While the RTX 3090 was Nvidia’s big dog, the RTX 3080 has been their gaming flagship, leaving the 3090 to fill a role similar to the Titan cards in the past. So Nvidia’s announcement of the RTX 3080 Ti Monday was big news for 4k focused gamers. The RTX 3080 Ti is situated to be the new gaming flagship. It’s hard to believe that the RTX 3080 was launched 9 months ago and the last flagship Ti card the RTX 2080 Ti was back in September of 2018. Unlike the RTX 3080 which had a 2-week wait from announcement to the launch, the RTX 3080 Ti on the other hand was announced Monday, reviews are out today and you can (hopefully) buy them tomorrow. But before then, today I’m going to see what the 3080 Ti is all about and how it performs, so let’s dive in!
Product Name: Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition
Review Sample Provided by: Nvidia
Written by: Wes Compton
Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE
How does the RTX 3080 Ti compare
So the RTX 3080 Ti runs on the same Ampere architecture and GA102 GPU that the RTX 3080 and the RTX 3090 are based on. Nvidia has then mixed the two up, turning off a few SMs from the 3090 and downclocking things slightly, and most importantly cutting the crazy 24 GB VRAM of the RTX 3090 down to 12GB. What you end up with is an amped up 3080. The 3080 Ti breaks through the 10k CUDA core count with 10240 cores. Then with the third generation Tensor cores, you go from 272 on the RTX 3080 to 320 on the RTX 3080 Ti. Then for the ray tracing RT cores, the RTX 3080 has 68 of the gen 2 cores and the RTX 3080 Ti steps up to 80. This is all a big step up over the RTX 3080 so the boost clock speeds calm things down slightly being lower than the RTX 3080. The RTX 3080 runs at 1710 MHz where the RTX 3080 Ti is 1665 MHz.
On the memory side of things, the RTX 3080 Ti jumps from 10GB of VRAM on the RTX 3080 up to 12GB of VRAM. They both run GDDR6X and at 19 Gbps. The RTX 3080 Ti however runs on a 384-bit memory controller compared to the 320 bit of the RTX 3080 which gives it a lot more bandwidth. The RTX 3080 has 760GB/sec vs the 921GB/sec of the RTX 3080 Ti with more memory and the bigger controller. They are both built on the same custom 8nm process from Samsung and the transistor count is also the same. But for TGP to power having more of the GA102 enabled the RTX 3080 Ti needs 350 watts where the RTX 3080 was at 320 Watts.
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Specifications |
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Editon |
GeForce RTX 2080 Super Founders Edition |
GeForce RTX 2080 TiFounders Edition |
GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition |
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition |
|
GPU Codename |
GP102 |
TU104 |
TU102 |
GA102 |
GA102 |
|
GPU Architecture |
Pascal |
Turing |
Turing |
Ampere |
Ampere |
|
GPCs |
6 |
6 |
6 |
6 |
7 |
|
TPCs |
28 |
24 |
36 |
34 |
40 |
|
SMs |
28 |
48 |
68 |
68 |
80 |
|
CUDA Cores / SM |
128 |
64 |
64 |
128 |
128 |
|
CUDA Cores / GPU |
3584 |
3072 |
4352 |
8704 |
10240 |
|
Tensor Cores / SM |
N/A |
8 (2nd Gen) |
8 (2nd Gen) |
4 (3rd Gen) |
4 (3rd Gen) |
|
Tensor Cores / GPU |
N/A |
384 (2nd Gen) |
544 (2nd Gen) |
272 (3rd Gen) |
320 (3rd Gen) |
|
RT Cores |
N/A |
48 (1st Gen) |
68 (1st Gen) |
68 (2nd Gen) |
80 (2nd gen) |
|
GPU Boost Clock (MHz) |
1582 |
1815 |
1545 |
1710 |
1665 |
|
Frame Buffer Memory Size and Type |
11264 MB GDDR5X |
8192 MB GDDR6 |
11264 MB GDDR6 |
10240 MB GDDR6X |
12 GB GDDR6X |
|
Memory Interface |
352-bit |
256-bit |
352-bit |
320-bit |
384-bit |
|
Memory Clock (Data Rate) |
11 Gbps |
15.5 Gbps |
14 Gbps |
19 Gbps |
19 Gbps |
|
Memory Bandwidth |
484 GB/sec |
496 GB/sec |
616 GB/sec |
760 GB/sec |
912 GB/sec |
|
ROPs |
88 |
64 |
88 |
96 |
112 |
|
Texture Units |
224 |
192 |
272 |
272 |
320 |
|
L2 Cache Size |
2816 KB |
4096 KB |
5632 KB |
5120 KB |
6144 KB |
|
TGP (Total Graphics Power) |
250W |
250W |
260W |
320W |
350W |
|
Transistor Count |
12 Billion |
13.6 Billion |
18.6 Billion |
28.3 Billion |
28.3 Billion |
|
Manufacturing Process |
TSMC 16nm |
TSMC 12 nm FFN |
TSMC 12 nm FFN |
Samsung 8 nm |
Samsung 8 nm |
Before diving into everything I do always take a look with GPUz to double-check that the listed specifications match up with what I am getting in my testing. In this case, Nvidia has the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition clocked at 1665 Mhz for the boost clock and GPUz does confirm that. This also documents the firmware version our card is running at and the driver which is the 466.54 beta driver provided to press prior to launch.
