Benchmarks for Nvidia‘s GeForce RTX 3090 have leaked online and the results may strike some as disappointing. However, the devil is often in the detail and that appears to be the case here as well, with the tests not necessarily as revealing as some suggest.
Nvidia recently announced its top of the line graphics processor, along with two other GPUs that were priced much lower. The GeForce RTX 3090 retails for $1499, while the less powerful RTX 3080 is just $699, and the RTX 3070 costs the least at $499. That sets expectations for the card that is over twice the cost of the middle option to have much higher performance. According to Nvidia, this is clearly the case. The GeForce RTX 3090 offers 8K resolution at 60 frames per second (FPS). It has many more CUDA cores, more ray tracing cores and more RAM. In every specification, it ranks as the largest and the fastest and the extra cost is thought to be reflected in its greater capabilities.
In a video published by TecLab on Bilibili, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 benchmarks showed a modest 10-percent improvement over previously leaked RTX 3080 benchmarks. While the video is no longer available, screenshots were captured by VideoCardz showing the results. Note that the translation in the screen captures mostly references “10 thousand Yuan Flagship” and “5 thousand Yuan Flagship” instead of using the names of the Nvidia cards. However, one does show the GPU as the RTX 3080. In addition to benchmarks, several games were tested with RTX and DLSS toggled on and off for comparison. The more expensive card consistently scored 7 to 11-percent better, but shouldn’t a larger difference be seen? Perhaps not.
Why The RTX 3090 Is Worth The Much Higher Price
Given that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 costs more than double the price of the RTX 3080, shouldn’t it have double the performance? That may be an unrealistic expectation. The reason why is that the RTX 3090 is designed not only for great speed, but great speed at a higher resolution. Remember that this is an 8K GPU. The maximum quality of the RTX 3080 is 4K resolution. It’s easy to think of 8K as being twice that of 4K, but the resolution doubles in both dimensions. That means 8K resolution is four times as detailed as 4K. The new middle-priced Nvidia GPU is impressive, but its more expensive and powerful sibling can quadruple that power in terms of resolution. This is quite a feat and one that wasn’t shown in the recently leaked benchmark tests.
It should also be noted that both cards were not identified by name, though the RTX 3080 was shown in one screenshot. If these are the models claimed, were they production models of the new cards? Even if the results shown by the leaked benchmarks are true, it shows only that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is faster than the RTX 3080 when outputting 4K resolution. Nothing is known for certain on what to expect when pushing four times as many pixels and outputting 8K. There is good reason to believe Nvidia’s statement that this is the biggest improvement in GPUs it has ever made and if 4K gaming is all that is needed, the RTX 3080 is plenty powerful. For those that want more or want to build a future-proof system, Nvidia’s RTX 3090 will be a satisfying, though expensive choice.
