Expectations for Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 have been building, and a leaked new set of benchmarks reveals a significant leap over the previous generation [3DMark benchmark results for what is purported to be the GeForce RTX 3080, discovered by Hardware Leaks, show that it is up to 21% faster than Nvidia's most powerful graphics card, the GeForce RTX Titan However, since the Titan is not really a consumer GPU, for a better comparison, the GeForce RTX 3080 achieved a score of 18,257, 30% faster than the current generation's top-of-the-line graphics card, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition

The results should be noted

Notably, the GeForce RTX 3080 is not mentioned by name Rather, the benchmark results were labeled "unknown Nvidia Ampere GPU" However, since Nvidia tends to lead the new generation of GPUs with its top-end graphics cards, one would expect this card to be the equivalent of the RTX 3080, even if it does not end up using that nomenclature

The GPU's core speed of 1,935 MHz and memory clock speed of 6,000 MHz make it clear that this graphics card is a high-end component, not a mid-range GPU from Nvidia

According to HardwareLeaks, the base GA102 die on which the RTX 3080 is based comes in three variants: the top-of-the-line Titan model, the RTX 3090 or Ti model, and the standard RTX 3080 The GPU's memory configuration comes in 24GB, 12GB, and 10GB variations There are This was further authenticated on Twitter by technology leaker KatCorgi

With 21 Gbps memory bandwidth, the RTX 3090 (also known as the RTX 3080 Ti) appears to be an absolute powerhouse of a graphics card However, the RTX 3080's bandwidth is 19 Gbps, so the RTX 3080 will be no slouch when it comes to high-end graphics performance

All of this makes the new Ampere-based GeForce RTX graphics cards a significant upgrade over current GeForce GPUs that use the Truing architecture We also expect that the next generation GeForce graphics cards will have on-board ray tracing capabilities and may even include a co-processor to help handle their demanding rendering techniques

Raytracing performance will likely become more important in future games, as the PS5 and Xbox Series X may usher in a new generation of titles that incorporate ray-tracing hardware and use realistic lighting techniques Therefore, having a series of GPUs that can chew through the graphic demands of ray tracing may be a boon for PC gamers

We expect Nvidia to pull the covers off the next GeForce RTX lineup at some point in August or September This is because their nemesis AMD is set to release a high-end Radeon graphics card that will be a GeForce killer