NVIDIA has officially revealed the Geforce Rtx 3000 series of graphics cards, with the RTX 3070, 3080, and 3090. The new line of cards is powered by the Ampere architecture, which brings with it a host of improvements over 2018’s RTX launch.

Unsurprisingly, the RTX 3000 series will have improved raytracing and machine learning (DLSS) performance, much more than its’ previous iterations. After months of rumors, NVIDIA finally revealed its cards confirming most of what has been rumored regarding the launch.

“Today’s launch of NVIDIA Ampere GPUs is a giant step into the future. The work of thousands of engineering years, the GeForce RTX 30 Series delivers our greatest generational leap ever. NVIDIA RTX fuses programmable shading, ray tracing, and AI for developers to create entirely new worlds. Twenty years from now, we’ll look back and realize that the future of gaming started here.” – Jensen Huang, CEO, NVIDIA.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Specs

Take a look at the specs of the RTX 30 series lineup:

The new Ampere cards pack a lot of power, and constitute a generational improvement over Turing. Here all the details directly from NVIDIA:

• GeForce RTX 3070 — Starting at $499, the RTX 3070 is faster than the RTX 2080 Ti at less than half the price, and on average is 60 percent faster than the original RTX 2070. It is equipped with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, hitting the sweet spot of performance for games running at 4K and 1440p resolutions.

• GeForce RTX 3080 — Starting at $699, the RTX 3080 is the ultimate gaming GPU — up to 2x faster than the RTX 2080. Featuring 10GB of the new high-speed GDDR6X memory running at 19Gbps, the RTX 3080 can consistently deliver 60 frames per second for 4K resolution gaming.

• GeForce RTX 3090 — At the top of the stack is the RTX 3090, priced at $1,499 and referred to as
  the “BFGPU” — Big Ferocious GPU. It even comes with a silencer — a three-slot, dual-axial, flowthrough design that is up to 10x quieter than the TITAN RTX and keeps the GPU up to 30 degrees C cooler. Its 24GB of GDDR6X memory can tackle the toughest AI algorithms and feed massive, content creation workloads. The RTX 3090 is up to 50 percent faster than the current ultimate
  PC graphics card, TITAN RTX, enabling gamers to experience 60 fps in 8K resolution across many
  top games.

NVIDIA Ampere Features – 2nd Generation RTX Is Here

While NVIDIA technically revealed the first Ampere powered GPU a while back (NVIDIA A100), we now have more details of what the new architecture brings to the table.

(Note: The following is directly from NVIDIA’s press release.)

• New Streaming Multiprocessors: The building block for the world’s fastest, most efficient GPU, delivering 2x the FP32 throughput of the previous generation, and 30 Shader-TFLOPS of processing power.

• Second-gen RT Cores: New dedicated RT Cores deliver 2x the throughput of the previous generation, plus concurrent ray tracing and shading and compute, with 58 RT-TFLOPS of processing power.

• Third-gen Tensor Cores: New dedicated Tensor Cores, with up to 2x the throughput of the previous generation, making it faster and more efficient to run AI-powered technologies, like NVIDIA DLSS, and 238 Tensor-TFLOPS of processing power.

• NVIDIA RTX IO: Enables rapid GPU-based loading and game asset decompression, accelerating
  input/output performance by up to 100x compared with hard drives and traditional storage APIs. In conjunction with Microsoft’s new DirectStorage for Windows API,(1) RTX IO offloads dozens of CPU cores’ worth of work to the RTX GPU, improving frame rates and enabling near-instantaneous game loading.

• World’s Fastest Graphics Memory: NVIDIA has worked with Micron to create the world’s fastest discrete graphics memory for the RTX 30 Series, GDDR6X.(2) It provides data speeds of close to 1TB/s system memory bandwidth for graphics card applications, maximizing game, and app
  performance.

• Next-Gen Process Technology: New 8N NVIDIA custom process from Samsung, which allows for higher transistor density and more efficiency.

GeForce RTX 3000 New Design and Features

The new graphics cards also come with a new design, a surprise that previous leaks spoiled for many. Here are what the design changes entail:

• Dual-Axial, Flow-Through Thermal Solution – Up to 2x more cooling performance, with a
  stunning unibody design. Gamers and creators will be able to enjoy the unrivaled performance while their GPUs simultaneously run cooler and quieter than ever.

• Exquisite Mechanical and Electrical Design – A stronger mechanical structure, with a new
  low-profile leaf spring along with a new 12-pin power connector, allows more space for
  components and cooling, and is compatible with 8-pin connectors in existing power supplies, with an included adapter.

• HDMI 2.1 – The increased bandwidth provided by HDMI 2.1 allows, for the first time, a single cable connection to 8K HDR TVs for ultra-high-resolution gaming

• AV1 Decode – First discrete GPUs with support for the new AV1 codec, enabling gamers to watch up to 8K HDR internet video using as much as 50 percent less bandwidth.

The GeForce RTX 3080 will be available starting Sept. 17. The GeForce RTX 3090 will be available starting
Sept. 24. The GeForce RTX 3070 will be available in October.

Early adopters of the lineup will also receive a free copy of Watch Dogs: Legion and a one-year subscription to NVIDIA GeForce NOW game streaming service.

NVIDIA revealed a lot of info regarding the lineup, including a host of new features. You can find more GeForce RTX 30 coverage here.