Nvidia Confirms: RTX 3090 Performance 10% To 15% Faster Than RTX 3080 in 4K Gaming, Limited Supply

GeForce RTX 3090 (Image credit: Nvidia)

If there was any doubt to the GeForce RTX 3090's performance, Nvidia just confirmed it via a blog post today. The GeForce RTX 3090, which Nvidia is dubbing as the big ferocious GPU or "BFGPU," is only 10% to 15% faster than the GeForce RTX 3080 at 4K gaming. The graphics card is sure to once again upset our list of best gaming graphics cards, hopefully in a good way.

The GeForce RTX 3090 officially goes on sale tomorrow. The Founders Edition will retail at $1,499, and custom models could cost between $1,499.99 to $1,799.99. Don't get your hope up just yet though since Nvidia itself has acknowledged that stock will be extremely limited.

In the post, Nvidia stated that "Since we built GeForce RTX 3090 for a unique group of users, like the TITAN RTX before it, we want to apologize upfront that this will be in limited supply on launch day. We know this is frustrating, and we’re working with our partners to increase the supply in the weeks to come."

Packing 10,496 CUDA cores and 24GB of GDDR6X memory, the GeForce RTX 3090 will likely find a place inside systems for content creators, professionals, researchers or really hardcore enthusiasts. Nvidia's numbers show that the GeForce RTX 3090 is up to 50% faster than the existing Titan RTX at 4K gaming. With the huge amount of memory, you likely won't see the GeForce RTX 3090 shine until you hit the 8K resolution.

The GeForce RTX 3090 costs a little more than double that of the GeForce RTX 3080 and only delivers up to 15% better performance at 4K. Unless you game at 8K or plan to use the GeForce RTX 3090 for work, the GeForce RTX 3080 is the smarter purchase. If you're not in a hurry for a graphics card upgrade, it would wise to wait until October 28 to see what AMD has to offer with the Radeon RX 6000.

Zhiye Liu
RAM Reviewer and News Editor

Zhiye Liu is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • XxDarkMario20xX
    So glad did nto cancel my pre order now not kinda worth buying 3090 just for extra GB and 15% that GPU might now use! My cod game uses 8GB on ultra 4k
    Reply
  • kerberos_20
    isnt 3090 aimed for 8K? so why no 8K comparison
    Reply
  • Gurg
    Isn't this supposed to be released for sale tomorrow? Why no reviews today?
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    kerberos_20 said:
    isnt 3090 aimed for 8K? so why no 8K comparison
    Because you wouldn't want to be playing in 8k on anything slower than a 3090. 3090 realistically isn't fast enough for consistent 8k either. Statistically, 0% of the market has an 8k display in their home. More of a marketing gimmick than anything. Sort of like raytracing on the 2000 series. A decent preview of what's to come. It will be possible for good performance in the future, but the future isn't now.
    Reply
  • King_V
    The GeForce RTX 3090 is three times more expensive than the GeForce RTX 3080 and only delivers up to 15% better performance at 4K.

    Um, at $699 for the 3080, and $1499 for the 3090, that comes to a little more than double. $2099 would be 3 times more expensive.

    I mean, the point still stands in that you'd be paying too much extra for only a 15% gain in performance, but still, let's not engage in hyperbole at this level.
    Reply
  • Chung Leong
    The extra VRAM in the 3090 is really only useful if you do offline rendering. There simply isn't enough memory bandwidth to render a scene using 10GB+ assets in real time.
    Reply
  • SinisterMessiah
    They going to release something in-between the 3080 and 3090?

    3080 Ti ???
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    SinisterMessiah said:
    They going to release something in-between the 3080 and 3090?

    3080 Ti ???
    20GB 3080 is basically assured. Outside of that, probably no. With only a 10-15% difference between the 3080 and 3090, what would be the point of putting a card in the middle of those two? Not sure what they will do for a refresh next year. Full GA102 die has only 2 more SM's than a 3090. Faster memory and higher core clocks is about all they got for wiggle room.
    Reply
  • gio2vanni86
    This is sad. I just wanted to SLI 2 cards and you can only do it with the 3090's. Them not having NV link on the 3080's is a slap in the face. Why do you do this to me NVIDIA! WHY! Sadly going to be hard getting two 3090's limited supply and well even just getting one 3080 is going to be a mission but their is no nvlink so im at a crossroad. Maybe AMD can steal nvidia's thunder in having crossfire on all their cards :)
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    gio2vanni86 said:
    This is sad. I just wanted to SLI 2 cards and you can only do it with the 3090's. Them not having NV link on the 3080's is a slap in the face. Why do you do this to me NVIDIA! WHY! Sadly going to be hard getting two 3090's limited supply and well even just getting one 3080 is going to be a mission but their is no nvlink so im at a crossroad. Maybe AMD can steal nvidia's thunder in having crossfire on all their cards :)
    SLI has been killed off. The NVlink bridge isn't going to be of any use for gaming with Nvidia officially not releasing any more SLI profiles for games. You can still use multiple GPU's for DX12 games that support it natively. No link bridge is necessary for that.
    Reply