NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (Desktop) vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 sits behind the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti as the second fastest desktop GPU in NVIDIA's current Turing line-up. The RTX 2080 has 2,944 shader units, 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM and a 256-bit interface that runs at 14 GHz and delivers up to 448 GB/s.

Features

NVIDIA manufacturers the TU104 chip on a 12 nm FinFET process and includes features like Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and Real-Time Ray Tracing (RTRT), which should combine to create more realistic lighting effects than older GPUs based on the company's Pascal architecture (if the games supports it). The RTX 2080 is also DisplayPort 1.4 ready, while there is also support for HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) and H.265 video en/decoding (PlayReady 3.0).

Performance

The RTX 2080 should perform on par with a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, but it will outclass the latter in games that support DLSS and RTRT. The RTX 2080 is at the pinnacle of consumer desktop GPUs and can play most triple-A games released in 2018 at high graphics in 4K.

Power Requirements

NVIDIA estimates that the RTX 2080 should consume a maximum of 215 W, which is 35 W higher than the company rates its GeForce GTX 1080.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU or 3080 Ti Mobile (for laptops, GN20-E8) is the fastest graphics card for notebooks in early 2022. It is based on the GA103S Ampere chip and offers 7,424 shaders and 16 GB GDDR6 graphics memory with a 256 Bit memory bus. It supports PCIe 4.0 and will be available in different variants (80 - 175 Watt TGP currently known). The maximum Boost clock can vary from 1125 (80 W) to 1590 MHz (150W and up).

There is no more Max-Q variant (formerly used for the low power variants) but every OEM can choose to implement Max-Q technologies (Dynamic Boost, Whispermode).

The performance depends on the TGP setting and cooling of the laptop. Thanks to the higher core count, the RTX 3080 Ti should be clearly faster than the old RTX 3080 Mobile and therefore well suited for 4K gaming.

The GA103S chip offers 7,424 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 3,712 INT32 ALUs). With Turing all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The GA103S integrates 58 Raytracing cores and 232 Tensor cores (e.g., for DLSS). The L2 cache is 4 MB. The Ampere chips also include an improved 5th generation video encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and a 7th generation decoder (for various formats now including AV1). Compared to the GA103, the GA103S integrates only a 256 Bit memory bus.

The GA103S chip is manufactured by Samsung in 8nm (8N), which is not quite able to keep up with the 7nm node at TSMC (e.g. used by AMD and also for the professional GA100 Ampere chip).