At long last, the RTX 30 series GPUs have been unveiled.
It should come as no surprise that they represent a significant leap in graphics technology.
The announcement video covers more than just the new GPUs, though, and they go into detail about several exciting new developments for GeForce GPU users.
Nvidia Reflex, launching soon for all RTX card users, will drive down latency in games, and provide a huge advantage in competitive gaming, with Destiny 2 set to be the first game to utilise this new technology.
Nvidia Broadcast is the new tech for streamers, that can remove or blur backgrounds, superimpose you into a new scene, track your movement and provide a green-screen style effect. It’s very cool tech and will be coming to RTX cards soon.
There are a lot more incredibly interesting breakdowns, like the DLSS AI Deep Learning explanation, and I’d highly recommend watching the whole video.
The big reveal, of course, is the 2nd Gen RTX cards; the RTX 3070, RTX 3080 and behemoth RTX 3090 GPUs. If you just want to watch the new card announcements, skip to 18:00 minutes in:
Excited? We sure are!
The RTX 3070 is more powerful than an RTX 2080 Ti, but costs just $499. That’s insane, especially when the RTX 2080 Ti costs $1199. The RTX 3080 packs even more power, and it will be retailing for just $699. Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor.
The biggest (both in size and performance) GPU, though, is the RTX 3090, the successor to the Nvidia Titan. With a staggering 24Gb of GDDR6X, this monster will retail for $1499, which is actually cheap. Well, comparatively, anyway. If your pockets are deep enough, the performance is unrivalled.
If you hadn’t already been considering switching to PC for the next-gen, maybe these epic cards will change your mind? For around £1000 you will be able to build an unbelievably powerful rig that will annihilate anything the next-gen consoles can offer.
Considering the new RTX 3070 is more powerful than a 2080 Ti, we can expect to see the price of these older GPUs plummet in the coming months, making it possible to build a phenomenal gaming rig for peanuts. Could we be seeing the advent of RTX 20-series desktops coming onto the market priced closer to what you’d pay for a console? With these new cards on the horizon, you’d have to have more money than sense to buy one of the current-gen cards at today’s prices, and the only way manufacturers are going to shift their stock is if prices plummet.
We can’t wait for the next generation of graphics cards to start making it into PCs and the consumer market, and the likes of Acer and MSI have already announced their RTX 30-series GPUs and hardware, like Acer’s Orion series desktop PCs.
The next-gen consoles aren’t even out yet, but they’re at real risk of being massively outclassed before they even launch. There’s no doubt that on a price-performance scale, the new consoles are going to be off the chain, and we still don’t really know how much separates these giants of couch gaming. The true next-gen battle, though, is between AMD Navi 2X and Nvidia Ampere.
Let’s hope the new Big Navi (Navi 2X) cards in the Xbox and PlayStation can bring as much power to the table as these Nvidia powerhouses!
The RTX 3080 will be available to buy from September 17th, 2020
The RTX 3070 will be available to buy this October
