A closer look at Nvidia’s new RTX 3080

Nvidia promises great things with the GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. “Twice the performance” of the RTX 2080 is perhaps the biggest claim of them all, with promises of a breakthrough in PC gaming. While we’re still putting the RTX 3080 through its paces, here’s a closer look at what the actual hardware looks like.

Nvidia has switched to a new pennant board for the RTX 3080 and combined this PCB with a new cooling shroud. That means the RTX 3080 forms a figure of eight, with fans flanking on either side. Nvidia is using a push-pull system here, with the fan on the left acting more like a traditional air cooler by pushing air out of the PCIe slot. The fan on the right sucks air into the card, which then escapes on the opposite side near the CPU cooler and rear case fan.

Nvidia claims that this is a more optimal airflow model, reducing GPU temperatures on the RTX 3080 by around 20 ° C, but there are concerns that it could affect CPU temperatures by blowing air directly over it. the CPU. Either way, this new card should offer quieter and more efficient cooling.

Another big change with the RTX 3080 hardware itself is a new 12-pin connector. It’s smaller than using two traditional eight-pin connectors, but it means you have to use a rather cumbersome adapter that splits up and hangs off the side of the card. Fortunately, Corsair has committed to creating a dedicated 12-pin connector for these cards, and hopefully other PSU manufacturers will create their own versions as well. These new 12-pin connectors will only be found on Nvidia’s own RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 cards.

Compared to the RTX 2080, the RTX 3080 isn’t much bigger. It’s a bit longer at 285mm vs. 267mm, but it’s still a dual-slot design and will fit most cases. The same cannot be said about the size of the RTX 3090, which promises to be a card monster in more ways than one. Nvidia’s RTX 3080 will ship with 10GB of GDDR6X memory, and Nvidia is using 8,704 CUDA cores combined with a 1.71GHz boost clock. All of this adds up to 29.7 teraflops of performance.

We’ll put this performance to the test against the RTX 2080 for 4K and 1440p gaming in the coming days to see where Nvidia’s claims land. Check back soon for the full GeForce RTX 3080 review. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 will launch on September 17 at a price tag of $ 699.