New leaks indicate that the rumored GeForce RTX 3080 will offer only a 20% improvement over the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, which may disappoint those expecting a significant upgrade over Nvidia's current generation graphics cards.

This is the first time we've seen this leap.

The leak comes courtesy of KatCorgi, a reasonably respected technical tipster, who tweeted out the performance gains he expects the RTX 3080 to have. Some may find the 20% power increase a bit disappointing, especially considering how powerful the Turing-based GeForce RTX 20 series GPUs were compared to their predecessors.

However, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is Nvidia's current top-of-the-line graphics card and offers enormous performance for around $1,000. As such, a 20% increase in performance over such graphics cards should not be overlooked.

The GeForce RTX 3080, on the other hand, is likely to follow in the footsteps of the GeForce RTX 2080, which, while not cheap, is far more affordable for PC gaming enthusiasts than its Ti-laden sibling. At $600 or $700, the RTX 3080 can be assumed to offer considerably more performance than current $1,000 cards.

Nevertheless, KatCorgi does not reveal the source of such performance claims, so they should be taken with a pinch of salt. Furthermore, given that the next generation of GeForce GPUs have not yet been announced, it is likely that Nvidia is still testing them. With that in mind, such performance leaks may not be indicative of the final product.

Perhaps the real performance test will be how the GeForce RTX 3080 rates against the upcoming AMD Big Navi graphics card, which is touted as an "Nvidia killer" and according to recent performance leaks, the Big Navi is expected to outperform the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and may be 40-50% faster than the 2080 Ti. Therefore, it would logically be faster than the GeForce 3080.

However, much of the performance will depend on how well software and games interact with the latest GPU technology, and since Big Navi uses the same RDNA 2 graphics architecture as the PS5 and Xbox Series X GPUs, next-generation games This could give it an edge in next-generation games.

However, Nvidia is not to be outdone when it comes to GeForce card optimization. With next-generation GeForce graphics cards expected to be available in August or September, and Big Navi possibly coming in November, we may see a proper high-end graphics showdown later this year.