Ampere Discussion Thread

[SteelCrysis]

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

Much to the surprise of no one, anywhere, Nvidia announced the GeForce RTX 3060 today during its not-technically-part-of-CES 'special event.' The RTX 3060 will be coming to desktops and laptops in February, and the desktop part at least will feature 12GB of GDDR6. Will it join the best graphics cards as the new mainstream favorite, and where will it place on our GPU benchmarks hierarchy? Nvidia didn't provide too many details, but we expect it to land at roughly the performance of the outgoing RTX 2070 Super (maybe only RTX 2070).

The biggest news is perhaps the price. Nvidia says the card will launch at $329, which is less than the launch price of the RTX 2060 ($349). Whether you'll be able to find a card at that price any time soon is a different story. Given the current GPU shortages, plus cryptocurrency surges, we fully expect the RTX 3060 to sell out quickly. Maybe we'll end up pleasantly surprised, but don't count on it.
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Core specs weren't revealed, but Nvidia did give performance data. 13 TFLOPS and 25 RT TFLOPS with 101 Tensor TFLOPS puts it about 20-25 percent below the RTX 3060 Ti. Rumors and leaks strongly suggest the RTX 3060 will use a new GA106 GPU, though we may see future variants based off harvested GA104 GPUs.

The GA106 will only have support for six GDDR6 memory channels. In a somewhat unusual twist, Nvidia has announced the card will have 12GB of GDDR6 memory. That's 50 percent more memory than the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070, and even surpasses the RTX 3080. There have been leaks suggesting 6GB cards are also in the works, but whether those will be for laptops only, or an RTX 3050 Ti, isn't clear. There's still a distinct possibility the RTX 3060 will end up like the GTX 1060, with two variants with different memory capacities. Let's hope not, but ... probably.
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We're actually very happy to see 12GB, even if it's not absolutely necessary today, because plenty of games are already bumping into VRAM limits at 8GB, never mind 6GB. Whether the GPU will be fast enough to really use the additional capacity remains to be seen. In some games, the 12GB could actually put it close to the 3060 Ti, maybe even ahead of it, which would be a bit strange but not impossible.

We also expect Nvidia will launch updated RTX 30-series parts with double the VRAM of the existing GPUs at some point. Whether it's called the RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3080 Super, or RTX 3080 20GB (most likely the first), we should get higher VRAM configurations in the coming months. An RTX 3070 Ti with 16GB is also likely to show up. Those will inevitably cost more than the existing models, and considering the continuing GPU shortages it's probably not a bad idea for Nvidia to wait a bit before announcing and launching those parts.

We'll be back in February with the full review of the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB, to see how it stacks up against the rest of the current graphics card offerings. The price looks good, but then so do the other official prices on RTX 30-series cards. Let's hope supply can start to match demand.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvi...n-review/9

Now that we've seen the RTX 3070 along with AMD's RX 6800, we have a better feel for the GPU market we're likely to see during the coming year. AMD doesn't have a viable alternative to the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti at the $400 price point yet, so for now, this is the undisputed upper mainstream champion. Some might say $400 isn't really a mainstream GPU, but given the sales of previous-gen GTX 1070 and RTX 2060 / 2060 Super cards, there are clearly plenty of people willing to spend that much money on a graphics card. And to be clear, this is a great card for that price.

The RTX 3060 Ti is about 35-40 percent faster than the previous-gen 2060 Super and about 30 percent faster than AMD's RX 5700 XT — and that's without even getting into ray tracing or DLSS support. In ray tracing games, the 3060 Ti lead grows to 40-45 percent over the 2060 Super, and AMD's RX 5000 series doesn't even have the option to try and run DXR games. Even against AMD's new RX 6800, though, the RTX 3060 Ti delivers better overall DXR performance — and can improve by around 30 percent on average for games that support DLSS, using DLSS Quality mode. Plus, Cyberpunk 2077 will launch in about ten days [not that I'm counting, #fanboy] with plenty of ray tracing effects and DLSS 2.0. The RTX 3070 is supposed to be good for 1440p ultra with ray tracing, or 4K ultra without ray tracing, which means the 3060 Ti should be able to handle those settings as well. And thankfully, unlike graphics cards, digital downloads of a game aren't going to sell out.

Which brings us to the problem of supply. We'll be shocked if RTX 3060 Ti doesn't sell out just as fast as the 3070, 3080, 3090, 6800, and 6800 XT. Hell, we've seen people buying used previous-gen cards off eBay for more than their original launch price, which is sad. It's not quite as bad as the GPU shortages during the great cryptocurrency mining craze of 2017, but it's not much better. And hey, Bitcoin is flirting with $20,000 per BTC again, so maybe there's still hope. (/sarcasm, if that's not clear.)

Anyway, Nvidia's CEO said Ampere supply likely wouldn't keep up with demand until 2021. That actually makes plenty of sense, as it takes about 5-6 months from placing an order for a bunch of chips (silicon wafers) to getting shipping graphics cards using those chips. Six months ago, we were right in the midst of the first COVID-19 surge, and there was a lot of uncertainty about the future. In retrospect, Nvidia could have doubled or even tripled its orders and probably been just fine, but we can't imagine what the reaction would have been had someone suggested that back in April! Hindsight, such a lovely thing.
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Right now, Nvidia just gave a nice boost in performance and features to the $400 market. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is a relatively small step down from the RTX 3070, with a larger step down in price. That hits the sweet spot in both price and performance — in fact, out of the current and previous-gen GPUs, it's the best overall card in price to performance ratio (fps per dollar). If you're hoping to upgrade to a new graphics card, the RTX 3060 Ti definitely belongs on your shortlist.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvi...n-review/7

The GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition is everything we expected. It's a lower power card with a smaller footprint, and it basically trades blows with the previous generation king of the hill, the RTX 2080 Ti. Two years later, and $500 now potentially gets you the same performance as the old $1,200 GPUs. If there's one constant in the world of GPUs, it's the ever-increasing performance at any given price point. But we're in the midst of a lot of GPU stuff, and without seeing what AMD's Big Navi brings to the table, it's impossible to give a final verdict for the RTX 3070.

AMD will spill the beans on Big Navi tomorrow, but we don't expect the hardware to arrive for review until mid-November or later. That's fine because, in all likelihood, almost no one is going to be able to buy an RTX 3070. Just like the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 sold out within minutes (or seconds) of launch, we expect the initial batches of RTX 3070 will go fast. Historically speaking, that's what always happens for new high-end cards. RTX 2070, 2080, and 2080 Ti sold out at launch; GTX 1070, 1080, and 1080 Ti also sold out at launch; and so did GTX 970 and 980. The question isn't so much whether the new GPUs will sell out, but rather how long they'll be harder to purchase.
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The bottom line is that we can't declare a winner right this moment. Nvidia's Ampere RTX 30-series GPUs are potent, and the RTX 3070 brings new levels of performance to the $500 market. We expect to see 30-series parts push down into the $300-$400 range in the coming months as well. AMD's Big Navi is more of a wildcard since we don't quite know what to expect in terms of ray tracing performance or DLSS alternatives. AMD may have as many as four Navi 2x GPUs launching in the next month or two (or three or four), also with prices ranging from perhaps $250 up to $600 or more.

If you're already set on going with Nvidia and don't want to spend more than $500, you can try to pick up an RTX 3070 on Thursday. If you're willing to spend a bit more money, we'd argue the added VRAM, bandwidth, and performance of the RTX 3080 means it's the better option at $700 — not that you can find RTX 3080 in stock, but you can keep trying. For the undecided, we suggest waiting to see what happens with Big Navi, and of course, those who prefer AMD GPUs will want an RX 6000 regardless of how it stacks up.

Whatever your GPU choice, it's an exciting time after about two years of waiting for the next big thing to arrive. Of course, there will be even faster options next year, so if you already have a capable GPU, just enjoy it until it's no longer sufficient. Maybe by then, we'll be talking about RTX 6070 and RX 9000.