Written by Ajay Neman| Updated: August 15, 2020 9:18:02 am
Nvidia founder & CEO Jensen Huang has confirmed to ‘highlight the company’s latest innovations in gaming and graphics’ during the digital event. This is almost guaranteed to be in reference to the next-gen Ampere GPUs, which were previously tipped for an early September launch.
When Nvidia introduced their GeForce RTX 20 series to the world in 2018, the graphics card market was shaken to its core. However, supreme performance doesn’t come at a cheap price. As a matter of fact, technology wasn’t the only thing being stretched to its limit.
The eye-gouging $1200 price point for RTX 2080 Ti was unheard of in the consumer market, as generally anything above $1000 was considered enthusiast grade. In this article, we’ll explain everything about the RTX 3000 series and help you decide whether or not it’s worth the money for you.
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What You Get With RTX 3000 series
Ray Tracing:
There’s a chance that all new Nvidia RTX 3000 graphics will come with a traversal coprocessor that will be solely focused on accelerating ray-tracing performance. A two-fan design (one on each side) and the possibility of using a dual-sided PCB that would allow the implementation of another chip on the “back”. The “front” would cool the main GPU die, while the back fan would be handling the cooling of the traversal coprocessor.
If this turns out to be true, Nvidia would be able to deliver a graphics performance boost without a significant architecture overhaul. Instead of using inserting RT cores on the GPU die to handle ray-tracing, the traversal coprocessor would be dedicated to that kind of task. Not only does that suggest ray-tracing performance would be significantly improved, but it also frees up space in the GPU die for more traditional cores.
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Deep Learning Super Sampling
NVIDIA has some near GPU cheat codes when it comes to its DLSS technology (Deep Learning Super Sampling) According to Moore’s Law is Dead, DLSS 3.0 is going to be an even bigger game-changer. One of the main Ampere GPU features is DLSS 3.0 technology. DLSS 3.0 will reportedly “work in any game with TAA” but it will require a Game Ready driver to do so, meaning developers will have to do some “specific programming per game to get it to work, but it should be easier than before”.
An interesting note is that “some evidence NVIDIA will be turning DLSS 3.0 on by default in the upcoming Ampere GPUs, possibly overriding settings in some games and pushing benchmarking sites to use it in comparisons with RDNA 2”.
Power-hungry
With a breakdown of the TGP of the purported GeForce RTX 3090. Igor has worked out that the GeForce RTX 3090 should have a rather large 350W TGP (Total Graphics Power) that breaks down into 230W for the GA102 and 60W for the 24GB GDDR6X memory.
NVIDIA Ampere GPU specs
Nothing is confirmed regarding Nvidia Ampere GPU specs so far, but there has been plenty of rumors. It was expected that Ampere GPU would use TSMC’s 7nm process, but recent reports claim Nvidia will opt for Samsung’s 8nm process instead. This is according to renowned leaker @kopite7kimi, but it’s still worth retaining a bit of skepticism for now.
How much will RTX 3000 cost?
There are no details on price just yet, with Nvidia likely set to make a final decision at the last possible moment in order to undercut the competition.
A Wccftech report claims that Nvidia is looking to make the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 slightly cheaper than their Turing counterparts in a bid to make ray tracing accelerated cards more appealing to a mass market. With the RTX 2080 Ti graphics card currently costing over £1000, that comes as no surprise.