Nvidia RTX 3090 vs 3080 Benchmark comparison on 7+ games | 10GB vs 24GB | 3080 VS 3090
0After two years of waiting, Nvidia’s ferocious GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards are here, starting with the highest-end options. Now that the dust has settled, enthusiasts may be wondering: Should I buy the $700 GeForce RTX 3080, or the $1,500 GeForce RTX 3090? We’ve reviewed several models of each, and after hours of hands-on testing, we have the answers you need.
Bottom line? It depends on what you’re planning to use them for. Here are our quick-hit recommendations.
Buy the GeForce RTX 3080 if you’re a pure gamer. Nvidia calls the RTX 3080 this generation’s gaming flagship, and it delivers staggering performance well in excess of the hallowed 60-frames-per-second mark at both 4K and high-refresh-rate 1440p, as well as 3440x1440 ultrawide. And yes, that’s with all the eye candy cranked to 11. This GPU is so fast you can finally play ray traced games with DLSS enabled and still hit 60 fps at those lofty resolutions—something you couldn’t say with comparable RTX 20-series graphics cards.
The RTX 3080 is a monumental upgrade over the RTX 2080 and GTX 1080 Ti alike. Just be sure your power supply can handle the RTX 3080, as Nvidia’s new “Ampere” GPU architecture and ultra-fast GDDR6X memory modules use significantly more power than prior GeForce generations.
Buy the GeForce RTX 3090 only if you’re a professional who can use it for content creation or research tasks, or if you’re a deep-pocketed gamer who values pure performance over actual price-to-performance value. Let’s tackle those separately, starting with gaming.