NVIDIA Teases GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming Performance Vs Mighty RTX 3080, Compute Vs Titan RTX

Ampere 3090 3QTR Back Left
When NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang announced the GeForce RTX 3080, he billed it at the company's new gaming flagship. Priced at $699, the GeForce RTX 3080 is twice as fast as the GeForce RTX 2080 and is a 4K gaming champion. But the true flagship of the Ampere family is actually the GeForce RTX 3090, which can drive certain games at 60fps at a stunning 8K resolution.

We already knew that the GeForce RTX 3090 would be arriving tomorrow, September 24th, but NVIDIA is further driving that point home with a new blog post. If you thought that it was nearly impossible to get a GeForce RTX 3080 last week when it launched, your fortunes will likely be much worse if you're attempting to purchase the GeForce RTX 3090, which is priced at an eye watering $1,499.

"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," said NVIDIA. "We know this is frustrating, and we’re working with our partners to increase the supply in the weeks to come.

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NVIDIA Titan RTX rendering and compute performance versus GeForce RTX 3090 (Click to Enlarge)

Given the high price tag of the GeForce RTX 3090, perhaps the scalpers won’t be as bad as they were during the GeForce RTX 3080 launch, but we aren’t holding our collective breath.

As for performance, NVIDIA is giving us a little preview by indicating that the GeForce RTX 3090 is up to 50 percent faster than the preceding Titan RTX in compute performance. Compared to the GeForce RTX 3080, NVIDIA says that it is 10 to 15 percent faster on average in 4K gaming benchmarks. 

That last figure is a bit eyebrow-raising to us considering that the GeForce RTX 3080 is priced at just $699, which means that the GeForce RTX 3090 is over twice as expensive. So, you’re paying twice the price for at most a 15 percent gain in gaming performance? Perhaps NVIDIA is downplaying performance a bit, but we’ll likely see tomorrow when embargos start lifting on reviews for this new 8K gaming beast.