The Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti is finally available to buy, but how does it measure up against the RTX 3080 Ti?
The newest entry in the RTX 30-Series range is, according to Nvidia, the company’s most powerful graphics card to date.
While we haven’t been able to test the RTX 3090 Ti yet, we have experience with the RTX 3080 Ti, and so will be putting these two GPUs up against each to see how they differ.
Price and availability
The RTX 3080 Ti came out June 2021. Looking at the Nvidia website, prices start at £1049, though it is listed as out of stock.
Meanwhile, the RTX 3090 Ti launched in March 2022 and is available for £1879, which makes it t a whopping £830 more expensive.
Considering the stock issues that have plagued graphics cards for the last couple of years, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to purchase these card at their original RRP. You may well have to pay significantly more.
Specs
The Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti may be the most powerful graphics card that Nvidia has launched so far, but it’s still using the same Nvidia Ampere architecture that other cards in the range feature.
In order to boost the performance, Nvidia has instead crammed in more CUDA Cores. It’s also using 24GB of GDDR6X memory, which is double the count that the RTX 3080 Ti offers.
You can check out the breakdown of the specs of both the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3090 Ti below. We also included the RTX 3090 for reference:
| RTX 3080 Ti | RTX 3090 | RTX 3090 Ti | |
| CUDA Cores | 10,240 | 10,496 | 10,752 |
| Base Clock | 1.37 GHz | 1.40 GHz | 1.67 GHz |
| Boost Clock | 1.67 GHz | 1.70 GHz | 1.86 GHz |
| Memory (GDDR6X) | 12 GB | 24 GB | 24 GB |
| Memory Speed | 19 Gbps | 19.5 Gbps | 21 Gbps |
| Memory Bus | 384-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit |
| TDP | 350W | 350W | 450W |
Performance
In terms of performance, Nvidia claims the RTX 3090 Ti is, on average, 64% faster faster than the RTX 3080 Ti.
The RTX 3090 Ti has been marketed for 8K gaming, while the RTX 3080 Ti is arguably limited to 4K gaming. Although I’m not sure whether that’s so important right now, with so few monitors supporting 8K.
You’ll likely see a bigger performance difference for creative applications, whether that’s editing video or rendering 3D animations.
There is a trade-off to these performance gains though, as the RTX 3090 Ti has an eye-watering graphics card power of 450W, which is 100W more than than the RTX 3080 Ti. This not only means you may need to upgrade your PSU, but could also see your electricity bill become even more expensive.
Of course, all of these performance metric are courtesy of Nvidia. We won’t get an accurate view of performance until we’ll able to test the RTX 3090 Ti for ourselves.
Verdict
It’s clear to see that the RTX 3090 Ti is a more powerful than the RTX 3080 Ti, despite using the same Ampere architecture.
But with the dramatic increase in both price and power consumption, it’s difficult to justify the upgrade. We’re also expecting Nvidia’s 4000-Series range to arrive later this year, complicating the dilemma even further.
However, since we haven’t yet had the chance to test out the latest graphics card, it’s impossible to make a final verdict.
You might like…
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
