Ampere Discussion Thread

[SteelCrysis]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/rtx-3080-sold-out

Nvidia’s RTX 3080 launched earlier today, but unless you woke up as soon as the sales went live or, perhaps, had a bot that bought it for you, you wouldn’t know. We did our best to guide potential customers on where and how to buy the RTX 3080 yesterday afternoon, but the new holder of the Best Graphics Card crown is already sold out at every website we listed.

B&H’s entire site is down right now, in fact. And, according to customers, the cards sold out so fast that no amount of preparation would have let them get one.
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Online retail is more important than ever right now, with many unable or unwilling to enter brick-and-mortar stores in the midst of the pandemic. And, unfortunately, that means we’re also more vulnerable to bots than ever, as well. As with the 1080 launch, we’d expect stock to start reappearing anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months from now. Though we could also see the shortage lasting into next year, given the card's stark jump in performance and the potential for cryptocurrency miners to start adopting it as a new standard.

In the meantime, our friends over at PC Gamer reached out to Nvidia, which reportedly said the following:

We've just spoken to Nvidia: “We are seeing unprecedented demand for the RTX 3080. We have been in production since August and are making them as quickly as possible. Our NV team and partners are shipping more every day to etailers & retailers”

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia...-apologize

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 GPU , one of the best graphics cards, launched today, and it sold out almost instantly. Nvidia has apologized for the situation regarding orders on its own website, and Newegg posted a statement to Twitter to justify the situation.

Nvidia put a statement up on its forum in a locked thread entitled "RTX 3080 Nvidia Store Availability," which, as of this writing, has been downvoted 126 times.
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It further added that the company is manually reviewing orders in an attempt to thwart scalpers and bots, and that more cards are being shipped daily.
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Newegg claims it got more traffic today than on Black Friday morning, and that it sold out in five minutes, even with bot protection. It encourages those who want an RTX 3080 to use its Auto Notify feature and check in regularly. In response, some Twitter users have claimed that cards had sold out before Auto Notify let them know about stock.

In a follow-up, Newegg added that the card would have sold out even faster if the site didn't have traffic issues, and added that Auto Notify isn't a guarantee.

EVGA, which sells its own cards, thanked followers on Twitter for patience after "overwhelming demand" and also recommended the use of a notify feature.
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The cards also sold out almost immediately at Best Buy, B&H, Amazon and Microcenter, the latter of which was featured in photos that went semi-viral on social media with lines outside stores.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia...rtage-2020

Since the Nvidia Ampere Keynote, we've known the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 are going to be absolute power suckers, Nvidia itself recommends a bare minimum of a 750W power supply for the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, but you'll need larger power supplies for some systems. Our testing backs that up, too; we observed up to a 335W average power draw from just the 3080. This means many of us will need new power supplies, unfortunately right during a PSU shortage that has sent pricing skyward on some models (more on that shortly).
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Power Supply Requirements for Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090
For the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 PSU requirements, you'll want a 750W power supply if you pair the card with a mainstream Core i5/i7 processor or Ryzen 5/7 CPU. That requirement jumps to 850W for Intel Core i9 and Ryzen i9 chips, with a peak of 1000W for Intel HEDT and AMD Threadripper platforms.

Power Supply Requirements for Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
Mainstream Core i5/i7 and Ryzen i5/i7 system PSU requirements stay the same at 750W for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 as they are for the RTX 3090. However, you only need an 850W power supply for HEDT/Threadripper and Core i9/Ryzen 9 platforms.

Power Supply Requirements for Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
Finally, for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 PSU requirements, you'll "only" need 650W for Core i5/i7 & Ryzen 5/7 systems, 750W for Core i9/Ryzen 9 systems, and 850W for HEDT/Threadripper platforms.
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If only it were that easy. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, power supply volume has been at an all-time low, causing stock outages and prices to rise on some models. We touched upon the topic a month ago, and the cause of the PSU shortage is a multi-pronged issue:
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Looking at 750W power supply listings on Newegg.com, it appears that stock for PSUs is okay today, but prices are still over-inflated on most units. So if you're one of those unlucky people that don't have a qualifying unit to compliment your RTX 3080, be prepared to pay even more for your RTX 3080 upgrade than what you see on the GPUs sticker.

Supply chain issues can take months to resolve, and we may not be in the worst of the power supply shortage yet. Given the current state of the market and the expected rush of new PSU orders as enthusiasts build out new Ampere systems, it's possible we could see the supply situation worsen, or pricing increase further. We'll update as necessary.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amazon...ber-launch

The GeForce RTX 3070, which could be a serious contender for the best graphics card in the mid-range category, lands on October 15. Despite that, Amazon has already listed PNY's GeForce RTX 3070 8GB XLR8 Gaming Epic-X RGB Triple Fan Edition and GeForce RTX 3070 8GB Dual Fan, as spotted via @momomo_us.
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Nvidia has disabled preorders with Ampere, meaning everyone gets a fair chance at snatching up a GeForce RTX 3070 come October 15.

https://www.tomshardware.com/features/nv...benchmarks

If you're thinking about purchasing the RTX 3080, we still maintain that having a good CPU is important, meaning at least a six-core Intel or AMD Ryzen processor. Of course, it's all relative as well. Maybe you're looking to upgrade your entire PC in the coming months, but you want to wait for Zen 3 to launch. Or maybe you just can't afford to upgrade everything at once. Depending on your current graphics card, making the jump to the 3080 might be warranted even on an older PC, especially if it's only going to be a temporary solution. How you want to upgrade is a personal decision, and it's entirely possible to stuff the RTX 3080 into an old 2nd Gen Core or AMD FX build if you want. We wouldn't recommend doing that, but it's possible.

While the biggest differences in performance occurred at lower resolutions and settings, it's also important to look at the bigger picture. The Core i9-9900K and 10900K might 'only' be 10% faster than a slower CPU, but that's almost a whole step in GPU performance. RTX 2080 Ti was 15-20% faster than the RTX 2080 Super, but it cost 70% more. If you're running an older GPU with an older CPU and you're planning to upgrade your graphics card, it's probably a good idea to wait and see what the GeForce RTX 3070 brings to the table, as well as AMD's Big Navi. You might not miss out on much in terms of performance while saving several hundred dollars, depending on the rest of your PC components.

As always, the sage advice for upgrades is to only make the jump when your current PC doesn't do what you want it to do. If you're pining for 4K ultra at 60 fps, or looking forward to games with even more ray tracing effects, the GeForce RTX 3080 is a big jump in generational performance. It's clearly faster than the previous king of the hill (the RTX 2080 Ti, or even the Titan RTX), at a substantially lower price. Just don't expect to make full use of the 3080 if you pair it up with an old processor.

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/31509...erformance

Why open a discussion of Nvidia’s latest Ampere with a reminder of Turing’s launch flaws? Because Ampere, as near as I can tell, fixes every single one of them. Having taken such a negative stance on Turing at launch, it’s appropriate to revisit the question of whether I feel the same way about Ampere on its debut.

I do not.

ExtremeTech has not yet received an Ampere GPU for review, so I’m basing this opinion on coverage from our sister site PCMag, as well as HotHardware and Ars Technica. Sometimes, different reviewers have significantly different opinions on a product, but that’s not the case here. Everyone thinks Ampere is an amazing GPU.
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Ampere offers performance uplifts of 1.5x – 1.8x in 4K gaming, with the degree of improvement depending on the title. If the 1080 Ti was the first GPU to offer uncompromising 4K performance, the RTX 3080 is the first GPU to offer good 4K performance with a chance of turning ray tracing on. Features like DLSS 2.0, while not strictly introduced with Ampere, make DLSS far more interesting (and useful when it comes to boosting game performance). At $700, the GPU isn’t cheap — but it’s a vastly better deal than the RTX 2080 represented at launch. Comparing backward against Pascal, the launch price on the RTX 3080 is higher, but performance is far better. The eventual Ampere GPUs that hit the $500 price point will still significantly outperform any GTX 1080.

As for AMD, RDNA2 is going to have to be something very special to compete against Nvidia at the top of the product stack. According to data at 3DCenter.de, the multiple-review average for the 5700 XT is ~50.5 percent of the RTX 3080’s performance. Because scaling is never perfectly linear, AMD will need a potent combination of increased core counts (80 CUs is the most common rumor, up from 40), increased clock speeds, and potentially some additional IPC gains from RDNA2 in order to cleanly beat the RTX 3080.

AMD has promised a 1.5x performance-per-watt improvement over RDNA, but that doesn’t tell us anything about what the average performance improvement will be. We can assume that doubling up core counts would roughly double performance assuming the GPU is balanced, but that’s only an approximation — and AMD would need additional gains from clock or efficiency to bring Big Navi in ahead of the RTX 3080.

AMD always has the option to position Big Navi as a strong option against the RTX 3070 and lower GPUs, similar to how the RX 5700 XT and 5700 were competitors for RTX 2060 and 2070. For now, however, Nvidia is decisively redefining high-end performance — and they’re doing it at better launch pricing this time around.

I haven’t had the ability to test one yet, but I trust the opinions of my colleagues. Ampere looks to be everything Turing wasn’t, I’m considering buying one out of my own pocket for AI upscaling work, and the GPU has no weak points that anyone has identified. Stellar work.