Winners and Losers: Nvidia’s RTX 3080 bedazzles while the PS5 leaves gamers empty handed

It has been an exciting week in tech, with launch events coming and going at a frenzied pace that left even the most ardent of fans struggling to keep up.

We’ve seen everything from the new top of the line Oculus Quest 2 VR headset to the certainly unique dual-screen LG Wing hit the scene.

But in this sea of announcements for us here at Trusted Towers there have been two very clear winners and losers over the last 7 days.

Winner: The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

Nvidia’s new Ampere graphics card architecture oozed potential when it launched earlier this year. For those that missed it, Ampere is the follow up to Nvidia’s Turing GPU line of cards and on paper it is seriously impressive, bringing with it a number of key new technologies.

Highlights include a more efficient 8nm manufacturing process, upgraded RT Cores, third-gen Tensor cores and Micron G6X video memory (VRAM).

But this week we found the upgrade isn’t just cool on paper. Having gotten our hands on a Founders Edition RTX 3080, we can confirm the next-gen card is the GPU we’ve been waiting for.

We thoroughly put the 3080 through its paces, throwing every benchmark and test we could think of at it and can now confirm it delivers on pretty much every one of Nvidia’s bold performance claims.

Specifically, the RTX 3080 is the first card we’ve tested that’s truly capable of 4K ray tracing gaming at frame rates over 60fps. This makes it the best card on the market and a new benchmark for performance when gaming.

Related: Best GPU

Loser: PS5 buyers

This week Sony wowed, then expertly dashed, UK PlayStation fans hopes. Specifically, the firm lifted the lid on a number of key details about the PS5 we’ve been waiting donkeys’ years to find out. These included its launch titles, price, release date and pre-order details.

And while most of the news was awesome – the team has been outright salivating since we saw the new Demon Souls trailer – the firm’s pre-order strategy was a little disappointing.

Specifically, having promised it wouldn’t rush pre-orders and would ensure there was ample stock, Sony pushed the UK pre-orders live in the wee hours. This meant most buyers woke up to find every single retailer had already sold out of PS5s. As if this wasn’t bad enough, it also delayed the release so those that were lucky enough to get one will have to wait longer than US early adopters to get their mitts on it.

All-in-all it was a tough day for general PlayStation fans, earning them a place as this week’s loser.

Related: Best PS5 games