2/Sept/2020: nVidia dropped the bombshell on the long anticipated RTX 3000 series of GPUs. Specs have all but confirmed. With 3 Very high end cards, one of the 3 in particular looked a very compelling choice.
By heavily increasing the amount of CUDA cores, and shrunk the process down to just 7nm, the result is Ampere.
FEATURES:
To put it plain, the RTX 3000 series is a beast just by looking at CUDA Counts alone. However the RTX 3000 also implements some following knick-knacks.
RTX new Ampere based Ray-Tracing cores are 70% more powerful than those of Turing, making Ray-Tracing applications and games that use Ray Tracing run much more optimally without too big a performance loss ratio. And memory internal architecture has also been altered. By going with GDDR6 as memory standards, 6X as the top end, nVidia has thoroughly increased the memory bandwidth available, especially now the aim is to hit playable frame rates on 8K resolutions. Moreover, the Tensor Cores are 4 times as potent on Ampere than it is on Turing. Of course, the RTX 3000 natively supports PCI-E Gen 4, but going from Gen 3 to Gen 4 isn't big of a deal yet.
RTX 3090 - RELEASED ON SEPTEMBER 24 2020
CUDA CORES - 10496
384-bit 24GB GDDR6X at 19.5 GHz
Core Clock: 1400 - 1700MHz
Predecessor: RTX Titan
The top of the line flagship. The CUDA core count is more than double that believe it or not! 10496 vs 4532 of the RTX 2080 Ti and the 4608 of the Titan. The reason why it cost so high at 1499 USD is that this card is meant as a replacement of the RTX Titan series, rather than the 2080 Ti.
RTX 3080 - RELEASED on SEPTEMBER 17 2020
CUDA CORES - 8704
320-bit 10GB GDDR6X at 19 GHz
Core Clock: 1440 to 1710 MHz
Predecessor: RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080 Super
Another worthy card that is way cheaper than the 3090 at 699. Which for its beefy specs, the price is not bad, not bad at all. This card is meant to replace the top of the line 2080s. But that's not the main card that is gonna throw the competition off the market.
RTX 3070 - RELEASED MID OCTOBER 2020
CUDA CORES - 5888
256-Bit 8GB GDDR6 at 16GHz
Core Clock 1500 to 1730
TDP: 220W
Predecessor: RTX 2070
This is the card that everyone is watching. Because of the price at 499 and providing more Teraflops than even the RTX 2080 Ti / Titan, that made users who bought the old 2080s, feel a bit ripped-off. Because all for 499, this can even have the potential to perform even better than the old flagships. But if you think about it with regards to the GTX 1070, it was to be as powerful the 980 Ti. And the RTX 2070 and Super, to trade blows or if not be better than the 1080 Ti in many ways than none. So not really that surprising. The only obvious difference between the 2080 Ti or Super that the 3070 doesn't have is using GDDR6X memory and with the latter using a way lower bus-width. This may be huge in some ways but we'd wait till official reviews come out to be sure. And shouldn't really impact performance if your intended resolution is 1440p. That said this card in particular will be a good option especially when upgrading from the Pascal based GTX 10 series like what I have now.
GIGAFLOPS PERFORMANCE
Single Precision:
RTX 3090 29389 (35686)
RTX 3080 25068 (29768)
RTX 3070 17664 (20372)
RTX Titan (T) 12442 (16312)
2080 Ti 11750 (13448)
2080 Super 10138 (11151)
1080 Ti 10609 (11340)
1080 8228 (8873)
1070 5783 (6463)
Bear in mind this is just theoretical Gigaflops Performance. It remains to be seen how good each of them will perform in real life come 2021. I have both a 1070 and a 1080, so it'll be good to check them out how they fare in 2021. The card I might get is the 3070. So we'll see, after I get married.
