NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 review: Say hello to 4K ray traced gaming

Note: This review was first published on 16 Sept 2020.

A Generational Leap in design and performance

NVIDIA’s newest GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition graphic card has arrived, paving the way for the rest of the RTX 30 Series cards to follow up – the more budget-friendly RTX 3070 and the incredibly monstrous RTX 3090 that NVIDIA is aptly nicknaming it the BFGPU – in the coming weeks, and we can finally talk about the card’s performance!

But let’s leave that aside for a moment and let me talk about the card itself. We’ve already covered the hardware design of the RTX 3080 previously (TL;DR it’s a really gorgeous looking Founders Edition card as you can see from the photos) including the Ampere architecture it's based upon and the new design approach to cooling. We have even discussed the new RTX IO technology that will speed up future gaming loading and reduce game install sizes.

So, without further ado let’s talk about what do you get on this new graphics card and jump into performance figures right after this specs comparison table-

More about the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition

The RTX 20 Series, while great was not quite the big hitter over the previous GTX 10 Series that many gamers envisaged it to be. With the RTX 30 Series, and in particular the RTX 3080, NVIDIA claims the new cards represent a generational leap in performance. More so, when you consider that not only is the RTX 3080 Founders Edition more than twice as powerful on paper than the RTX 2080 Founders Edition, but going for the same launch price at US$699.

NVIDIA has somewhat given an update to the card's outputs as well. It now features a HDMI 2.1 connector, which allows support for 4K resolution at 120Hz refresh rate. and three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs. All four connectors can drive displays up to an 8K resolution at 60Hz. What’s disappeared in the RTX 3080 and other Founders Edition and partners cards, however, is the USB-C port that supports VirtualLink to power VR headsets. The interface never really took off, and now it looks like it never will with NVIDIA all but killed it off.

Another feature lacking is an NVLink interconnect, last seen on the RTX 20 Series cards. That means for the first time in a long while, a flagship GeForce card will not support SLI. I’m not sure if most gamers will miss this feature, as the performance gains even with two RTX 2080 Ti cards, were marginal at best with many modern games. But that said, the RTX 3090 Founders Edition will still retain the NVLink interconnect for SLI capability, perhaps for extreme server or complex AI applications – and you’ll need to dish out more than US$3,000 and sacrifice six bays in your casing.

Our Test Rig

Now for the fun part – performance! We have bumped up our graphics card test rig and comes with the following specifications:

• 10^th Gen Intel Core i9-10900K (3.7GHz base clock, 20MB Intel Smart L3 cache)
• ASUS ROG Maximus XII Formula (Intel Z490)
• WD Black SN750 2TB SSD
• Windows 10 Home 64-bit
• Acer Predator X27

Naturally, we’ll be stacking the RTX 3080 Founders Edition against the class of “80” cards from the RTX 20 Series. This includes the full suite of the RTX 2080 Founders Edition cards, including the original 2080, 2080 Super and the current reigning king of the hill RTX 2080 Ti. For good measure, I’ve also included an older GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition to see how far a leap the RTX 3080’s performance compares.

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

All graphics cards were installed with the yet-to-be-released ForceWare 456.16 driver.

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[caption=Test cards compared]

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Benchmarks

We have also updated our benchmarks used, including the removal of some older titles for more recent ones and also those that supports ray tracing and/or DLSS:

• 3DMark
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood
• Hitman 2
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Metro: Exodus
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Death Stranding
• Doom Eternal
• Control

We used the Fire Strike Extreme benchmark and stress test in 3DMark for our temperature and power consumption tests respectively.

3DMark

3DMark is a synthetic benchmark that tests graphics and computational performance at different resolutions, starting at 1080p and going all the way up to 4K. A series of two graphics test, one physics test, and then a combined test stresses your hardware in turn to assess its performance.

Unsurprisingly, the GeForce RTX 3080 knocks the wind out of the rest of the cards here. Interestingly, in Firestrike (based on DirectX 11) runs we see the GTX 1080 Ti matching up to the GeForce RTX 2080 yet on the other end of the spectrum, the RTX 2080 Ti is no match for the GeForce 3080. It’s only with TimeSpy, a DirectX 12 benchmark, do we see the GTX 1080 Ti lagging behind all RTX cards with the RTX 3080 clearly leading the way again.

Since the RTX cards support hardware ray tracing through its RT Cores, I’ve also used 3DMark’s Port Royal Ray Tracing benchmark to size up each card’s ray tracing capabilities. The GTX 10 Series cards run ray tracing too, but without dedicated RT Cores like on the RTX cards, it just can’t run playable frame rates with it enabled. What’s eye-catching here is how much better the RTX 3080 fares with ray tracing as compared to all three RTX 20 Series cards. The performance difference between it and the nearest RTX 2080 Ti is quite an impressive feat. We’ll find out more about this with real-world games benchmarks next page. In the meantime, let’s look at how the cards fared with DLSS turned on.

For the uninitiated, deep learning super sampling or DLSS uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to produce an image that looks like a higher-resolution image, without the rendering overhead. The idea is to make games rendered at 1440p look like they’re running at 4K, or 1080p games to look like 1440p. This is all possible thanks to NVIDIA’s Tensor cores, which are only available in RTX GPUs. Although RTX 20 series GPUs have Tensor cores inside, the RTX 30 Series come with NVIDIA’s second-generation Tensor cores, which offer greater per-core performance – and the results here isn’t surprising as much as it was expected of the RTX 3080 card.

Now let’s look at how the card performs in games.

1080p 1440p, 4K benchmarks (no ray tracing, no DLSS)

Even at full settings for all of the games here, the RTX 3080 still tore through ahead of the previous generation cards here for all games. But there are interesting insights here.

For one, all cards except the GTX 1080 Ti have hit a performance ceiling with Hitman 2 running at 1080p with maximum graphics settings, and it looks there’s not much more you can get out this game beyond the RTX 2080 at this resolution.

Secondly, look at Red Dead Redemption 2 scores. The game is a crazy resource hog – with the RTX 3080 just inching at the high side of 60fps – even at 1080p resolution. And here’s the kicker; only the 1080 Ti and 2080 Ti cards with their larger 11GB frame buffer could run the game at 4K resolution with full settings! But on the realistic side, it’s near impossible to play the game even at 16fps with an RTX 2080 Ti. It will be interesting to see how the game can perform with the RTX 3090, with its eye-popping 24GB memory.

All in all, it’s no surprise to see the RTX 3080 outclassing all of the cards here. What’s impressive is how well the card performs at 4K, being able to churn out that resolution – with graphics settings at maximum – at more than 60fps with the exception card-breaking games such as Metro: Exodus and Red Dead Redemption 2.

Ray Tracing & DLSS Performance

Ray tracing arrived with the RTX 20 Series but the graphical feature didn't quite take off in the way NVIDIA would have liked. Firstly, there was the lack of games that feature ray tracing. It's not an exaggeration to say you could count with both hands the number of games that supported it. Then there was also the performance hit with games that do support it, as you can see in the ray tracing benchmark above. My tests were quite brutal with 4K at maximum settings for ray tracing, but it's an interesting benchmark nonetheless to see where the RTX 3080 stands in relationship to its predecessors.

So, while the RTX 3080 performs better than the RTX 20 Series with ray tracing, we can assume that modern games at 4K resolution with maximum settings is still going to crush it. Want to enjoy the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing switch on? You're going to have to either play at a lower resolution or tone down the graphical settings. Or...you can switch on DLSS. Yes, Cyberpunk 2077 supports it and the list of games that supports both or either ray tracing and DLSS have grown quite a fair bit now.

With DLSS, the frame-rates in games improved tremendously even with ray tracing switched on. As you can see from the chart above, the RTX 3080 recorded a near 50% improvement in Metro: Exodus and more than 90% with Control. DLSS has come a long way since the RTX 20 Series days, and the RTX 3080 with its more powerful Tensor Cores (the dedicated AI processors on RTX GPUs) now gives gamers the performance headroom to maximize ray tracing settings and increase output resolutions.

Closing Statement

At one point during NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang's RTX 30 Series keynote, he made the GeForce RTX 3080 pitch to existing GTX 10 Series card owners. And my benchmarks clearly shows why - the RTX 3080 truly represents a marked leap in performance not just over the four-year-old cards but also the not-quite-that-outdated RTX 20 Series as well. NVIDIA wasn't kidding when they claimed the RTX 3080 to be twice as fast as the RTX 2080 (even if that is only with certain games, but we'll accept that claim).

The key question now is, should you upgrade? That really depends on what cards you use right now, and if you have or will have a 4K gaming monitor.

The answer is a no brainer if you happen to own any of the GTX 10 Series cards. Or even any of the AMD graphics cards. The age of these cards are showing, and will no doubt not give you the best experience with upcoming releases such as Cyberpunk 2077 and the new Call of Duty just to name a couple. Upgrading to an RTX 3080, or even the upcoming RTX 3070 will give you a huge performance boost and new gaming experience - welcome to ray tracing and DLSS.

My recommendation for GeForce RTX 2080 / RTX 2080 Super owners to switch to a GeForce RTX 3080 depends on a couple of things. The kind of games played, framerates at 1440p resolution gaming, and if there's an intention to want to enjoy ray tracing at higher resolutions. Again, if upcoming release like Cyberpunk 2077 and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 are titles you want to play then things will get a little scratchy. For instance, it's very likely that these games will run like Metro: Exodus or even Red Dead Redemption 2 in our benchmarks. That is, even at 1440p it's going to struggle at full graphics settings. The price of the RTX 3080 Founders Edition at US$699, the same price as the RTX 2080 Founders Edition at launch but for twice the firepower, is another compelling reason to want to consider the upgrade.

It's only with RTX 2080 Ti card owners that the decision to want to consider the upgrade a bit more painful. Especially if you'd just splashed more than S$1,500 on an RTX 2080 Ti partners card before the RTX 30 Series announcement. My recommendation would still be to upgrade to an RTX 3080, but perhaps eventually rather than immediate. This is an assumption that RTX 2080 Ti card owners are likelier to want to play their PC games at 4K (I know, I do), and the RTX 3080 does outperform the RTX 2080 Ti cards resoundingly at 4K with ray tracing switched.

So to close off my review, my view is that the GeForce RTX 3080 is a truly remarkable card. Despite what NVIDIA said two years ago, the RTX 2080 didn't quite usher in 4K gaming - the RTX 2080 Ti did in a limited capacity but at a crushing price point. Now, 4K gaming is reality and at a more reasonable price point with the RTX 3080.

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