Keeping their tradition alive of launching a new graphics architecture every two years, this year, NVIDIA introduced its Ampere GPU. The Ampere GPU is built upon the foundation set by Turing. Termed as its biggest generational leap, the NVIDIA Ampere GPUs excel compared to previous generations at everything.

The Ampere lineup offers faster shader performance, faster ray tracing performance, and faster AI performance. Built on a brand new process node and featuring an architecture designed from the ground up, Ampere is a killer product with lots of numbers to talk about. The fundamental of Ampere was to take everything NVIDIA learned with its Turing architecture and not only refine it but to use its DNA to form a product in a completely new performance category.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Rumored To Have Better Supply Than RTX 3060 Ti & RTX 3060 Graphics Cards

Today, we will be taking a look at the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB graphics card, a silent release from NVIDIA that wasn’t announced till its official release on 11th January.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Gaming Graphics Cards – The Biggest GPU Performance Leap in Recent History

Turing wasn’t just any graphics core, it was the graphics core that was to become the foundation of future GPUs. The future is realized now with next-generation consoles going deep in talks about ray tracing and AI-assisted super-sampling techniques. NVIDIA had a head start with Turing and its Ampere generation will only do things infinitely times better.

The Ampere GPU does many traditional things that we would expect from a GPU, but at the same time, also breaks the barrier when it comes to untraditional GPU operations. Just to sum up some features:

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• New Streaming Multiprocessor (SM)
• New Turing Tensor Cores
• New Real-Time Ray Tracing Acceleration
• New Shading Enhancements
• New Deep Learning Features For Graphics & Inference
• New GDDR6X High-Performance Memory Subsystem
• New 2nd Generation NVLINK Interconnect
• New HDMI 2.1 Display Engine & Next-Gen NVENC/NVDEC

The technologies mentioned above are some of the main building blocks of the Ampere GPU, but there’s more within the graphics core itself which we will talk about in detail so let’s get started.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Pricing Per Segment

NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 series is made up of a diverse portfolio of graphics cards. The lineup starts at the GeForce RTX 3060 with an MSRP of $329 US and goes all the way up to higher-end configurations starting at $499 US for the GeForce RTX 3070, $599 US for the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, $699 US for the GeForce RTX 3080, $1199 US for the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and $1499 US for the GeForce RTX 3090. NVIDIA themselves call the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti the flagship graphics card and not the GeForce RTX 3090.

The RTX 3080 & RTX 3070 are both priced well and in line with their predecessors but the GeForce RTX 3090 goes all out with a price of $1499 US. Even the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has seen a price hike compared to the MSRP of the RTX 2080 Ti ($999 US vs $1199 US). NVIDIA calls the GeForce RTX 3090 the “BFGPU” and as per the terminology, it seems like this is a new marketing name for the Titan graphics card. It is likely that we could see a Titan-based card under the Quadro branding with faster specs out of the box but the GeForce RTX 3090 is purely a gaming graphics card first with all the horsepower for intense professional and workstation workloads.

With that said, the GeForce RTX 3080 replaces the RTX 2080 SUPER at the same price point and the GeForce RTX 3070 replaces the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER at the same price point. Given this trend, we might see the more mainstream variants cost just as much as their RTX 20 SUPER series cards but with a higher performance out of the box.

NVIDIA GeForce GPU Segment/Tier Prices

Graphics Segment	2014-2016	2016-2017	2017-2018	2018-2019	2019-2020	2020-2021
Titan Tier	Titan X (Maxwell)	Titan X (Pascal)	Titan Xp (Pascal)	Titan V (Volta)	Titan RTX (Turing)	GeForce RTX 3090
Price	$999 US	$1199 US	$1199 US	$2999 US	$2499 US	$1499 US
Ultra Enthusiast Tier	GeForce GTX 980 Ti	GeForce GTX 980 Ti	GeForce GTX 1080 Ti	GeForce RTX 2080 Ti	GeForce RTX 2080 Ti	GeForce RTX 3080 Ti
Price	$649 US	$649 US	$699 US	$999 US	$999 US	$1199 US
Enthusiast Tier	GeForce GTX 980	GeForce GTX 1080	GeForce GTX 1080	GeForce RTX 2080	GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER	GeForce RTX 3080
Price	$549 US	$549 US	$549 US	$699 US	$699 US	$699 US
High-End Tier	GeForce GTX 970	GeForce GTX 1070	GeForce GTX 1070	GeForce RTX 2070	GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER	GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GeForce RTX 3070
Price	$329 US	$379 US	$379 US	$499 US	$499 US	$599 $499
Mainstream Tier	GeForce GTX 960	GeForce GTX 1060	GeForce GTX 1060	GeForce GTX 1060	GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER GeForce RTX 2060 GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GeForce GTX 1660	GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB
Price	$199 US	$249 US	$249 US	$249 US	$399 US $349 US $279 US $229 US $219 US	$399 US $329 US
Entry Tier	GTX 750 Ti GTX 750	GTX 950	GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050	GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050	GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650	TBA
Price	$149 US $119 US	$149 US	$139 US $109 US	$139 US $109 US	$159 US $149 US	TBA

In addition to the specs/price update, NVIDIA’s RTX technologies are being widely adopted by major game engines and APIs such as Microsoft’s DirectX (DXR), Vulkan, Unreal Engine, Unity, and Frostbite. While there were only three RTX titles around the launch of the RTX 20 series cards, NVIDIA now has at least 28 titles that utilize their RTX feature set to offer real-time ray tracing with more coming soon.

In addition to that, with the upcoming consoles confirmed to feature ray tracing, developers can also make use of the RTX technology to fine-tune future games for the GeForce RTX hardware. Currently, NVIDIA has 13 game engines that are leveraging their RTX technologies for use in their upcoming and existing games while both Vulkan and DirectX 12 Ultimate APIs are part of the RTX ecosystem on the PC platform.

So for this review, I will be taking a look at MSI’s latest GeForce RTX 30 SUPRIM X series graphics card which includes the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB SUPRIM X.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB Graphics Card

NVIDIA designed the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB graphics card, not just for any gamer but all gamers who want to have the best 4K graphics performance at hand to power the next-generation of AAA gaming titles with superb visuals and insane fluidity. It’s not just the FPS that matters these days, it’s visuals, and a smoother frame rate too and this is exactly what the GeForce RTX 30 series is made to excel at. There’s a lot to talk about regarding NVIDIA’s flagship Ampere gaming graphics cards so let’s start off with the specifications.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB Graphics Card Specifications

For the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB, NVIDIA has enabled a total of 70 SM units which results in a total of 8960 CUDA cores, a 3% increase over the standard RTX 3080. In addition to the CUDA cores, NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3080 also comes packed with next-generation RT (Ray-Tracing) cores, Tensor cores, and brand new SM or streaming multi-processor units. The card is suggested to have a TDP of 350W and will operate at a base clock of 1260 MHz and a boost clock of 1710 MHz.

In terms of memory, the updated GeForce RTX 3080 comes packed with 12 GB of memory and that too is the next-generation GDDR6X design. With Micron’s latest and greatest graphics memory dies, the RTX 3080 can deliver GDDR6X memory speeds of 19.0 Gbps. That along with a bus interface of 384-bit will deliver a cumulative bandwidth of 912 GB / s or a 20% increase over the 10 GB variant. The TGP for the card is set to be slightly higher than the RTX 3080 at 350 Watts. That’s definitely needed to feed the extra cores so NVIDIA might have to optimize the clocks a bit here.

The reception of this card mostly depends on its pricing. While the MSRP of $ 699 US was never true for the GeForce RTX 3080, the same can be expected for the 12 GB variant. It will slide between the RTX 3080 10 GB and RTX 3080 Ti 12 GB graphics card so expect around $ 899- $ 999 US as an MSRP & realistic pricing should be expected over $ 1500 US. As for performance, the card may end up being really close to the RTX 3080 Ti at a lower price point.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series ‘Ampere’ Graphics Card Specifications:

Graphics Card Name	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090
GPU Name	Ampere GA107	Ampere GA107	Ampere GA106-300	Ampere GA104-200	Ampere GA104-300	Ampere GA104-400	Ampere GA102-200	Ampere GA102-225	Ampere GA102-300
Process Node	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm
Die Size	TBA	TBA	TBA	395.2mm2	395.2mm2	395.2mm2	628.4mm2	628.4mm2	628.4mm2
Transistors	TBA	TBA	TBA	17.4 Billion	17.4 Billion	17.4 Billion	28 Billion	28 Billion	28 Billion
CUDA Cores	2048?	2560?	3584	4864	5888	6144	8704	10240	10496
TMUs / ROPs	64 / 40	80 / 48	112 / 64	152 / 80	184 / 96	192/ 96	272 / 96	320 / 112	328 / 112
Tensor / RT Cores	64 / 16	80 / 20	112 / 28	152 / 38	184 / 46	192/ 48	272 / 68	320 / 80	328 / 82
Base Clock	TBA	TBA	1320 MHz	1410 MHz	1500 MHz	1575 MHz	1440 MHz	1365 MHz	1400 MHz
Boost Clock	TBA	TBA	1780 MHz	1665 MHz	1730 MHz	1770 MHz	1710 MHz	1665 MHz	1700 MHz
FP32 Compute	TBA	TBA	12.7 TFLOPs	16.2 TFLOPs	20 TFLOPs	22 TFLOPs	30 TFLOPs	34 TFLOPs	36 TFLOPs
RT TFLOPs	TBA	TBA	25.4 TFLOPs	32.4 TFLOPs	40 TFLOPs	42 TFLOPs	58 TFLOPs	67 TFLOPs	69 TFLOPs
Tensor-TOPs	TBA	TBA	101 TOPs	129.6 TOPs	163 TOPs	174 TOPs	238 TOPs	273 TOPs	285 TOPs
Memory Capacity	4 GB GDDR6?	4 GB GDDR6?	12 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6X	10 GB GDDR6X	12 GB GDDR6X	24 GB GDDR6X
Memory Bus	128-bit	128-bit	192-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	320-bit	384-bit	384-bit
Memory Speed	TBA	TBA	15 Gbps	14 Gbps	14 Gbps	19 Gbps	19 Gbps	19 Gbps	19.5 Gbps
Bandwidth	TBA	TBA	360 Gbps	448 Gbps	448 Gbps	608 Gbps	760 Gbps	912 Gbps	936 Gbps
TGP	~75W	~100W	170W	200W	220W	290W	320W	350W	350W
Price (MSRP / FE)	$149?	$199?	$329	$399 US	$499 US	$599 US	$699 US	$1199	$1499 US
Launch (Availability)	2021?	2021?	February 2021	December 2020	29th October 2020	10th June 2021	17th September 2020	3rd June 2021	24th September 2020

In case you want to read our full NVIDIA Ampere GPU architecture deep dive and GeForce RTX 30 Founders Edition review, head over to this link.