Ampere Discussion Thread

[SteelCrysis]

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/palit...oc/39.html

NVIDIA released the GeForce RTX 3070 just six weeks ago, and today, we're reviewing the Palit RTX 3070 JetStream OC. I had the review mostly finished, but couldn't get the last bits done because of the RX 6800 XT and RTX 3060 Ti launches. Out of the box, Palit has overclocked their RX 3070 JetStream OC to a rated boost clock of 1815 MHz, which is a 90 MHz increase over the Founders Edition. This turns into a real-life performance gain of 2%—not a whole lot, but other custom designs are similar. On average, at 1440p, we found the JetStream OC to be 2% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, 15% ahead of the RTX 3060 Ti, and 53% faster than the RTX 2070, which is pretty nice. The RTX 3080 is 21% faster, at 30% higher pricing. AMD's Radeon RX 6800 is only 4% faster than the Palit JetStream, at higher MSRP.

With those performance numbers, RTX 3070 is the perfect choice for the huge 1440p gamer crowd, but the card also has enough muscle to run many titles at 4K 60 FPS, especially if you are willing to dial down settings a little bit. The RTX 3070 is also a great choice for 1080p Full HD if you want to drive a high-refresh-rate monitor with 120 or 144 Hz. For just 1080p 60 Hz, it's overkill unless next-gen titles go overboard with their hardware requirements, which is highly unlikely. NVIDIA launched the RTX 3060 Ti just recently, which is a decent alternative for these scenarios, too, but falls back a little bit in performance, especially when betting on RTX you should be tempted to consider the RTX 3070.
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Right now, it is hard to comment on pricing because all cards are out of stock. On eBay and other platforms, scalpers have put up listings at terrible prices that don't reflect a realistic price point either. For the Palit RTX 3070 JetStream OC, we're expecting an MSRP of around $520, which is a reasonable price point relative to the $500 for the FE. Even just $20 more isn't easy to justify—you're getting a better cooler, but it will end up running louder and a bit warmer than the Founders Edition. The factory overclock yields 2% in real-life performance, which is not that big of a difference, either. AMD has priced their Radeon RX 6800 at $580, which is a pretty big increase over $520 for 4% more gaming performance and worse raytracing performance. AMD does offer 16 GB on their RDNA 2 cards, but I'm not convinced it will make a significant difference in the future, and it certainly does not today. Let's hope that supply normalizes soon, so you can get you hands on these fantastic new graphics cards.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidi...on/41.html

With the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, NVIDIA is finally pushing Ampere below the $500 price point, which makes it attractive to an even larger audience of gamers. The new RTX 3060 Ti is based on the same GA104 graphics processor as the RTX 3070, just with some rendering units disabled. The RTX 3060 Ti is targeted at definite 1440p gaming with 60 FPS and entry-level 4K at lower details or with DLSS enabled. Raytracing is a core focus of NVIDIA's Ampere lineup, too. The RTX 3060 Ti will offer a great RT experience at 1080p and 1440p in most titles.

Averaged over our test suite at 1440p resolution, we find that the RTX 3060 Ti beats the RTX 2080 Super by 3%, which makes it only 12% slower than the RTX 2080 Ti that did cost a fortune not long ago. The performance uplift over the RTX 2060 is a staggering 58%, 38% more than the RTX 2060 Super. The RTX 3060 Ti sits right in the middle of the AMD competition—the RX 5700 XT is 21% behind the RTX 3060 Ti and the RX 6800 is 20% faster, which suggests we'll soon see an RX 6700 Series that will go head-to-head with the RTX 3060 Ti.

With these performance numbers, the RTX 3060 Ti is an excellent choice for gamers using the 1440p resolution. It also has enough horsepower to handle 4K, but you'll have to reduce details a little bit in the most demanding games. Considering that price, this will be a reasonable tradeoff for many. I can also imagine plenty of 1080p Full HD gamers wanting the RTX 3060 Ti because it will give them enough FPS for high refresh-rate monitors, even with enabled raytracing at maximum details.
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The RTX 3060 Ti improves power efficiency once again—by a few percent over RTX 3070 and 10+% over RTX 3080/3090. AMD has launched their new RDNA2 Radeon cards just recently, which are doing a little bit better than Ampere in performance per watt; however, the RTX 3060 Ti can make up a bit of ground here, too. Just like for previous NVIDIA generations, power efficiency is the cornerstone for a successful product. If power draw were higher, heat output would go up, which would require a louder or larger cooler and a more complex PCB design, all of which increases production cost, too.

While there has been a lot of discussion on 10 GB VRAM for the GeForce RTX 3080, even more so considering AMD offers 16 GB on their cards, the RTX 3060 Ti will be perfectly fine with 8 GB. It offers substantially lower shading power compared to these "4K" cards, so the limiting factor will be the shading-rate capability, not the amount of memory. Next-gen consoles do have more memory, but their 16 GB is for the OS, game, and graphics combined, which means effective graphics memory is close enough to the 8 GB offered by the RTX 3060 Ti. I've been hearing good things from developers about the direct-to-GPU disk streaming capabilities of the new consoles, especially on PS5, which could reduce VRAM requirements considerably. Guess we'll have to wait and see. Should you ever feel VRAM is running out, just sell the RTX 3060 Ti and buy whatever card is right at that time.

NVIDIA is positioning the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition at $399, which is an extremely competitive price. At that price point, it offers price/performance comparable to the GTX 1660 Super, which has the best price/performance ratio of all NVIDIA offerings. It would also be a better deal than the Radeon RX 5600 XT. If you can find an RTX 3060 Ti at $400, then definitely go for it. I'm having my doubts, though. Looking at recent launches from both AMD and NVIDIA, it seems MSRP prices are a fantasy true for only the first batch, there to impress potential customers, with actual retail pricing ending up much higher. Looking at the other RTX 3060 Ti reviews today, we had a hard time getting price points out of many manufacturers, and what we got was substantially higher than $400, with the ASUS STRIX at $500, MSI Gaming X at $470, and Palit at $440+. From vendors, I heard that "the supply should be pretty good," but that "it also might not be enough for more than a few hours" or that "we might see $500 soon," so let's wait a few days and hope people will actually be able to buy this fantastic graphics card at reasonable pricing.