RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080 -After a very interesting 3080 graphic card launch from last week.
It is time to finally talk about its bigger brother, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090.
And in this post, I mostly want to answer one simple question here.
Should you get an RTX 3080 vs RTX 3090 for gaming? Even though this 3090 is a titan class card, and it's made for those extreme creative workflows that just need more memory
And will use those 24 gigabytes of V-RAM that this card has to offer.
If you look at the product page on Nvidia's website, they say it should also offer the ultimate gaming experience.
Now, I know that a lot of you were really really excited when the announcement came out, and we're ready to get an RTX 3090 for yourself, just for gaming.
What are you exactly get over this RTX 3080?
As it will kind of depend on the types of games you play, and your other hardware, I will try to cover today everything from 8k Gaming to 1080 feet competitive gaming to see what the actual differences are and which card will fit you, the best.
And to do that, I'll be using these two cards from Gigabyte the RTX 3080 gaming OS, and the RTX 3090 gaming OC.
And as you can see right here these two cards are pretty much identical.
They have the same design, the same RTX 3080 size, and the same cooling solution so it should be a fair comparison.
And on top of that, I also want to talk about how well gigabytes cooling solution performs in general, compared to other RTX 3000 cards I have had a chance to do so far.
What's the difference between RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080
The RTX 3090 uses the same chip, as the RTX 3080 then with more cores, enabled with 30% More CUDA cores, Ray Tracing cores and Tensor cores.
It's pretty much a straight-up upgrade over the RTX 3080. But the biggest change is the jump from 10 to 24 gigabytes of GDDR 6x memory, which is also clogged slightly faster than the 3080.
Now there is something that really won't matter for most gamers, but it will be very useful for certain specific types of work.
Next to that, the 3090 has a higher TDP of 350 Watts, compared to 320 watts on the RTX 3080.
so it is said to us around 10% More power, overall, but I'll talk about actual power consumption a bit later.
Gigabyte Gaming OC Design & Features
RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080 - When we look at these gigabyte cards, knowing that these new RTX chips can be quite power-hungry.
It is good to see a nice big and bulky cooler, and as you can see it is completely the same on both the 3080 and the 3090 here.
They're a bit larger than previous gaming overclocking cards, coming in at 32 cm long, 12.9 cm wide, and 5.5 cm thick.
So it's not quite as big as the MSI Gaming X trio, but they are all roughly in the same size class.
The design itself is pretty neutral so it should nicely fit most bills out there, and the build quality is quite good.
The Shroud is plastic but it feels solid enough and the backplate is a proper metal one, again with a couple of holes for the air to flow through.
I am not too sure about the shroud cut out on the left side of the graphics card is there for the NV link option on the 3090, but it just looks a bit odd and a bit empty on the 3080, RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080.
Now considering SLI is dead anyways I personally wish they just kept a nice continuous line on top of the card or at least made a cut-out where the power connections are a bit out of the way instead.
RGB fan logo lights- RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080
If you're an RGB fan, you won't be too impressed as only the logo and the low line underneath the light.
Now you can still customize it using the fusion software, or, you know, you can just turn it off, if it's not your thing, the overall feature set is pretty good too.
You have a fan stop option when the card has nothing to do, you get to dual BIOS with an OC and acquired mode, and they also added a second HDMI 2.1 port there are two HDMI ports and three display ports in total.
The best feature is the extra year warranty that you get if you register your card with a gigabyte.
It offers four years of warranty over the usual three years that other RTX GPU cards have now.
I really think that if you're going to spend so much money on a graphics card, having a longer warranty than most competitors out there is a really big deal here.
4K Gaming Performance-RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080
But how did these two compare in gaming, starting with a 4k resolution, and all the games with very high settings, you can see roughly a 12% performance increase on average. If you take a geforce RTX 3090 over the RTX 3080.
Some games like Doom eternal or shadow the Tomb Raider show pretty good scaling, with the extra cores, but most games are at around an 11% increase.
The 3090 is around 40% faster than the previous 2080 Ti, on average, with the occasional game performing around 50% better.
So, if you compare it to the 2080 Ti. The 3090 is actually a very nice improvement.
But if you put this much, much cheaper 3080 next to it 12% increase on average is not really a lot, and I'm sure it will disappoint, many of you out there, especially when you add the price of the 3090 to that direct reason.
1440p Gaming Performance- RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080
And when we look at the 1440p results, that percentage drops even lower, as most games struggle to gain more than single-digit percentages with an RTX 3090 over the 3080.
Keep in mind, RTX 3090 gpu isn't really made for this resolution it's important to make this very clear for anyone that thought differently.
1080p Gaming Performance- RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080
1080p, even the 3080 didn't show any real benefit over the 20 series graphics card, as most games were limited by something else other than raw GPU power.
There is an occasional exception, Doom eternal for example manages to still gain around 15% over the 3080 and jump from more than 360 FPS to well over 400, which is both insane and pretty useless so for 1080p gaming, you should probably be looking at an upcoming RTX 3070 or rumors 3060 Ti instead because even this 3080 seems like overkill.
Talking about Esports/ "Pro Gamer" 1080p Performance
The only exception is if you're an actual professional gamer or a full-time streamer, and you make your living by winning games.
Because even at 1080p at lower settings to maximize your FPS, the 3080 will do much better than the 20 series RTX GPU, and this 3090 will do a bit better than the 3080 in some games.
So, I'm absolutely not saying RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080 that you should buy a 3090 for 1080p gaming, but if you're that person that has a 360-hertz monitor high-end peripherals and to whom every single frame matters and it can be a difference between winning or losing a game and RTX 3090 might not be completely insane only just a tiny bit.
Performance Summary
RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080 - For most gamers, the RTX 3090 doesn't add that much, and it just makes this RTX 3080 GPU look like an even better deal.
Even if we look at 4k gaming where we can see the biggest impact of this new generation.
The difference between these two cards is just too small to justify the price premium of the 3090, as you would need to pay twice as much for a pretty rough, 10 to 12% upgrade, and that also explains by in post, what it comes to RTX 3090 focus completely on 8k Gaming.
Instead, or at least in their presentation and their reviewer's guide, but not so much on their product page, and I think that they need to make sure that this is crystal clear to everyone
So it doesn't cause unrealistic expectations, And then, disappointment to people that want to buy this 3090
About "8K Gaming" RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080
When it comes to 8k Gaming. I didn't test the 3080 GPU because, you know, there's no point.
But seeing actual frame rates of over 60 FPS on an 8k resolution with the RTX 3090 is just insane to remember that is four times the pixels of a 4k monitor.
Control that straining and Wolf and Stein, all managed to get 60 fps or more on this resolution and fortnight played comfortably at 70 to 80 FPS.
But 8k gaming is a thing of the future and that's something that I believe we should consider as a serious topic today.
Now looking at the PC monitors there is only one single 8k monitor from Dell, which isn't intended for gaming.
While there are a couple of 8k TVs in the market, I don't see how those are a real alternative for gaming enthusiasts.
The cheapest 8k TV with HDMI 2.1 It's available here in the Netherlands is the 65 inch LG nano cell.
Why would you get that as a gamer a 4k OLED TV with instant pixel response times & 120hz refresh rate for less money?
RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080 -You have to remember. While many games can run at 8k. Many get nowhere near playable frame rates and old games will run smoother if you just run them at 4k resolution.
Anyways, so it's great that NVIDIA is taking steps towards the future of gaming, but it still doesn't justify spending this much money on an RTX 3090 today.
PSU Advice / Power Consumption
Now one very important thing to keep an eye out for is the power consumption, the RTX 3090 GPU uses a little bit more power than the RTX 3080 as expected.
The overall system power consumption going up a little bit more as well so a nice, good quality 750 watt power supply is a good starting point for the 3090 a rig, or a good quality 650 watt power supply for the 3080 rig last RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080.
Gigabyte Gaming OC Cooler Performance
RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080 - If you're serious about overclocking, make sure you go a step or two from looking at the thermal and noise performance gig if I did a really good job here.
When I look at the RTX 3080 in comparison to the Nvidia MSI Gaming X Trio and the Asus of OC is just does well.
In Overclocking mode the thermals are great and noise levels aren't so reasonable 38.8 decibels so you can hear it a bit, but it's not loud.
The silent mode makes the card, almost completely silent while still showing good thermal results
You can just pick between these two very nicely balanced profiles depending on your preference or, depending on your tolerance for noise.
In a noise normalized test with every cooler at 40 decibels, the gigabyte shows a good improvement over the founder's edition from Nvidia, but it is less than two degrees behind the Asus and the MSI cards which is a really good result, because the gigabyte is meant to be slightly cheaper
For the RTX 3090 graphic cards, I only have the MSI Gaming exterior to compare it with. And we see a very similar result with two very well-balanced fan profiles.
The larger MSI performs a bit better at a fixed noise level their cooling solution is a little bit more efficient.
But remember, you will lose the dual bios, the extra HDMI port, and that extra year warranty. If you go for the MSI RTX graphics cards.
Gigabyte Gaming OC Conclusion
Gigabyte done a really good job with their gaming go see this time around, assuming that the price will be quite competitive. Per usual, and considering the performance of this card, all the extra features and the extra long warranty.
This gave me go see should be a great model to consider if you're looking to buy any RTX 3000 series card.
Conclusion RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080
Let's comes to this 3080 versus a 3090 discussion that most of you already made your mind up by now.
And if you look at some blender benchmarks that scale perfectly with these extra cores of the 3090, and they can show some real benefits for professionals
Or if you look at some heavy effects and resolve that will simply not work on a GPU that doesn't have enough memory.
RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080 - This GeForce RTX 3090 is an interesting choice and you know the only one out there.
So if you consider it as a business expense, it is not a bad deal, and it does have a better value than the Titan cards from previous generations that did cost even more back then.
But for gaming, the RTX 3090 is in a pretty rough position Nvidia 8k claims are impressive and very progressive.
But by the time 8k gaming becomes a real thing, we'll be looking at the next generation of GPU.
It's a nice glimpse into the future, but its current resolutions pay more than double to get something of a 10 to 12% gain, it's just really hard for me to justify.
Now I know that some of you will still get it because it is better, even for the tiny little bit, and you don't care how much it costs you simply won't settle for less.
I cannot objectively recommend getting a 3090 over 3080 for gaming, especially when you look at how this RTX 3080 performs.
This card does almost as well as the RTX 3090 GPU, it leaves the 2080 and the 2080 Ti way behind.
It lets you play every game on 4k resolution, comfortably, and it can be bought for a reasonable price.
So I strongly recommended it last week, and I still stand by that completely.
Now that is it for today. I hope you enjoyed this blog post, if you did please drop me a comment and subscribe to this blog to never miss future posts. Bye guys.