GeForce RTX 3070 Vs 2080Ti

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Yesterday NVIDIA announced the much-anticipated GeForce RTX 30 series which is based on its Ampere architecture and built on an optimized version of Samsung’s 8nm process.

The cards have been heavily leaked over recent weeks and we knew there had been lots of claims of increased performance and we also knew that NVIDIA were going to charge some crazy prices for the top of the range RTX 3090.

However, what was not expected was that NVIDIA would claim that GeForce RTX 3070 should offer RTX 2080 Ti level performance for just $499/£470

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Performance claims

geforce rtx 3080 exploded view full airflow visualization web crop

NVIDIA has claimed that the GeForce RTX 30 series biggest generational leap ever

NVIDIA claims that the new GeForce RTX 3070 is 60% faster on average than the GeForce RTX 2070. That means it is faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, the previous flagship model.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 is 50% more powerful than Titan RTX!

As for the models higher up in the range – NVIDIA says the RTX 3090 is 50% more powerful than the Titan RTX, and that the card is able to deliver 60fps at 8K. Then there’s the RTX 3080, which offers double the level of performance of the RTX 2080 for the same price.

All of this sounds amazing and if true the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 will easily be the sweet spot for most gamers offering the best price to performance ratio. I don’t think many gamers feel that the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti underperforms in any game regardless of resolution and refresh rate.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 won’t beat the RTX 2080 Ti in some scenarios

There are some caveats though, the RTX 3070 won’t beat the RTX 2080 Ti in all scenarios, in particular, if you do play at 4K and want the benefits of ray tracing you may have to go higher.

For specific scenarios, the larger amount of RAM in the 2018 graphics card could handle higher resolution better. The RTX 3070 is said to support 4K gaming at 60 frames per second, but it won’t handle that rate with ray tracing on.

NVIDIA GeForce Specification Comparison

RTX 3090RTX 3080RTX 3070RTX 2080 Ti
CUDA Cores10496870458884352
Base Clock1.40GHz1.44GHz1.50GHz1.35GHz
Boost Clock1.7GHz1.71GHz1.73GHz1545MHz
Memory Clock19.5Gbps GDDR6X19Gbps GDDR6X16Gbps GDDR614Gbps GDDR6
Memory Bus Width384-bit320-bit256-bit352-bit
VRAM24GB10GB8GB11GB
Single Precision Perf.35.7 TFLOPs29.8 TFLOPs20.4 TFLOPs13.4 TFLOPs
Tensor Perf. (FP16)285 TFLOPs238 TFLOPs163 TFLOPs114 TFLOPs
Ray Perf.69 TFLOPs58 TFLOPs40 TFLOPs?
TDP350W320W220W250W
GPUGA102?GA102?GA104?TU102
Transistor Count28B28B?18.6B
PCIe Interface4.0 x164.0 x164.0 x163.0 x16
ArchitectureAmpereAmpereAmpereTuring
Manufacturing ProcessSamsung 8nmSamsung 8nmSamsung 8nmTSMC 12nm FFN
Launch Date24th September17th of SeptemberOctober 202020th September 2018
Launch PriceMSRP: $1499/£1399MSRP: $699/£649MSRP: $499/£469MSRP: $999

Currently, we only have NVIDIA’s word on the performance, but looking at the specification, we can see that the new RTX 30 series models offer a huge bump in performance numbers with the RTX 3070 eclipsing the RTX 2080 Ti in every spec apart from the memory size.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 vs RTX 2080 Early Benchmarks

Eurogamer managed to snag some exclusive access to test the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 giving us some idea of the performance gains to be had. While this does not strictly relate to the RTX 3070 vs RTX 2080Ti it does give us some idea of the generational improvements.

The tests carried out were all done following guidelines from NVIDIA, this meant only certain games could be tested and all games were tested under 4K resolution with settings set as high as possible.

Based on this testing, NVIDIA is accurate in saying this is the biggest generational jump in years, the performance increases seen are greater than the shift between GTX 980 and GTX 1080.

RTX 3080 vs RTX 20804K/Max Settings Perf Boost
Borderlands 381.6
Doom Eternal84.2
Shadow of the Tomb Raider69.8
Control77.6
Ray Tracing: Quake 2 RTX92.3
Ray Tracing: Control/High RT/DLSS Perf77.6

At the very least, this test appears to indicate that the GeForce RTX 3080 will offer superior performance to the RTX 2080 Ti. That is not quite the same as the RTX 3070 beating it, but still impressive nonetheless as you now have a £650 card offering the same performance as a £1000+ card has been offering for the past year or so.

My questionable maths says the RTX 2070 should offer better performance

If we look at the worst result for the RTX 2080 and assume the RTX 2070 sees the same 70% gain for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, that should, in theory, correlate with it beating the RTX 2080ti.

Looking at TweakTown, who benchmarked both the RTX 2070 and RTX 2080ti in Shadow of Tomb Raider, they managed to achieve:

  • RTX 2070
    • Minimum – 36fps
    • Average – 42fps
  • RTX 2080Ti
    • Minimum – 58fps
    • Average – 65fps
  • RTX 3070 (assuming the FPS accurately increases by 70%)
    • Minimum – 61fps
    • Average – 71fps

I am not going to say that the above numbers are anywhere near accurate to what you will expect, but at the very least it looks very positive.

Price and Availability

Nvidia is launching the RTX 3070 last, perhaps to avoid eager gamers opting for this over the RTX 3080 (which is what I may end up doing). It will launch sometime in October for $499/£469, for custom cards from the likes of ASUS the prices will vary depending on the design.

The first card to launch will be the RTX 3080 on the 17th of September for $699/£649 then shortly after the RTX 3090 for an astronomical $1499/£1399

Overall – Will the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 beat the RTX 2080 Ti

Based on the specs and the initial testing and my not very scientific calculations the GeForce RTX 3070 looks like it will out perform the RTX 2080ti at least in some scenarios.

I suspect all of this will be best case scenario, NVIDIA obviously want to make the card look as good as possible, so in some games it will be better but others a little slower.

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