NVIDIA Ampere GPUs launched

Yesterday NVIDIA announced three new Ampere GPUs, the 3070, the 3080 and the bfgpu, the 3090. Prices and relative performance improvements compared to the last generation Turing cards were compared through a series of gameplay demonstrations and bar-charts.

The performance increase across the board is nothing short of phenomenal. The generational leap is substantial compared to the previous generation graphics cards. Not only that, and this is the best part, we may not need to sell our kidneys to get the best that NVIDIA has to offer. With the exception of the 3090, which is overkill and priced at close to a whopping USD1500, which is, in all sense, a Titan card, only reserved for content creators and the occasional hardcore gamer, who plays at 4K or even 8K (is that even a thing yet, gaming at 8K at this point of time?), the 3080 and 3070 is great for mainstream consumers. It’s tempting for sure to get the latest and greatest, but lets be realistic, the 3080 is the next best choice. Coming at USD699, the 3080 offers substantial performance gains over the 2080ti, all at almost half the price.

Already I can literally hear the value of all the 2080tis out there plummeting in value overnight. 2080ti, with its exorbitant price at launch, just does not give good value for money from the get go, is now pummeled by the 3080 in not just the price, but performance gains as well.

I am so glad that I resisted the temptation of making the upgrade. I was tempted several timed over the past couple of years of making the upgrade, checking feverishly at times on whether the prices of 2080tis has dropped significantly since its launch. But it barely budged. I was so close to clicking the ‘buy’ button on Amazon on several occasions, but in the end, never made it into the final step of purchasing.

I can’t wait to get my hands on a good 3080 when it releases officially on the 17th of September. Usually at this time of the year, Apple would have announced and launched their latest flagship phone. But NVIDIA has taken that slot this year, and it seems that are making aggressive moves to push their products out to market as soon as possible, as they are sensing stiff competition from the red camp, that is AMD, which is just about to announce their latest lineup of GPUs for the gaming market and general consumers. Also not forgetting the consoles from Sony and Microsoft, powered mainly by AMD graphics chips.

NVIDIA has proven once again that they have made a huge generational leap in terms of raw graphical computing power that is worth upgrading to. I am pretty sure that demand will be very high at launch, as the prices for both 3080 and 3070 GPU models are very compelling for the performance you are getting.