The first Nvidia Ampere architecture cards, the RTX 3070, RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, look like some seriously impressive bits of kit.
Nvidia has been doing a thing on Twitter where it was been counting down (counting up?) the history of Nvidia Geforce graphics cards, right from the Geforce 256 in 1999 through to the RTX 2080 Ti in 2019.
It’s been a bit odd, to be honest. There have been some fairly dubious “highlights” on the list. But it’s all been building to something. Something big. And today that something big arrived: the first of the Ampere graphics cards, the Nvidia Geforce RTX 3080.
In an event where we saw real-time ray tracing in Fortnite, Cyberpunk 2077, and the inside of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s kitchen – no, really; why does he have so many spatulas? – we found out all of the important details of the new RTX 3080 card. Here are the key specs.
RTX 3080 specs
- CUDA cores: 8704
- Base clock: 1.44 GHz
- Boost clock: 1.71 GHz
- Memory: 10 GB GDDR6X
- Memory bandwidth: 320-bit
- Slot size: Double slot
- Maximum GPU temperate: 93 ºC
- Graphics card power: 320 W
- Minimum PSU: 750 W
- Power connector: 2x PCIe 8-pin
- Founders edition MSRP: £649.00
To be clear, that’s not a typo. That is six-hundred and forty-nine pounds.
By way of comparison, the founders edition of this card’s predecessor, the RTX 2080 (2944 CUDA cores), cost £749. The RTX 3080 has three times the core count of the RTX 2080, while its launch price is £100 less.
What’s even more astonishing is that the RTX 3080 actually has twice as many cores as the previous generation’s flagship, the RTX 2080 Ti (4352 CUDA cores), and that card’s founders edition cost £1099. The RTX 3080 is twice as powerful as the RTX 2080 Ti, and a little over half the price.
But wait, there’s more! Nvidia has also announced a new card, slightly down the range: the RTX 3070.
RTX 3070 specs
- CUDA cores: 5888
- Base clock: 1.5 GHz
- Boost clock: 1.73 GHz
- Memory: 8 GB GDDR6
- Memory bandwidth: 256-bit
- Slot size: Double slot
- Maximum GPU temperate: 93 ºC
- Graphics card power: 220 W
- Minimum PSU: 650 W
- Power connector: 1x PCIe 8-pin
- Founders edition MSRP: £469.00
And there’s even more! There’s also a new flagship at the top of the tree: the RTX 3090.
RTX 3090 specs
- CUDA cores: 10496
- Base clock: 1.4 GHz
- Boost clock: 1.7 GHz
- Memory: 24 GB GDDR6X
- Memory bandwidth: 384-bit
- Slot size: Triple slot
- Maximum GPU temperate: 93 ºC
- Graphics card power: 350 W
- Minimum PSU: 750 W
- Power connector: 2x PCIe 8-pin
- Founders edition MSRP: £1399.00
That is a hell of a card. It’s a massive price tag, sure, but it’s three times the core count of the RTX 2080 Ti, for only a few hundred quid more.
Moore’s Law still counts for something, at least.
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