Is it the right time to upgrade your gaming build to the new RTX 30 series, or you should hold on and wait. We will provide a brief and comprehensive look at the new RTX series in this article.
Nvidia announced its new highly anticipated RTX 30 series on 1st September of this year. This series is based on new and improved Ampere silicon architecture that shaken the benchmark industry. People are going crazy with the first hands on to the RTX benchmarks that landed on Youtube channels. It has shown some significant improvements as compared to the previous RTX 20 series. The gaming industry gave an overwhelming response to the new improvements.
Some of the most significant claims about this anticipated series are 4k and 8k support with smooth 60 frames per second. Benchmarks speak of its monstrous and massive gaming performance. Nvidia is claiming that this performance boost became possible due to advanced ray tracing technology. It provides more lighting in the gameplay.
Many gamers are still thinking that is it worth to upgrade and buy an RTX 3080. If we look at RTX 20 series, especially RTX 2060, and Best RTX 2070 Super they are still perfect for playing games like CS:GO, LoL, and Destiny. So is it the right time to upgrade or worth waiting for better options?
AMD is not far behind this benchmarks race and impacting the market with BIG NAVI. Can it come at par with its competitor or not? There are many unanswered questions that we will address in this article by looking at the recent upgrades. We will also analyze and compare upgrades, memory speed, and bandwidth. This article will help the people to address their concerns regarding waiting and buying RTX-30 GPUs or not.
RTX 3080 vs RTX 2080
We will be discussing GPU specifications and the performance of last year’s flagship Nvidia RTX 2080 TI and RTX 3080. Let us see the specification below:
| Nvidia RTX 3080 | Nvidia RTX 2080 TI | |
| CUDA Cores | 8,704 | 4,352 |
| Boost Clock (MHz) | 1,710 | 1,545 |
| Standard Memory Config | 10GB GDDR6X | 11GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Interface Width | 320-bit | 352-bit |
| Memory Speed | 19 Gbps | 14Gbps |
| Memory Bandwidth | 760.0 GB/s | 616 GB/s |
| Maximum Resolution | 7860 x 4320 | 7680 x 4320 |
| Inputs | HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a | DisplayPort, HDMI, USB Type-C |
| Start Price | $699 | $1,000 |
Architecture & Power Limits
One of the primary performance improvements from 20 series to RTX 30 series is its architecture difference. GPUs of the last year got huge performance improvements due to turning architecture. This architecture was considered to be a big jump for specifications. It was claimed to be a massive jump from previous generations. But in RTX 30-series turning architecture is replaced with the improved Ampere architecture. This new improvement gives a considerable boost in performance over previous RTX generations.
Ampere architecture offered the first 7nm GPU that is an inflection point for Nvidia. This technology shrinks the space occupied by the transistors resulting in a smaller area for transistors. It is the third generation of deep learning hardware and the second generation of consumer ray tracing. The small process enabled Nvidia to improve the hardware and technologies over the RTX-20 series.
The ampere architecture seems to be a combined blend of Pascal’s 2016 and 2018 turning GPUs. It offers up to 2nd generation RT cores with 2x throughout, 3rd generation tensor cores with 2x throughput, and new SM with 2x FP32 throughput.
Consumers’ models have a different set of GPUs, such as GA102, GA104, etc. The GA102 provides a single digit on lithography, which is the first of its kind. It is using Samsung’s 8nm process. While TSMC’s N7 node is one of the better options with overall better performance. But the addition of it to the RTX-30 series with seriously increase its price.
The GA102 uses 17% smaller space as compared to RTX 2080 TI. Even it got 28.3 billion transistors in a 628.4 nm square die. That is a more than 52% increase over the TU102 chip of RTX 20180 TI.
Architecture plays a vital role in the performance boost, but it is not only a single factor affecting it. Its performance comes at the expense of more power consumption. The previous RTX 2080 TI was 225W, while the new RTX 3080 added 100W to it and is said to be a 70% performance gain and a 50% increase in power consumption from the previous generation.
Price And Performance
There is a huge performance boost in GPUs from RTX 20 to RTX30-series. So it is no surprise when we see RTX30 beating RTX2080 TI clearly with a considerable margin. It is the second generation of technology, and usually, the second generation of any technology comes with more improvements and increased pricing. The same goes with the RTX 30 regarding RAW gaming performance.
RTX 3080 packs with the GPU, which is the first to provide stable 4k gaming with a smooth frame per second. RTX 2080 Ti had this feature, but it was not as good and did not provide stable fps. It was equipped with more memory and a more extensive interface for the memory width. It falls behind RTX 30- series due to GDDR6 memory because RTX 3080 is offering GDDR6X VRAM. These latest ones have better memory management, speed, and bandwidth. Furthermore, it gives double the CUDA core and faster clock speeds. Minimalistic ampere architecture, more power consumption, better memory management, and faster clock speed make it an impressive GPU.
RTX 3080 showed an increase of 20% in performance compared to the 2080Ti in Horizon Zero Dawn, Red Dead Redemption 2, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, League of Legends, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. While when it is compared against the 2080 Super, it increased 50-60% performance within the same price range.
So, comparing the specifications and performance of previous generations and the new ampere-based generation, we can say that it is worth upgrading to the RTX 30 series. It packs 4K performance with stable 60 fps and killer graphics.
RTX 30-Series vs Big NAVI – Which to Choose?
Questions raised by many forums and Reddit users about comparing Big NAVI against the RTX 30 series. To answer those questions, a Reddit user found the listing in the firmware update of the new ROCm. This initial information showed that those two GPUs are based on RDNA2 architecture, AMD’s new technology.
Lately, a discussion started among the gaming platforms about the impact of this technology on the performance of BIG NAVI. Still, there is so much information is required to estimate the exact potential of those GPUs. Either they are worth to be competent enough to rival against RTX 30-series.
But initial stats show that BIG NAVI carried 80CUs and a 256-bit memory bus, further confirming that AMD made tremendous progress this year in their GPU department to get a fair share in the market. However, it is still early to say how much impact it will do against the 30 series. Form the specifications looks clear that it will come head to head with RTX 30 series.
Final Thoug hts
In this article, we provided an in-depth look at the RTX 30- series. We covered its performance, improvement from previous models, pricing, and whether to upgrade or not topics. Hopefully, this article let you decide whether you want RTX 30 GPU.
We consider it a significant improvement and the best value for your money. It gives 4K gaming with smooth fps, better performance, and more features than previous generations.
If you still have any queries related to RTX 30 series, especially 3080, please ask in the comment section.
