Hardware & Technical Latest Nvidia Ampere Rumours

[Morbad]

Overall, I like the reference cooler. I don't think it's going to cool as well as non-reference 3-4 slot monstrosities, but I think it will be quite competitive as far as noise vs. cooling goes. I also like that it exhausts about half it's flow outside of the case. Both the size and extra exhaust are important for me as I plan on putting a 3080 in my SFF system that's using a Lian-Li TU150 case; it doesn't really have room for a thicker card (if I keep my bottom intake fans) and has limited ventilation (even after cutting out the stamped grills). The other aspects of the FE seem fine, though the PCB shape seems like it would be fragile if I put a GPU only block on it at some point.

Ultimately, I think initial supply will be tight all-round, and I'll take almost any 3080 that will physically fit that comes from a reputable seller with a decent return policy. If I miss out on the first batch of 3080s, I may hold out for big Navi.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

Overall, I like the reference cooler. I don't think it's going to cool as well as non-reference 3-4 slot monstrosities, but I think it will be quite competitive as far as noise vs. cooling goes. I also like that it exhausts about half it's flow outside of the case. Both the size and extra exhaust are important for me as I plan on putting a 3080 in my SFF system that's using a Lian-Li TU150 case; it doesn't really have room for a thicker card (if I keep my bottom intake fans) and has limited ventilation (even after cutting out the stamped grills). The other aspects of the FE seem fine, though the

Ultimately, I think initial supply will be tight all-round, and I'll take almost any 3080 that will physically fit that comes from a reputable seller with a decent return policy. If I miss out on the first batch of 3080s, I may hold out for big Navi.

OK, reassuring.
I'm also not really worried about the hot air blown to my CPU cooler as I feel like the airflow will be much better within the case thanks to the pull fan, offsetting its effect - I have a large fan front at the bottom, full mesh front, bottom and top with side openings as well, all with an exhaust fan at the top back (I prefer it this way, RGB light shows and glass are not my cup of tea). I.e. I expect the airflow will be better from the front bottom towards the back top. The only issue could be drawing more air through the side which doesn't have a dust filter.

Big Navi - I am ruling AMD out based on the drivers alone. While acknowledging that Ryzen CPUs are good, so far the Intel-Nvidia combo worked out for me so well, that I won't risk any instability through going with any AMD products. If I miss out from the first batch, then I can wait... I am confident I will be able to be there in time, but the actual ordering will be done by a friend of mine who lives in Germany, FE is not sold where I live.

 

[GroG79]

3060 TI incoming

Nvidia working on Geforce RTX 3060 Ti for October

Coming before RTX 3060 to counter Radeon RX 6000 series It appears that Nvidia has somewhat changed its launch plans and we might see an RTX 3060 Ti as early as October, another SKU that will be based on the same GA104 GPU as the RTX 3070. According to details provided by Videocardz.com, the RTX...

fudzilla.com

And 28 october rdna2

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1303726639013036033

Source: https://twitter.com/Radeon/status/1303726639013036033


Put your bets down now Ladies and gentlemen!

 

[GroG79]

Big Navi - I am ruling AMD out based on the drivers alone. While acknowledging that Ryzen CPUs are good, so far the Intel-Nvidia combo worked out for me so well, that I won't risk any instability through going with any AMD products. If I miss out from the first batch, then I can wait... I am confident I will be able to be there in time, but the actual ordering will be done by a friend of mine who lives in Germany, FE is not sold where I live.

Dont live in the past. Both companies made errors in the driver departments a lot of times.

 

[Morbad]

OK, reassuring.
I'm also not really worried about the hot air blown to my CPU cooler as I feel like the airflow will be much better within the case thanks to the pull fan, offsetting its effect - I have a large fan front at the bottom, full mesh front, bottom and top with side openings as well, all with an exhaust fan at the top back (I prefer it this way, RGB light shows and glass are not my cup of tea). I.e. I expect the airflow will be better from the front bottom towards the back top. The only issue could be drawing more air through the side which doesn't have a dust filter.

Hard to completely prevent GPU exhaust from being ingested by the CPU cooler, unless the GPU has a radial blower cooler, or is on a water loop with radiators that dump heat elsewhere. The reference cooler seems like a passable compromise, though we'll have to wait till the 16th to see actual tests.

If you have non-filtered potential intakes, you can always block them off. My TU-150 has a grill on the side panel that I just covered with a piece of adhesive sound dampening foam from the inside. Making sure the only intake has to be through filters dramatically increases the length of time the inside of the case can go between cleanings.

Big Navi - I am ruling AMD out based on the drivers alone. While acknowledging that Ryzen CPUs are good, so far the Intel-Nvidia combo worked out for me so well, that I won't risk any instability through going with any AMD products. If I miss out from the first batch, then I can wait... I am confident I will be able to be there in time, but the actual ordering will be done by a friend of mine who lives in Germany, FE is not sold where I live.

AMD has had more than a year to refine their RDNA drivers and the current 20.8.3 drivers are pretty solid. I had some annoying issues with my 5700XT, but they've largely been resolved and I don't expect big Navi to be problematic.

I do prefer NVIDIA's control panel and there are more solid 3rd party tools for tuning NVIDIA driver settings and profiles, but those are minor concerns.

 

[Patrick_68000]

3060 TI incoming

Certainly a very good card which will be sold in millions of copies.

 

[Morbad]

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition FLIR (thermal) footage leaks - VideoCardz.com

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition thermal testing One of the reviewers accidentally uploaded footage from FLIR (thermal) testing of the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition. The video has been quickly taken down, but Reddit users made copies. The video shows NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders...

videocardz.com

As noted, not much context included in that thermal test, so it's impossible to come to any firm conclusions.

It's very likely that the card, as with previous models, has a target GPU temperature and a fan profile that doesn't ramp up until this temperature is approached. The real test will be seeing temperatures at noise normalized fan speeds.

 

[Morbad]

After seeing all the AIB models that have been announced and considering the likely binning situation, I'm even more heavily leaning toward the FE model than I was before.

Firstly, the only dual slot AIB models I see are the lower end EVGA SKUs and EVGA has three models above these, which means the odds of high binned die making it into one of the EVGA dual slot parts is probably close to non-existent.

NVIDIA only has one SKU of each model, so it should be pure luck of the draw. I could go with a pre-binned AIB model, but there are significant price premiums here.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

After seeing all the AIB models that have been announced and considering the likely binning situation, I'm even more heavily leaning toward the FE model than I was before.

Firstly, the only dual slot AIB models I see are the lower end EVGA SKUs and EVGA has three models above these, which means the odds of high binned die making it into one of the EVGA dual slot parts is probably close to non-existent.

NVIDIA only has one SKU of each model, so it should be pure luck of the draw. I could go with a pre-binned AIB model, but there are significant price premiums here.

And to be honest, I see the FE stocks to last at least a reasonable half an hour or so compared to most retailers' AIB stocks too - at least this is was my experience during the height of the mining craze.
I'm looking forward to Gamers Nexus review later today.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Hardware Unboxed's 3080 review:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csSmiaR3RVE

 

[Straha Yeagar]

Take my money right now...

 

[Morbad]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTeXh9x0sUc


Some difference in GPU samples and test methodologies between reviews. Gamer's Nexus is considerably more detailed outside of the benchmark results, but Hardware Unboxed gives PCI-E generation and CPU comparisons.

I doubt NVIDIA sent any bin 0 boards out to reviewers, so it shouldn't be surprising if some retail FE samples perform slightly worse.

As expected, the power limiter is an issue, though it's hard to tell exactly by how much, as power consumption and clock speeds will vary from sample to sample. The offset overclocking GN is doing is also not ideal. I'm not sure why they didn't do a full frequency/voltage curve; maybe there wasn't time or maybe MSI AB doesn't fully support the 3080 yet. I expect the non-reference AIB boards with triple 8-pin power connectors to allow for considerably higher power limits, but prior leaks show even lower max power limits on the reference, non-FE, PCBs.

FE cooler seems very solid, though as with all vapor chamber bases, flatness and contact pressure are less than perfect.

PCI-E 3.0 vs. 4.0 is irrelevant, also as expected.

 

[askavir]

3060 TI incoming

Nvidia working on Geforce RTX 3060 Ti for October

Coming before RTX 3060 to counter Radeon RX 6000 series It appears that Nvidia has somewhat changed its launch plans and we might see an RTX 3060 Ti as early as October, another SKU that will be based on the same GA104 GPU as the RTX 3070. According to details provided by Videocardz.com, the RTX...

fudzilla.com

And 28 october rdna2

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1303726639013036033

Source: https://twitter.com/Radeon/status/1303726639013036033


Put your bets down now Ladies and gentlemen!

That's great news, as the XX60 cards are usually the best bang for buck.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTeXh9x0sUc


Some difference in GPU samples and test methodologies between reviews. Gamer's Nexus is considerably more detailed outside of the benchmark results, but Hardware Unboxed gives PCI-E generation and CPU comparisons.

I doubt NVIDIA sent any bin 0 boards out to reviewers, so it shouldn't be surprising if some retail FE samples perform slightly worse.

As expected, the power limiter is an issue, though it's hard to tell exactly by how much, as power consumption and clock speeds will vary from sample to sample. The offset overclocking GN is doing is also not ideal. I'm not sure why they didn't do a full frequency/voltage curve; maybe there wasn't time or maybe MSI AB doesn't fully support the 3080 yet. I expect the non-reference AIB boards with triple 8-pin power connectors to allow for considerably higher power limits, but prior leaks show even lower max power limits on the reference, non-FE, PCBs.

FE cooler seems very solid, though as with all vapor chamber bases, flatness and contact pressure are less than perfect.

PCI-E 3.0 vs. 4.0 is irrelevant, also as expected.

I think Morbad's reasoning is still valid. The better PCBs will cost much more at AIBs, leaving FE a very good value choice.

I think I'll proceed to snatch one tomorrow. At the end I'm getting 70-80% better performance vs. my second hand 1080ti (low end MSI Armor) at about 67% higher price.

My only second thoughts come from the 1080ti's still adequate performance - I only need a better GPU for the preordered G2 Reverb that may or may not arrive by end of October.

 

[Chris Simon]

I think Morbad's reasoning is still valid. The better PCBs will cost much more at AIBs, leaving FE a very good value choice.

I think I'll proceed to snatch one tomorrow. At the end I'm getting 70-80% better performance vs. my second hand 1080ti (low end MSI Armor) at about 67% higher price.

My only second thoughts come from the 1080ti's still adequate performance - I only need a better GPU for the preordered G2 Reverb that may or may not arrive by end of October.

I think there are other considerations as well. Jay pointed out an interesting thing - when comes to 30XX it seems that even an 8700K is bottlenecking it, as well as many newer CPUs (including lower models last gen Ryzen and 9/10th gen Intels).
So I'm afraid they really only make sense in a new system, as just a GPU upgrade, they might as well kind of suck (at least in the price vs. performance ratio)

Personally I have big plans for this winter.
Right now I have a R3600 + 5700XT in a VR rig and main gaming rig with R3800X + 2080Ti. I think I'm going to suffle them around a bit.
I'm going to wait for the next Ryzen announcement as well as the Radeon GPUs, though.

My plan is to build a small ITX system as a semi-mobile VR station and build it into some piece of furniture (I need to evacuate a half of one room every time I want to play roomscale VR so I'd like to make everything easily moveable) so I think that's where my 2080Ti is going to end up, while 5700XT is going on the shelf to the rest of the Radeon collection.
Then I'd like to build a completely new rig (CP2077 themed, or at least that's the plan) and I'm now 70% sure it's going to be RTX3080.
20%, if I have a really successful October, income-wise, I may consider 3090 if the performance uplift is significant (after all even 3080 still can't play FS2020 at 60FPS. I reserve a small percentage for the new big Navi flagship.
To be honest I do prefer AMD over nVidia, but I prefer performance even more. But if the big Navi ends up around 3080 (or even slightly below), I might choose that one.

Erhm.. in any case - I'm thoroughly impressed by nVidia, right now. The architectural leap they just did is really impressive.

 

[Morbad]

One of the more technical reviews, courtesy of Igor's Lab:

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review- a big step forward and the tombstone for Turing | igor´sLAB

The long awaited day has arrived and yes, there is a lot to report. Of course there are tests for 10 games in two resolutions and 17 tests for workstation applications and studio apps – that will be a…

www.igorslab.de

I was searching to see if a shunt mod would be possible on these new parts and, to my significant disappointment, I don't think it will be (see page 2 of the above review). If I wasn't planning on putting this card in a SFF system with a 650w PSU, lack of the ability to take a shunt mod would be an outright deal breaker for me, as there is likely no other way to bypass the board's power limit without a lot of soldering or the off-chance that it will take a 3090 bios. The VRM and cooling will handle more than 370w board power, but that's all the 3080 firmware will allow and it does seem to be a significant performance hurdle, with every review I've seen hitting power limits long before anything else.

I'm almost tempted to wait to see what non-reference AIB's seem to be best binned and have the highest power limit available, but since I'm already going to be pushing the power and cooling capabilities of the system I intend to use, it's probably not worth the wait or the price premium.

I think there are other considerations as well. Jay pointed out an interesting thing - when comes to 30XX it seems that even an 8700K is bottlenecking it, as well as many newer CPUs (including lower models last gen Ryzen and 9/10th gen Intels).
So I'm afraid they really only make sense in a new system, as just a GPU upgrade, they might as well kind of suck (at least in the price vs. performance ratio)

Depends on the game and settings. Very few recent games at 4k with maxed out settings are going to be significantly CPU bottlenecked even with a part from a few generation ago. However, there are certainly some outliers.

For many games (Elite: Dangerous for example), you can just keep throwing eye-candy or AA at them until they become GPU limited.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

One of the more technical reviews, courtesy of Igor's Lab:

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review- a big step forward and the tombstone for Turing | igor´sLAB

The long awaited day has arrived and yes, there is a lot to report. Of course there are tests for 10 games in two resolutions and 17 tests for workstation applications and studio apps – that will be a…

www.igorslab.de

I was searching to see if a shunt mod would be possible on these new parts and, to my significant disappointment, I don't think it will be (see page 2 of the above review). If I wasn't planning on putting this card in a SFF system with a 650w PSU, lack of the ability to take a shunt mod would be an outright deal breaker for me, as there is likely no other way to bypass the board's power limit without a lot of soldering or the off-chance that it will take a 3090 bios. The VRM and cooling will handle more than 370w board power, but that's all the 3080 firmware will allow and it does seem to be a significant performance hurdle, with every review I've seen hitting power limits long before anything else.

I'm almost tempted to wait to see what non-reference AIB's seem to be best binned and have the highest power limit available, but since I'm already going to be pushing the power and cooling capabilities of the system I intend to use, it's probably not worth the wait or the price premium.



Depends on the game and settings. Very few recent games at 4k with maxed out settings are going to be significantly CPU bottlenecked even with a part from a few generation ago. However, there are certainly some outliers.

For many games (Elite: Dangerous for example), you can just keep throwing eye-candy or AA at them until they become GPU limited.

VR aside, I'll be rather monitor limited at 1440p and 75hz. That, or settings as you say.

 

[Arioch]

Hmmm, well that sucks!

Supposed to go on sale at 2pm BST, spent 15 minutes refreshing the Nvidia store page waiting for the “Notify Me” box to change into a purchase box, aaaaand...

...it went straight to “Out Of Stock”

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

The German Nvidia site is still on 'notify me'.

Edit: a couple of minutes ago it just flipped to out of stock immediately. Reading reddit this si the case everywhere, not a single person was able to present an FE purchase. But e-bay is already full of listings. What a dumpster fire launch this is.

 

[Arioch]

I’ve just received my “Notify Me” email that I signed up for last week - 53 minutes after the cards instantly sold out.

Cheers for that, Nvidia!