And it lights up
In a special conference this morning, Nvidia announced its newest line of graphics cards as well as GeForce-enabled applications. Previously there were lots of swirling rumors about prices and card strength, with the target looking at 24GB of video memory on the card with a price tag of $1500. As the stream started today, myself and Dan in the Destructoid chat girded our loins for the inevitable pain of a future upgrade. What awaited us was a pleasant surprise.
As expected, the 3000 series was announced with three cards coming, all using the new Ampere architecture which will see a marked improvement over the 2000 series. The flagship GeForce RTX 3080 was announced to have 10GB of GDDR6X memory with a 19Gbps run speed, promising 60 frames per second at 4K resolution. With an MSRP of $699, it’s a whole lot less of a shot to the wallet than initially expected. The “lower-end” card for the 3000 series was also announced as the GeForce RTX 3070. Boasting 8GB of GDDR6 memory, the card will launch with an MSRP of $499.
Then there’s the big boy. Geared toward gamers and content creators alike, the GeForce RTX 3090 is a whopper of a graphics card. Boasting the rumored 24GB of GDDR6X memory, the card used 3 (!) PCI slots. The rumored cost was also on-point with the price coming in at $1,499. Yowza.
Everyone and their mother is looking forward to the release of Cyberpunk 2077, and Nvidia jumped at the opportunity to show off the most anticipated game of the year on its new line of cards. To say it’s impressive would be an understatement.
The 3080 will be the first of the cards to roll out on September 17. The 3090 – or “BFGPU” as Nvidia calls it – will release on September 24. Finally, the 3070 will release on an unspecified date in October.
For a limited time, purchased cards will come with a free copy of the upcoming Ubisoft game Watch Dogs: Legion, as well as a year’s subscription to Nvidia’s game-streaming service.
