News Nvidia RTX 3080 By September? Ampere Launch Looks Imminent

[hannibal]

Actually we agree... we will see more expensive GPUs in this year...

 

[nofanneeded]

I'm not paying 1k for a graphics card, I don't care how great it is. Hopefully, the 3070 will be more sanely priced.

Just get RTX 2080 Ti from Ebay once people start to sell them in large , .. it will be the same price of 3070 and for sure much better ...

 

[nofanneeded]

SLI and crossfire, are next to pointless. and is just for bragging rights only. when was the last time nvidia or amd released and new profiles ? even they dont seem to be touting multi gpu configs for consumers any more, that should say alot.

" AMD competition is always rumored, and never materializes " much like most of what intel has been saying the last few years. never miss a chance to bash amd, do you?

Actually they are not pointless , but the Firms decided to abandon them because software houses did not care to optimize their games for Multi-GPU

 

[Flayed]

Just get RTX 2080 Ti from Ebay once people start to sell them in large , .. it will be the same price of 3070 and for sure much better ...

I have bad luck with cards from ebay. I have bought two and they both died fairly soon after purchase

 

[Conahl]

which could of been because of the prices of the cards. just got way to expensive, which made it even more of a niche market. knew quite a few people with sli/crossfire setups pre gtx 980/radeon 5xxx series, but after that, wasnt really worth the cost. i was more interested in eyefinity back then, then sli/crossfire

 

[thenewnumber2]

I disagree. Generational performance increases don't tend to obsolesce the previous gen product line. A 1080ti which released at around $700 is still a high end performer. One generation later the 2080ti jumped to almost $1000 at release. Ray tracing aside I won't purchase a 2060 to replace my 1080 ti and I won't shell out $1000 to upgrade. The prices have continued to climb across the entire lineup with high end cards now well out of reach for the average user. I looked at a titan at $1200. I laugh at a titan at $2500. Thank you very little cryptocurrency.

Fortunately, the Ampere A100 will be the most sought after card for cryptominers, and that part is of no use to gamers. I hope that Nvidia can keep the miners well supplied with these so they won't be scarfing up all of our 3080/90 supply.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Fortunately, the Ampere A100 will be the most sought after card for cryptominers, and that part is of no use to gamers. I hope that Nvidia can keep the miners well supplied with these so they won't be scarfing up all of our 3080/90 supply.

The GPU demand from miners, which resulted in a spike in GPU prices, died out ~2 years ago. The issue is that prices were still somewhat elevated when Nvidia released their Geforce 20 series, and they took advantage of that when setting the MSRP for their new cards. The 20 series price points looked 'good' compared to the price gouging that had been going on during the GPU shortage, but were still significantly higher than they had been prior. We ended up with cards that offered more absolute performance at the top end, but similar or even worse perf/$ overall. Things improved a bit when AMD finally brought a bit of competition with Navi, but cards from both vendors are still higher than they were in the past for a given product tier.

Basically, mining caused a shortage which caused high prices. The mining and shortage are gone, but the high prices never completely went away :/

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

The GPU demand from miners, which resulted in a spike in GPU prices, died out ~2 years ago. The issue is that prices were still somewhat elevated when Nvidia released their Geforce 20 series, and they took advantage of that when setting the MSRP for their new cards. The 20 series price points looked 'good' compared to the price gouging that had been going on during the GPU shortage, but were still significantly higher than they had been prior. We ended up with cards that offered more absolute performance at the top end, but similar or even worse perf/$ overall. Things improved a bit when AMD finally brought a bit of competition with Navi, but cards from both vendors are still higher than they were in the past for a given product tier.

Basically, mining caused a shortage which caused high prices. The mining and shortage are gone, but the high prices never completely went away :/

I think the real problem is that with mining demand, AMD and Nvidia had contract prices that were far lower than they wanted. It's easier to lower prices than raise them, so Nvidia started much higher ... and then apparently never saw a need to do much more than modest price cuts. It still amazes me that RTX 2080 Ti basically never got below about $1050 -- a few short-term $1000 sales happened, but never in any meaningful quantities.

 

[EricLane]

I am interested in an upgrade but it seems like all the product is bought up at release and sold at a profit by 3rd party vendors. I have never purchased a card at launch. Are there effective policies in place to allow people like myself to purchase a card in the first couple weeks or is this a "couple hours before they're out of stock" kind of thing?

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I am interested in an upgrade but it seems like all the product is bought up at release and sold at a profit by 3rd party vendors. I have never purchased a card at launch. Are there effective policies in place to allow people like myself to purchase a card in the first couple weeks or is this a "couple hours before they're out of stock" kind of thing?

Best chance to get a hot new GPU at launch is to be absolutely ready to pay a $50 to $100 premium, subscribe to the "notify" options for the card(s) you would buy, and immediately be ready to buy the instant a card is back in stock. Often they'll be in stock for 30-60 minutes, but if you're waffling on the purchase you probably won't be fast enough.

And I'm not saying you should do this unless you have a lot of disposable income. I fully expect RTX 3080/3090 to launch at obscene prices, so we could be talking $1000+ just for the graphics card. But buying (trying to buy) direct from Nvidia or EVGA is usually going to get you a better price than shopping on Amazon or Newegg for the first month or two.

 

[EricLane]

Best chance to get a hot new GPU at launch is to be absolutely ready to pay a $50 to $100 premium, subscribe to the "notify" options for the card(s) you would buy, and immediately be ready to buy the instant a card is back in stock. Often they'll be in stock for 30-60 minutes, but if you're waffling on the purchase you probably won't be fast enough.

And I'm not saying you should do this unless you have a lot of disposable income. I fully expect RTX 3080/3090 to launch at obscene prices, so we could be talking $1000+ just for the graphics card. But buying (trying to buy) direct from Nvidia or EVGA is usually going to get you a better price than shopping on Amazon or Newegg for the first month or two.

Great advice. Thank you.

 

[spongiemaster]

Best chance to get a hot new GPU at launch is to be absolutely ready to pay a $50 to $100 premium, subscribe to the "notify" options for the card(s) you would buy, and immediately be ready to buy the instant a card is back in stock. Often they'll be in stock for 30-60 minutes, but if you're waffling on the purchase you probably won't be fast enough.

And I'm not saying you should do this unless you have a lot of disposable income. I fully expect RTX 3080/3090 to launch at obscene prices, so we could be talking $1000+ just for the graphics card. But buying (trying to buy) direct from Nvidia or EVGA is usually going to get you a better price than shopping on Amazon or Newegg for the first month or two.

Another option is to look at traditional retail outlets that aren't online only because they tend to stick to MSRP. I preordered an RTX2080 and got it on launch day for the $800 MSRP from Best Buy, but due to a birthday coupon they sent me and some rewards points, I only paid about $700.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Another option is to look at traditional retail outlets that aren't online only because they tend to stick to MSRP. I preordered an RTX2080 and got it on launch day for the $800 MSRP from Best Buy, but due to a birthday coupon they sent me and some rewards points, I only paid about $700.

True! If you're willing to pre-order, you can usually get the hardware. All sorts of risks with pre-ordering of course, but if you have the money and lack time, go for it! 😀

 

[nofanneeded]

I have bad luck with cards from ebay. I have bought two and they both died fairly soon after purchase

RTX 2080 ti wont die on you it is the last Generation , maybe you bought very old products from Ebay.

 

[spongiemaster]

True! If you're willing to pre-order, you can usually get the hardware. All sorts of risks with pre-ordering of course, but if you have the money and lack time, go for it! 😀

I don't think there is going to be much risk with this generation. You can't preorder until actual models are announced on the 1st. Even though we won't get full in depth benchmarking, I fully expect Nvidia to tell us how fast the new cards will be unlike last time when it was all about ray tracing, and there was zero reference to rasterized performance because Nvidia didn't want to publish a slide that showed the 2080 about 3% faster than a 1080ti while having a $150 higher launch MSRP.

If you're looking for a specific aftermarket model, then preordering does get complicated and risky. If all you want is a reference design for water cooling, then preordering is definitely the way to go. Although, the rumors of the non-traditional dual sided PCB layout of the founders edition this round will probably mean you'll need to get a traditional reference design card from another manufacturer.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I don't think there is going to be much risk with this generation. You can't preorder until actual models are announced on the 1st. Even though we won't get full in depth benchmarking, I fully expect Nvidia to tell us how fast the new cards will be unlike last time when it was all about ray tracing, and there was zero reference to rasterized performance because Nvidia didn't want to publish a slide that showed the 2080 about 3% faster than a 1080ti while having a $150 higher launch MSRP.

If you're looking for a specific aftermarket model, then preordering does get complicated and risky. If all you want is a reference design for water cooling, then preordering is definitely the way to go. Although, the rumors of the non-traditional dual sided PCB layout of the founders edition this round will probably mean you'll need to get a traditional reference design card from another manufacturer.

Oops, you're right: I misread the 2080 bit. RTX 2080, in current games, is:

5.1% faster than 1080 Ti at 1080p
8.9% faster than 1080 Ti at 1440p
9.2% faster than 1080 Ti at 4K
8.4% faster than 1080 Ti overall

For nominally the same price. RTX 2080 Super, incidentally, is currently:

11.0% faster than 1080 Ti at 1080p
16.4% faster than 1080 Ti at 1440p
17.8% faster than 1080 Ti at 4K
15.8% faster than 1080 Ti at overall

And at least the 2080 Super FE didn't have the $100 early adopter tax.


------------ Original incorrect garbage comparing to 2080 Ti ------------
Interesting thing is that right now, two years after launch, the RTX 2080 Ti is 34% faster than the GTX 1080 Ti according to my benchmarks. That's 22.2% faster at 1080p (medium + ultra), 34.5% faster at 1440p (again, medium + ultra), and 40.4% faster at 4K (med + ultra). And to be clear, when I say "medium + ultra" I mean I ran all nine gaming benchmarks using both the medium and ultra presets in each game. Ultra obviously has a larger gap than medium.

It took a bit more time, maybe, but the RTX 20 series definitely looks a lot better than the GTX 10 series on recent games. And it's not just Nvidia intentionally degrading performance on older GPUs via drivers. A lot of it is DX12 and Vulkan use, plus more complex shaders where the concurrent INT + FP hardware in Turing helps. Actually, here's the review I posted at PCGamer at launch (possibly edited by my replacements, but the charts weren't changed):
https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-founders-edition-review/

In that suite of testing, I measured 33% better improvement at 4K ultra, 26.8% better performance at 1440p ultra, 18.4% improvement at 1080p ultra, and 10.7% improvement at 1080p medium. The naysayers that tried to pretend it was "only a few percent faster" were very much cherry picking the benchmarks they looked at, or just flat out lying about performance.

 

[spongiemaster]

Interesting thing is that right now, two years after launch, the RTX 2080 Ti is 34% faster than the GTX 1080 Ti according to my benchmarks. That's 22.2% faster at 1080p (medium + ultra), 34.5% faster at 1440p (again, medium + ultra), and 40.4% faster at 4K (med + ultra). And to be clear, when I say "medium + ultra" I mean I ran all nine gaming benchmarks using both the medium and ultra presets in each game. Ultra obviously has a larger gap than medium.

It took a bit more time, maybe, but the RTX 20 series definitely looks a lot better than the GTX 10 series on recent games. And it's not just Nvidia intentionally degrading performance on older GPUs via drivers. A lot of it is DX12 and Vulkan use, plus more complex shaders where the concurrent INT + FP hardware in Turing helps. Actually, here's the review I posted at PCGamer at launch (possibly edited by my replacements, but the charts weren't changed):
https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-founders-edition-review/

In that suite of testing, I measured 33% better improvement at 4K ultra, 26.8% better performance at 1440p ultra, 18.4% improvement at 1080p ultra, and 10.7% improvement at 1080p medium. The naysayers that tried to pretend it was "only a few percent faster" were very much cherry picking the benchmarks they looked at, or just flat out lying about performance.

You misread what I said. I was comparing the 1080Ti to the 2080, not the 2080Ti. By your own benchmarks at pcgamer, the 2080 was 3.4% faster at 4k, 4% at 1440p, and 3.3% 1080p. In previous generations, that would have been fine because the 80x would launch at a lower price than the previous Ti. However, this time, the 2080 launched at an MSRP $100 higher than the 1080Ti. 2 years later, 3-4% faster on average with a $100 price hike. Not even Nvidia could find a way to positive spin that, so they didn't mention the rasterized performance at all in their RTX launch reveal.

 

[spongiemaster]

You posted the following in the comment section of the PC Gamer article:

If we use the base prices, it would be 43% more money for 33% more performance going from 1080 Ti to 2080 Ti. The Founders Edition however is 71% more money for the same increase. I'd definitely recommend waiting for the non-Founders Edition cards to see how they're priced. $999 is still too much for a lot of users, but if you have 4k HDR G-Sync, it's totally worth it relative to the previous gen.

We know now, that the FE edition was the price floor for RTX cards despite the lower announced MSRP for non-FE cards. So the 33% more performance for 71% more money was pretty much as good as it got, most card were well above $1200. And that mystical $1000 2080Ti never materialized.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

You posted the following in the comment section of the PC Gamer article:

We know now, that the FE edition was the price floor for RTX cards despite the lower announced MSRP for non-FE cards. So the 33% more performance for 71% more money was pretty much as good as it got, most card were well above $1200. And that mystical $1000 2080Ti never materialized.

Technically, $999 cards did exist, in limited quantities. Anyone that really wanted to pay $1000, or maybe $1050, was able to do so. The best option was probably to put a "notify" on EVGA (last year or maybe late 2018) and buy it when the 2080 Ti Black (not Gaming!) was back in stock. But for people willing to spend $1000 on a GPU, I think adding another $50-$100 to avoid waiting probably wasn't that big of a deal.

2080 Ti prices today have gone up because Nvidia stopped making the chips likely many months back (end of 2019 maybe?) to clear inventory of the old stuff before the Ampere launch. I think Ampere would have launched in the spring if not for COVID, but maybe that's incorrect. Either way, there was a clear upward trend in pricing on 2080 Ti and 2080 Super over the past six months, with most places now having sold out of the 2080 Ti.

But you're right that Nvidia ultimately seemed to either see reduced demand for the 2080 Ti, or simply chose to not make more for the consumer market to hit the $1000 price originally discussed at launch. And you can bet I'll be mentioning this in the 30-series launch reviews, depending on what prices we see (ie, $999 for custom, $1199 for FE means I don't trust Nvidia to actually have $999 cards readily available).

 

[urbanman2004]

I'm pretty sure NVIDIA will overinflate the price of Ampere cards at release so hopefully AMD will have something to offer that incentivizes me to give them a chance this time around. If only Pascal pricing were still being observed 🙁

 

[jasonf2]

Fortunately, the Ampere A100 will be the most sought after card for cryptominers, and that part is of no use to gamers. I hope that Nvidia can keep the miners well supplied with these so they won't be scarfing up all of our 3080/90 supply.

Crypto on GPU has been largely replaced with ASIC specific mining rigs where it can be due to performance. Also increasing difficulty of solve reduced the ability for any small scale GPU mining rigs ROI to be highly questionable against electricity costs today regardless of card. Unfortunately the period of time that GPU mining was profitable pushed prices up, and they never came back down. The mining rigs were making money on standard store bought GPU rigs and everything available was bought out for months while the manufactures rode the supply and demand gravy train. For some reason though they are continuing the pricing trend even with mining being mostly out of the picture for all but a few cryptocurrency types. Even then with these card prices the initial capital investment means that the rigs have to run so long for payback that difficulty of solve issues make the risk of losing money pretty high.