nVidia 3080 reviews thread

[A///]

The cheaper AIB cards are about the same price as the FE (maybe within $20-30), and they all have 3 fans. I think the lower noise levels are well worth it.

I'm not familiar with the really cheap stuff you pointed out. I can see you being right though, especially with them being 10-15 degrees cooler at load or whatever J2C said. Which makes a large difference in demanding games and warmer ambient air temps such as that of summer and a well heated home during the winter.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Well, Ray Tracing performance is.....................blah.

-NV doesn't have to do a good job with Ray Tracing, they just have to do a better job than AMD. I think they're confident that they're starting this race in the lead.

As RT becomes more important with consoles and AMD hardware supporting it, we'll begin to see the ratios shift in RTs favor with each generational increase.

 

[Dribble]

Well, Ray Tracing performance is.....................blah.

That's not what other reviewers have said:

 

[guidryp]

That's not what other reviewers have said:

Tim at HWUB is making a strange complaint. The way he states it makes it sound like RT performance is no better than Turing.

It's obviously much better than Turing, but so is Traditional Raster performance, so the gains are almost more equal, slightly favoring RT (Maybe Raster +20%).

So I guess he wanted a bigger Tilt toward RT, but there is no free lunch, tilting more in favor or RT would make it worse at traditional performance. I doubt that is a trade-off most people want.

 

[CakeMonster]

Well even though they have to prioritize regular performance, it was quite reasonable to expect less of a % wise performance loss from enabling RT compared to 20xx series.

 

[guidryp]

Well even though they have to prioritize regular performance, it was quite reasonable to expect less of a % wise performance loss from enabling RT compared to 20xx series.

Yes a tiny bit less relative hit is reasonable, which is what you get.

But it will never be free, and will always be a very significant hit.

 

[Face2Face]

Tim at HWUB is making a strange complaint. The way he states it makes it sound like RT performance is no better than Turing.

It's obviously much better than Turing, but so is Traditional Raster performance, so the gains are almost more equal, slightly favoring RT (Maybe Raster +20%).

So I guess he wanted a bigger Tilt toward RT, but there is no free lunch, tilting more in favor or RT would make it worse at traditional performance. I doubt that is a trade-off most people want.

The 3080 performs up to 2X better vs. 2080 in path traced games. Minecraft RTX and Quake 2. Neither of which HWU tested...

 

[DJinPrime]

The 3080 performs up to 2X better vs. 2080 in path traced games. Minecraft RTX and Quake 2. Neither of which HWU tested...

Which is exactly inline with what Jensen said, the triple double; double of raster, rt, and tensors. It wasn't double raster, triple RT. HWUB's own charts shows that RT performance did double (NV math) compared to 2080. But he sounded like he was expecting it to be significantly better, that's his own misunderstanding.

Also, he just glossed over the Wolfenstein YB special patch that seems to enable new async capability of ampere. It increased performance of the 3080 by almost 8% for traditional and almost 10% in RT. Why is a new build required? Driver can't fix this? More info please!

 

[BFG10K]

I don't understand how something like this possible in this day and age:

As for the reference cooler, what a gigantic waste of time, money and R&D given the tri-fan AIB variant are still superior.

Why is a new build required? Driver can't fix this? More info please!

DX12/Vulkan are too low-level to allow driver overrides like that. That's one of the many disadvantages of low level APIs.

 

[guidryp]

As for the reference cooler, what a gigantic waste of time, money and R&D given the tri-fan AIB variant are still superior.

Reference cooler is decent, and fits in more cases.

 

[Det0x]

As for the reference cooler, what a gigantic waste of time, money and R&D given the tri-fan AIB variant are still superior.

You do understand you are comparing the 3080's relatively "small" 2 slot founders edition coolers vs the AIB custom 3 fans coolers, which pretty much all are 2.5-3 slot solutions.
285x112x38mm = FE 3080 cooler
335x140x56mm = MSI GAMING X TRIO cooler

I would wait to give judgement until ive seen the tests from 3090 cooler which is a proper 3 slot cooler and in the same league as the AIB's..

313x138x58mm =FE 3090 cooler

 

[Mopetar]

-NV doesn't have to do a good job with Ray Tracing, they just have to do a better job than AMD. I think they're confident that they're starting this race in the lead.

As RT becomes more important with consoles and AMD hardware supporting it, we'll begin to see the ratios shift in RTs favor with each generational increase.

We're still a decade off from what will be good ray tracing performance for the mass market.

Even with Ampere's improvements it's still a choice between playing at lower resolutions (and optionally using DSSL to compensate) or sacrificing frame rates to the point where the experience starts to suffer.

Keep in mind that this is only using RT for limited effects or enhancing only part of the visuals. Outside of a very limited set of games it isn't something that can be applied everywhere all the time. Trying to do so in most titles would create a slide show.

I'm also hesitant about it being important in the long term. It's just the new thing to sell consoles just like VR and motion controls before it. I think it has a better chance of sticking around in a way that the others really haven't because it's about improving the visuals instead of trying to add novelty that can get stale after awhile, but it will be a while before it gains the kind of traction that creates the kind of virtuous cycle that propels the technology forward without anyone needing to push it.

 

[IntelUser2000]

@Mopetar Meh. I just watched Hardware Unboxed's review. It seems like the 3080's potential is being wasted a bit on 1440p resolutions without using Ray Tracing.

The way I see it, 4K monitors are ridiculously expensive especially if you want IPS or good response times. At 1440p, Ray Tracing is definitely viable, even without DLSS.

 

[CP5670]

As for the reference cooler, what a gigantic waste of time, money and R&D given the tri-fan AIB variant are still superior.

I never understood the whole business model of having both FE and AIB cards to begin with. If they make the coolers really good, the AIB partners will get mad since there is no reason to buy those, and if the FE cards are worse (as is typically the case) then why have them at all? Nvidia/AMD only started selling their own cards a few generations ago and weren't always doing it.

 

[Dribble]

We're still a decade off from what will be good ray tracing performance for the mass market.

I think there is a pretty good chance that you'll be able to play at high with all the ray tracing effects on using a 3050Ti or whatever they decide to call it at 1080p with DLSS and 60fps in games like mine craft or cyberpunk. Remember you can basically render at 540 with DLSS to give you 1080 and the result will be similar in quality to 1080 with FXAA. It doesn't take a lot of rendering power to render at 540 even with ray tracing, and it doesn't take a lot of tensor cores to upscale from 540 to 1080.

 

[Elfear]

I think there is a pretty good chance that you'll be able to play at high with all the ray tracing effects on using a 3050Ti or whatever they decide to call it at 1080p with DLSS and 60fps in games like mine craft or cyberpunk. Remember you can basically render at 540 with DLSS to give you 1080 and the result will be similar in quality to 1080 with FXAA. It doesn't take a lot of rendering power to render at 540 even with ray tracing, and it doesn't take a lot of tensor cores to upscale from 540 to 1080.

Genuinely curious, how many games support DLSS 2.0 and look as good as native res?

 

[CakeMonster]

I've only seen DLSS in Control and the sharpening is just unacceptable. I hear that there's less sharpening in other games though so I'm not making a judgment based on that.

I must admit I dislike the gradual trend of image quality per pixel going down steady from ~10 years ago when MSAA was the standard, then it got replaced by FXAA and similar technologies, and now we've arrived at "intelligent" upscaling. This is not a good thing, at least not unless actual pixel density increases at the same time.

540 to 1080 does not convince me though, there seems to simply be too little data for a good end result.

 

[sontin]

Keep in mind that this is only using RT for limited effects or enhancing only part of the visuals. Outside of a very limited set of games it isn't something that can be applied everywhere all the time. Trying to do so in most titles would create a slide show.

Reflections, direct and indirect lightning have a huge impact on the whole picture. Claiming that these only "enhancing [a] part of the visuals" is just wrong.
Screen-Space effects have a limited effect because they dont have information from outside the screen-space.

 

[guidryp]

Optimum Tech does mainly SFF builds and review so it makes sense that he would test 3080 with SFX PSUs. It turns out even 600W SFX PSU had no trouble with 3080, but 450 SFX died instantly when a game was started.

 

[guidryp]

Edit: This was a double post, and since I couldn't figure out how to delete, I will just use it to note that above, he is also running the 3080 with an overclocked 10900K, and he picked the worse case game and resolution he could find for max power draw.

I think the video demonstrates, that people with decent 650W PSU will be fine running a 3080, though you probably don't want to OC a 10900K with it. It will work but it would push your PSU near limits.

 

[Mopetar]

I think there is a pretty good chance that you'll be able to play at high with all the ray tracing effects on using a 3050Ti or whatever they decide to call it at 1080p with DLSS and 60fps in games like mine craft or cyberpunk. Remember you can basically render at 540 with DLSS to give you 1080 and the result will be similar in quality to 1080 with FXAA. It doesn't take a lot of rendering power to render at 540 even with ray tracing, and it doesn't take a lot of tensor cores to upscale from 540 to 1080.

Has NVidia said the full stack is getting RT this time around?

Even then, with a card in that range I'm not sure how much RT performance we can expect. It's probably at cut down 3060 if it exists at all and they don't do something else akin to the 1060 3/6 GB with those dies.

 

[jpiniero]

Has NVidia said the full stack is getting RT this time around?

I don't believe they have said anything, but that should be the expectation.

 

[Dave2150]

Holy Smokes! I have my 27" (1440p) about 60-70 cm away - you must actually have to move your head to scan the edges of the frame!

My CX48 is wall mounted, keyboard is on the edge of the desk, so it's a little further than 90cm. Don't have to move my head at all.

It's perfect for my use case, games in general. I don't play that much FPS these days, but Doom Eternal and PUBG work well enough at this distance. Extremely immersive, and gaming at 4k is just brilliant.

I wouldn't play competitive CS on a monitor this size though!

 

[Dave2150]

@Mopetar Meh. I just watched Hardware Unboxed's review. It seems like the 3080's potential is being wasted a bit on 1440p resolutions without using Ray Tracing.

The way I see it, 4K monitors are ridiculously expensive especially if you want IPS or good response times. At 1440p, Ray Tracing is definitely viable, even without DLSS.

CX48 is the current 4K king, as long as you have the space for it. Cheaper than high end monitors too.

 

[Dave2150]

Do we know when 3090 reviews hit?

They are listed as going on sale on the 24th in the UK, perhaps the 23rd for the reviews then?

 

[CP5670]

CX48 is the current 4K king, as long as you have the space for it. Cheaper than high end monitors too.

Unfortunately, people are now finding out that the CX line is not doing 4K at 120hz at 444 properly, and subsamples to 422 internally. I was right about to pull the trigger on a 77" CX but might hold off now. Maybe it will be fixed in a firmware update but I would rather wait for that. 4K at 60hz does work fine.