Gigabyte RTX 3080 Eagle OC

Before we look at the actual card let’s look at the RTX 30-series.

Specifications

Features of the RTX3080

The first thing that you might notice is that the RTX 3080 now comes with more than twice the CUDA cores compared to both the RTX 2080 Super and RTX 2080, 8704 compared to 3072 and 2944. These CUDA cores are not completely the same as roughly half of those cores can shift between FP32 shader cores and INT32 integer cores depending on what the game or application wants at the time. So while you might think that we should get 2X performance right across the board it is not that easy. We should still see a major boost.

The memory is upgraded to GDDR6X and uses a slightly wider 320-bit memory interface giving us a maximum of 1760 GB/Sec memory bandwidth. You also now get a bit more memory at 10 GB compared to the 8 GB on the RTX 2080. I know some people have been moaning about this hoping for more memory and there is indications a 20 GB versions is on its way. To be honest though during all my testing at 4K I never ran into a issue with “just 10 GB” or even “just 8 GB” so for the large majority it should be enough.

The TGP has gone up from 225 W to 320 W but Nvidia claims it is also more efficient so that the 30-series offers 1.9x performance per watt over the 20-series.

The series 30 comes with upgrades to the different RTX processing systems: the programmable shader (2.7X improvement), the RT Core used for ray tracing (1.7x) and the Tensor Core which is used for DLSS and RTC Voice (2.7x).

RTX IO, RTX Reflex, RTX Broadcast, DLSS 2.1

It wouldn’t be a new card if Nvidia didn’t release some new cool features with it.

RTX IO

This technology sounds very exciting. A lot has been said about the PS5 (and Xbox Series X) ability to fast load stuff from a SSD. RTX IO is something similar for the PC. When used with Microsoft’s new DirectStorage for Windows API, RTX IO offloads dozens of CPU cores’ worth of work to your GeForce RTX GPU, improving frame rates, enabling near-instantaneous game loading, and opening the door to a new era of large, incredibly detailed open world games.

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I’m looking forward to see how this works. The caveat of course is that this is a technology that isn’t available right now. Microsoft hasn’t release DirectStorage yet and when it is release there will probably be few games supporting it right away. This might be a technology, like Ray tracing and DLSS, that needs a lot of time maturing before becoming more commonplace.

RTX REFLEX

If you are an e-sporter then this is for you. This technology combines GPU and game optimizations to reduces the latecy. For non-competitive people like me this is probably completely useless but if you are playing competitive then this looks like to help you.

RTX Broadcast

RTX Broadcast is using the Tensor Core AI to help filter away both sound and now background in the video. Think of it as a virtual green screen. The demos that nvidia show look very cool and it looks like a step up from similar solutions from web camera makers.

Nvidia DLSS 2.1

If you read my article about the RTX2060 Max-Q and DLSS you will know I think it is a grea technology that helps slower cards to play games at higher frame rates with little visual degradation.

DLSS 2.1 that is coming will have some new features:

• Support for the highest HDMI 2.1 link rate (12 Gbps/lane across all 4 lanes)
• Support for Display Stream Compression (DSC) to be able to power up to 8K, 60Hz in HDR
• Support for 8K gaming on the RTX 3090 with a new ultra performance mode.
• Compatible with PC VR headsets.