Mightiness attract, thermals, and noise

We trial powerfulness draw by looping theF1 2020 benchmark at 4K for about 20 minutes aft we've benchmarked everything else. We notice the highest reading on our Watts Up Pro cadence, which measures the power consumption of our entire test system. The initial part of the belt along, where all competitory cars are onscreen simultaneously, tends to equal the just about hard-to-please luck.

This isn't a worst-case test. We removed the Core i7-8700K's overclock and specifically chose a GPU-bound game squirting at a GPU-bound resolution to gauge carrying into action when the graphics card is sweating hard. If you'Ra playing a game that also hammers the CPU, you could see high boilers suit system power draws. Consider yourself warned.

Yep, feeding the A beast takes quite a morsel of power. Remember when we said Nvidia put the bicycle to the metal with these GPUs? Information technology shows here, where the RTX 3080 draws 50W more than the previous 2080 Ti flagship, and over 100W much than its mastermind 2080 predecessor, and an eye-opening 200W more than the GTX 1080. Disbursal uncomfortable levels of power to reach uncomfortable levels of (gambling) power is well worth it by our estimation, merely if you'Ra upgrading from a prior GeForce add-in, you may involve to indue in a new power supply—especially if you'atomic number 75 jumping up from the GTX 10-series.

We run thermals by leaving GPU-Z open during theF1 2020 power draw play test, noting the highest maximum temperature at the end. We observed the RTX 3080's temperatures in EVGA's Precision X1 tool instead, however.

Nvidia's radical new "flow-through" cooler for the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition works just fine, and it's significantly quieter than the dual-axial fans on the RTX 20-series Founders Edition cards—especially the RTX 2080 Ti. In practice, it's a lot fitter than any reference or Founders Version cooler we've seen ahead. Keeping the GPU at 79 degrees Celsius isn't noticeably better or worsened than previous FE models in raw thermal performance, and this actually runs slimly hotter than the RTX 2080 FE. The outermost metal shroud besides gets screaming hot to the touch.

But the GeForce RTX 3080 is a dole out more index-hungry and higher-execution than former-gen GPUs, and I'm not surprised it took an alien cooling design to keep the RTX 3080 Founders Version tame while churning out draw up rates like these. Nvidia couldn't just bolt a bunch of heavy metal and perpetual axial fans on these without severely stepping on the toes of partners like EVGA and Asus, after each.

I mention all this because Nvidia made lofty claims about the flow-through tank's efficiency. The company's GeForce RTX 30-series announcement post said information technology offers "nearly 2x the cooling system performance of early propagation solutions," patc CEO Jensen Huang claimed that this "keeps the GPU 20 degrees cooler than the Turing aim" during the board's livestream reveal. As you john picture below, those lofty numbers aren't represented in the net product, the RTX 3080 Founders Edition that you can actually buy.

nvidia geforce rtx 30 series cooler claims — How Nvidia achieved its lofty cooling comparisons for the RTX 30-series new design.

The details, equally always, are more nuanced. In a demonstration to reporters, GeForce product manager Justin Walker shared the above slide, which revealed that the claims were made past comparing the RTX 3090 versus the monster Titan RTX at a set 350W. This really is a more more efficient ice chest than previous-generation solutions, and it was essential for bringing Ampere to list. Only this serves every bit a reminder that you shouldn't take marketing numbers at face value.

I wealthy person nary complaints about Nvidia's flow-through design, though I haven't tested whether the hot melodic line pulled into the top off of your system can affect CPU Beaver State memory performance. I also love how quiet it is compared to previous models. I'm really inquiring to see what custom board makers can do with their more traditional cooling designs.

Should you buy the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition?

If you'Ra interested in spending generous to get exceptional 4K or extremist-fast 1440p performance on a 144Hz+ monitor, and so yes, you should buy the RTX 3080 Founder Edition. Full stop.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that Ampere is GeForce's sterling generational leap ever, and he wasn't kidding. Remember being blown departed when the GTX 1080 was 60 to 70 percent faster than the GTX 980, even with its slimly higher price? The GeForce RTX 3080 spits out frames busy 80 percent faster in single games, and 60 percent higher in the others. It's roughly 30 percent faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Titanium, the $1,200 previous-gen flagship, and a ridonkulous 100 to 160 per centum faster than the aged GeForce GTX 1080. All at the exact cookie-cutter $700 price tag as the RTX 2080.

The promises were true. This thing is an absolute monster. Sometimes it's faster at4K than the RTX 2080 is at1440p. Ludicrous.

There are no games where the GeForce RTX 3080 fails to crystallise a 60-frames-per-second average at 4K resolution with all feasible visuals effects turned on. The exception is the ridiculously straining Total War: Troy, which averages 56 fps (and feels just fine at even take down speeds as a strategy game). Most games go importantly faster than that. Strange than Troy, over again, no games fall below 100 fps at 1440p resolution with everything maxed out. Again, Total War again waterfall just diffident, at 98 fps, and over again, to the highest degree games go significantly faster than that. If you're fine bumping graphics down to high, games fell on even faster in our off-the-cuff tests. No graphics visiting card has come close to this level of performance before.

The "worst" (but silent massive) results come in CPU-bound operating room older DX11 titles. The Amp architecture screams when unleashed along properly optimized games that were built for DirectX 12 Oregon Vulkan. More and more of those are existence published these days, and all irradiate-traced games require DX12. The impact of shaft of light tracing and DLSS doesn't appear to cost lessened despite the adjacent-gen RT and tensor cores, but the RTX 3080 is indeed latched, it doesn't count. You can bring up ray traced games at 1440p, and true 4K now.

Just make trustworthy you can put totally this power to good use. If you get into't have a 4K monitor or a 144Hz 1440p monitor, you're probably wasting your money here. Nvidia says the $500 GeForce RTX 3070 will be even as fast-paced as the last-gen 2080 Ti for inferior than half the price when it launches in October. That should be a fine ultra-fast 1440p and 4K option excessively, though you'll likely need to dial down both graphics settings in strenuous games. You don't with the RTX 3080.

Mention, too, that most games hit a CPU chokepoint playing at 1080p with this card. Unless you're an esports pro who plans on turning down graphics settings (or playing around with Nvidia Reflex) to hit the highest possible form rates on a 360Hz supervise, your money is better fagged elsewhere if you have a 1080p screen and don't project along upgrading it soon.

The design, patc gorgeous, is a mixed bag when you dive into the details. The radical refreshing cooler isn't drastically major than what came before, temperature-wise, just it works well and is significantly quieter than before. The unique flow-through temperature reduction may not work well in small form factor PCs, though. The new 12-pin power connector is fine, but its too-short adapter for 2x 8-pin connectors looks ugly and blocks the card's illuminated white logo, though power supply makers will sell bespoke cables to cook the issue. Information technology's also somewhat tricky (just non out of the question) to pry bar aside for doctor or water cooling, as you can see in this Gamers Nexus RTX 3080 snap-down video.

Virtually every kick I rear end raise is carping. The ugly performance increase wouldn't be quite as glorious if the tedious RTX 20-serial hadn't been so unsatisfactory. You Crataegus laevigata need to kick upstairs your power supply to feed this beast, but information technology's worthwhile.

I also wonder whether the 10GB of aboard VRAM will be enough capacity for 4K gaming in a few years. The cutting-edge GDDR6X chips inside the RTX 3080 moves data twice as fast Eastern Samoa standard GDDR6, even so, and showed no mark of slowing John L. H. Down in our tests.

None of these are major issues for nearly people.

You could hold off on a day-one buy up to see what custom versions of the GeForce RTX 3080 pop the question, But you too should feel free to spam F5 on your keyboard at Amazon operating theatre Newegg when the RTX 3080 hits online shelves September 17, specially considering rumors that stock of these cards could be in unretentive supply during this crazy year.

Maybe you also want to watch what AMD has up its sleeves with the "Big Navi" Radeon RX 6000 reveal on October 28. Sure, AMD's RDNA 2 architecture looks auspicious. Only don't forget that Radeon has nonetheless to topple the GTX 1080 Ti nearly 3.5 long years by and by. I trust Big Navi sparks competition in the enthusiast end of the commercialize yet again, but it looks like a tall order for AMD.

Nvidia brought it this generation. Ampere is indeed Nvidia's greatest people leap in recent memory. The GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition isn't just the quickest art lineup ever released (until next week, when the even more ugly $1,500 RTX 3090 lands), it besides makes its predecessor feel instantly obsolete—and straight off makes ray tracing feel much much viable.

Like we said at the start: Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 artwork card symbolizes why we tell populate to wait for the second generation when bleeding-edge technology appears.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/393472/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-founders-edition-review.html

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