Top: Logo of the series Bottom: A GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition released in 2020, the series' flagship model until the RTX 3090 Ti released in 2022
The lineup was designed to compete with AMD's Radeon RX 6000 series of cards. It consists of the entry-level (and previously laptop-exclusive) RTX 3050 and laptop-exclusive RTX 3050 Ti, the mid-range RTX 3060, the upper-midrange RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070, the high-end RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 308010GB, and RTX 308012GB, the laptop-exclusive RTX 3080 16GB, and the enthusiast-class RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3090, and RTX 3090 Ti. This was the last generation from Nvidia to have official support for Windows 7, as the latest drivers for the current generation of cards require at least Windows 10 as of the time of writing.[4][5]
The GeForce RTX 30 series began shipping on September 17, 2020.[6][7] The initial launch, consisting of the RTX 3070, RTX 3080, and RTX 3090, occurred during the 2020–2023 global chip shortage, resulting in widespread and notable shortages of the series as a whole that lasted from the series' launch until 2022.
The GeForce RTX 30 series was succeeded by the GeForce RTX 40 series, powered by the Ada Lovelace microarchitecture, which first launched in 2022.[8]
Launch day for the RTX 3080 was September 17, 2020.[9] The lack of pre-order functionality and high demand exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and boost in scalping, resulted in a large number of online retailers struggling with the sheer number of purchases.[9][10]Newegg had completely sold out as expected on Black Friday. Long lines formed outside physical stores with stock, such as Micro Center in the United States,[11] and Dospara in Japan.[12] Twitter users reported that they used bots to buy large numbers of cards to resell for higher prices.[13]
Nvidia released a statement the following day, apologizing for the difficulties with their online store, which went down on launch day due to high traffic.[14] On October 2, Nvidia announced that it would delay the release of RTX 3070 cards by two weeks to guarantee availability.[15] On October 5, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced delays due to supply shortages, which were expected to go on until 2021.[16] On October 9, the company announced that all Founder's Edition graphic cards in the United States would temporarily be sold via Best Buy, while the official web store would be upgraded to improve the shopping experience.[17][18][19] In early December, Nvidia blamed continued component shortages on Samsung wafer shortages, resulting in chip shortages, among other factors.[20]
Shortages of RTX 30 series cards continued throughout 2021[21] and well into 2022 [22]. In an effort to limit purchases by crypto miners, Nvidia announced in February that the RTX 3060 cards would be able to detect algorithms for mining of the Ethereum cryptocurrency and halve the hash rate.[23] Shortly after release, Nvidia accidentally released a driver update which disabled the detection.[24] In March, TechRadar reported that the shortages could continue until the third quarter of the year, in part blaming a global GDDR6 memory shortage and the cards' supply being bought out by cryptominers.[25] In April, Hong Kong Customs and Excise seized 300 non-video CMP cards.[26]
Nvidia officially announced new RTX 3080, RTX 3070, RTX 3060 Ti Limited Hash Rate (LHR) SKUs on May 18, 2021, which limits the Ethereum hash mining hash rate.[27]
Nvidia released the RTX 3080 Ti on June 3, and the RTX 3070 Ti one week later, on June 10. Both included the cryptocurrency mining hash rate limiter.[28]
There have been multiple attempts to meet the demand. EVGA introduced a system designed to put people into a queue, with the goal being to prevent cards from selling out quickly and decrease wait time.[29]
Besides the Founders Edition, there are also a variety of aftermarket cards, referred to as "custom cards" by Nvidia. The graphics chip is taken from Nvidia and parts of the card are modified according to the company's specifications. Such modifications include: clock speeds, fans, heat sinks, connectors, and aesthetics. Such aftermarket cards tend to perform better than Nvidia's in-house cards, but the increased performance comes with tradeoffs in temperature and power consumption. Manufacturers include Gigabyte, MSI, ZOTAC, Asus, EVGA, and INNO3D.[30][31][32][33][34]
Nvidia officially released the GeForce RTX 3080 12GB graphics card on January 11, 2022 and the desktop GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card on January 27, 2022. The RTX 3050 had previously only had a laptop variant that was launched on May 11, 2021, along with the laptop variant of the RTX 3050 Ti that currently still has no desktop variant. Nvidia officially released the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti on March 29, 2022.
Details
CUDA cores and memory bandwidth per USD for RTX 30-series GPUs
Architectural improvements of the Ampere architecture include the following:
All mobile RTX 30 GPUs support fourth-generation Max-Q. The decision to enable Max-Q Technologies such as Dynamic Boost 2.0 and WhisperMode 2.0 on devices is handled by its manufacturer.[70][71][72]
According to TechRadar, "the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is an incredibly powerful graphics card". However, the problem would be that the RTX 3090 offers similar performance while "it costs significantly less."[87] In addition to its price, they criticized the RTX 3090 Ti's high power consumption.[87] The performance was praised, as the 3090 Ti "will likely be the go-to GPU for creative professionals that need brute force in their day-to-day work." In gaming, "the RTX 3090 Ti fares quite a bit better" compared to the RTX 3090, and even in 8K "will be able to hit a solid 60 fps in many games at high settings."[87]
RTX 3090
PC Gamer described the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 as a "frankly enormous graphics card", which is "supremely powerful" and "more worthy of its Titan credentials than the GeForce branding", as for the average gamer "it doesn't deliver enough over the RTX 3080 to make sense, but for the pro-creator it's a workload-crushing card."[88]
RTX 3080
GamesRadar praised the RTX 3080 for its capability to "run almost any game at 4K60fps with ray tracing" and found that it offers "4K gaming at an accessible price for the first time ever".[89] According to The Verge, "4K gaming arrived with the RTX 2080 Ti", but "the RTX 3080 does the same and more at a much more affordable price point."[90] Overall, the RTX 3080 would be "great for 1440p or 4K gaming"; however, they criticized the requirement of a 750W power supply as well as the 10GB of VRAM regarding future games.[90]
RTX 3070
Jim McGregor from Forbes found that "the RTX 3070 is the perfect solution for the more mainstream gamer", while "the competitive gamer or high-end creator will still likely opt for the GeForce RTX 3080 or RTX 3090."[91]
Support
Nvidia transitioned driver support for the Windows 7 operating system to legacy status and stopped issuing new security drivers for this operating system in September 2024.[92] The RTX 30 series is the last Nvidia GPU architecture to support the Windows 7 operating system; the RTX 40 and later series of GPUs require Windows 10 or later.
12Core boost values (if available) are stated below the base value inside brackets.
12Pixel fillrate is calculated as the number of render output units (ROPs) multiplied by the base (or boost) core clock speed.
12Texture fillrate is calculated as the number of texture mapping units (TMUs) multiplied by the base (or boost) core clock speed.
↑Precision performance is calculated from the base (or boost) core clock speed based on a FMA operation. Calculation for accumulated Tensor (FP16) computation is: Tensor Cores * core clock * 256 / 1000. When used with the sparsity feature, the ratio is 2:1.
↑Cards with GDDR6X send two bits per transfer. The transfer rate should not be confused with the bit rate.
12Max-Q design values are also accounted inside the final clock rate value. For models with Max-Q technology, the effective speeds of memory transfer and bandwidth are stated below inside brackets.
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