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

A Generational Leap in design and performance

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-

	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super Founders Edition	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080
Core Code	GA102-200	TU102	TU104	TU104
GPU Transistor Count	28.3 billion	18.9 billion	13.6 billion	13.6 billion
Manufacturing Process	8nm (Samsung)	12nm FinFET	12nm FinFET	12nm FinFET
Core Clock	Base: 1,440MHz Boost: 1,710MHz	Core: 1,350MHz, Boost: 1,635MHz	Core: 1,650MHz, Boost: 1,815MHz	Core: 1,515MHz, Boost: 1,800MHz
Stream Processors	8,704	4,352	3,072	2,944
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs)	272	272	192	184
Raster Operator units (ROP)	96	88	64	64
Memory Clock (DDR)	10GB GDDR6X 19,000MHz	11GB GDDR6 14,000MHz	8GB GDDR6 15,500MHz	8GB GDDR6 14,000MHz
Memory Bus width	320-bit	352-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	760GB/sec	616GB/s	496.1GB/s	448GB/s
PCI Express Interface	4.0 / 3.0	3.0	3.0	3.0
Power Connectors	1 x 12p-pin	2 x 8-pin	1x 8-pin, 1x 6-pin	1x 8-pin, 1x 6-pin
Multi GPU Technology	No	Yes (2-way SLI)	Yes (2-way SLI)	Yes (2-way SLI)
DVI Outputs	No	No	No	No
HDMI Outputs	1	1x	1x	1x
DisplayPort Outputs	3	3x	3x	3x
HDCP Output Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Stream Processor Clock	—	—	1,650MHz	—

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.