All companies indulge in marketing spiel when they launch a new product. This is the nature of the game. And when it comes to the gaming market, the hyperbole around top-end hardware like GPUs can get pretty thick indeed.
The stakes are quite high in 2020 for gaming, with the launch of a new generation of consoles. Nvidia has been dominating the PC gaming landscape since the PS4/Xbox one launched 7-8 years ago.
But the new consoles bring a quantum leap to gaming with monster specs capable of true 4K at 60FPS and even 8K if and when it becomes mainstream. And with AMD making a comeback across both CPUs (vs Intel) and GPUs (vs Nvidia), Team Green had to put in some extra effort.
The place of 3090 in the 3000 Series
There are many things that NVIDIA do better than AMD – one of them is the product naming and branding department. Nvidia GPUs are easy to identify – look at the first two digits to find the generation of the series, and the last two digits to find the GPU tier.
A 3070 is newer than 2070, and the 3090 is better than a 3060/3070/3080. If you want the glory of Ray Tracing, buy an RTX card, if not, then settle for a cheaper GTX card. Nothing could be simpler, regardless of the minor blip that was the jump from the 1000 series to the 1600 series.
In the grand scheme of things for Nvidia in 2020, 3090 is at the apex of their new 3000 series cards, code name “Ampere.” With more power at a lower price, the series is an absolutely massive upgrade over the 2000 series, which was a bit of a let-down in many ways.
But if you look at the pricing placement of the individual Ampere cards, 3090 is a special case. Yes, it is their most powerful card, but according to Nvidia, it is not the gaming flagship – that honor goes to the $964 priced RTX 3080 (US$700), which is incredibly powerful in its own right, capable of 4K 60FPS, like the PS5/Xbox Series X.
Where does that put the 3090 then, priced at a whopping $2000? Well, it is aimed squarely at content creators and other professionals who need a beefy GPU in their systems, as well as a small elite group of gamers.
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Before we look at the gaming, let’s get the content creation aspect out of the way.
Yes, the 3090 is absolutely worth it for content creation
Before the 3000 series, professionals had two main options among GPUs – Team Red’s Radeon VII and Team Green’s RTX 2080 Ti. To say that the 3090 wipes the floor with these two cards would be a bit of an understatement.
Let’s start with the AMD card – it comes with 16GB of HBM2 memory and AMDs pioneering 7nm process. It is also significantly cheaper than the 3090, launched a year ago in 2019 for roughly $1000. As for the RTX 2080 Ti, it comes with lower and slower 11GB DDR6 memory at the same price and a 24GB version available at a whopping $3400 (US$2500).
Compared to these older cards, 3090 is an absolute steal at around $2000 for content creation. For this use case, high graphics memory is paramount, and Nvidia has packed 24GB of faster GDDR6X in 3090 while still pricing it lower than the similarly specced 2080Ti.
And Nvidia has also packed in their third generation Tensor core technology in the latest Ampere cards. These are game-changers at the professional level, with huge potential for deep learning and other cutting-edge AI research.
It is not really fair to compare the 3090 to older gen cards. The best comparison is between the 3090 and the latest release from AMD – the much-touted Big Navi. But the flagship RX6900XT will only launch in December.
Even then, the stated 16GB GDDR6 memory should hamper its performance in content creation, leaving the 3090 as the king. But when it comes to gaming, the equations are significantly different.
But for gaming, not so much unless you have really deep pockets
Even before the unveiling of the RX 6900XT and 6800XT, there was a limited sense in buying a 3090 over a 3080 for pure gaming. At best, the 3090 offered a 10-15% performance bump at more than double the asking price.
Spending $2000 just on a GPU is a crazy idea, but at the flagship/enthusiast-level, factors like price to performance hardly matter.
With the October launch of far cheaper options from AMD, the arguments are heavily loaded against the 3090 for gaming. If you want 4K 60FPS, the 3080 or even the much cheaper 6800XT, is more than capable of doing so with aplomb.
In fact, in some games tested by AMD, the RX6000 series cards even beat the 3090 at 4K or 1440 resolutions. The only real space where the 3090 makes sense for gaming would be 8K. But that arena is still undeveloped – the vast majority of gamers are still playing at 1080p!
But if you have deep pockets and an 8K gaming ready setup, the 3090 is definitely the way to go in 2020. No other card will offer you performance at 8K high/ultra in games right now. But for most of us mere mortals playing at 1080/2K or even 4K, the 3080 or RX 6000 series offers better value for money.