The NVIDIA RTX 3080 has been announced as part of NVIDIA's new ‘30 Series’ of graphics cards, which will succeed the line of 2080, 2070, and other cards that have been on the market since 2018.
NVIDIA held a GeForce event on September 1 at 5 PM BST (9 AM PT), where we learnt all about the 3070, 3080 and 3090.
The RTX 3080 is now available for purchase, so read on below to find out all the details...
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NVIDIA RTX 3080 Release Date
We now know that the NVIDIA RTX 3080 release date is September 17th.
The event featured an address by NVIDIA's founder and CEO, Jensen Huang. During the event, Huang touted that this was a 'massive generational leap', and he wasn't wrong.
It's directly competing against the upcoming AMD RDNA2 GPU, and it looks to take on all the 4K games at 120FPS.
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NVIDIA RTX 3080 Price
The ‘20 Series’ back in 2018 began with the 2080 card and subsequently different levels of the graphics cards being released over the next 12 months after. It began with a price of $699, so prior to the NVIDIA event, many assumed it wouldn't be a stretch to see the 3080Ti at around the same price.
During the event on September 1st, the price was unveiled at $699/£649, while offering double the power of the 2080Ti. This huge, and undercuts most of AMD's current graphics cards.
If you’re upgrading from anything that’s less than the ‘1000’ series, you can probably expect 60FPS on a 1440P resolution with this card.
The new 'Ampere' architecture looks to blow many games out of the water, and have it ready for the oncoming games to come in the next six months.
Alongside the graphics card, anybody who buys an RTX 3080 from selected retailers until October 29 will also get a free copy of Watch Dogs Legion and a year's subscription to GeForce Now.
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NVIDIA RTX 3080 Stock Shortages
NVIDIA opted not to have a traditional pre-order period for the RTX 3080, instead opening orders on the day of release. Since September, however, the product has been in high demand, leading to stock shortages across many retail outlets.
Speaking in a Q&A covered by Tom's Hardware, originally intended to be about the recent GTC announcements, NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Huang, gave an insight into the stock situation of the RTX 3080 and 3090 cards.
"The 3080 and 3090 have a demand issue, not a supply issue," Huang stated. " "The demand issue is that it is much much greater than we expected, and we expected really a lot."
"Retailers will tell you they haven't seen a phenomenon like this in over a decade of computing. It hearkens back to the old days of Windows 95 and Pentium when people were just out of their minds to buy this stuff."
"I appreciate it very much, I just don't think there's a real problem to solve. It's a phenomenon to observe. It's just a phenomenon."
Speaking on when stock would be more widely available, Huang said: "I believe that demand will outstrip all of our supply through the year," citing the "double-whammy" of release day orders combined with the Holiday season as causing such unprecedented demand.
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NVIDIA RTX 3080 Specs
The RTX 3080 is based on the ‘Ampere’ architecture so it’s no surprise that it’s an absolute beast. Below are the official specs:
- CUDA Cores: 8,704
- Boost Clock: 1.71GHz
- VRAM: 10GB GDDR6X
- Memory Interface: 320-bit
- TDP: 320W
- Required power connectors: 2 x PCIe 8-pin
Bear in mind that a card this beefy is going to need some serious power to run, NVIDIA is recommending a power supply of at least 750W.
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