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NVIDIA officially announces RTX 3090, RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 graphics cards

The GeForce Special Event stream has come to an end and now, we have official details on the RTX 3090, RTX 3080 and RTX 3070. All three GPUs are built on NVIDIA's new Ampere architecture and include 2nd generation RT Cores and 3rd generation Tensor Cores, combining for massive performance boosts. 

This is a big generational leap compared to Turing, with the RTX 3070 delivering faster performance than an RTX 2080Ti. The RTX 3080 is up to two times faster than an RTX 2080Ti and finally, the RTX 3090, Nvidia's next-gen ‘BFGPU', is up to 50 percent faster than the TITAN RTX. According to Nvidia, the RTX 3090 is the first single GPU solution capable of gaming at 8K and 60 frames per second.

GeForce RTX 3090 GeForce RTX 3080 GeForce RTX 3070
CUDA Cores 10,496 8,704 5,888
VRAM 24 GB GDDR6X 10 GB GDDR6X 8 GB GDDR6
Prices Starting At $1499 $699 $499
Release Date September 24 September 17 Available October

As you can see in the specs above, the leaks weren't entirely right in terms of specs or pricing. The RTX 3090 will ship at $1499 and feature 10,496 CUDA Cores. The RTX 3080 is launching at $699 with 8704 CUDA cores and the RTX 3070 starts at $499 with 5888 CUDA Cores.

The new Founders Edition GeForce graphics cards also make big strides in cooling design. For the first time, these GPUs are designed to work in tandem with the airflow of most PC cases, with cool air being pulled in from the front, with one fan blowing hot air straight out of the rear of the case, and another blowing it up to be extracted by your rear case fan. Massive, dense heatsinks and heatpipes help draw the heat away from critical components. In all, Nvidia claims massive cooling gains from this dual-axial design, with the RTX 3080 slated to be up to 20 degrees Celsius cooler than the RTX 2080 Founders Edition.

In terms of performance, you can expect up to 2x gains going from an RTX 2080 Super to an RTX 3080, with ray-traced titles getting an even bigger bump thanks to the 2nd generation RT Cores and DLSS 2.0. Red Dead Redemption 2 for instance runs around 1.7x better on an RTX 3080 compared to a 2080 Super. In a ray-tracing game like Control, that performance gain is closer to 2x.

As we head towards the end of the year, there will be plenty of big Triple A games to test these cards out on too. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is going to include ray-tracing, as is Cyberpunk 2077 and Watch Dogs Legion.

KitGuru Says: This is a hugely exciting day for PC gaming and graphics enthusiasts. What do you all think of the RTX 30 series reveal? Will you be looking to upgrade? 

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