Nvidia RTX 4080 vs Nvidia RTX 3080: Which is better? The arrival of the Nvidia RTX 4000 series has everyone talking. It introduces new software and features like the 3rd-gen ray tracing and DLSS 3. Those will enhance your gaming experience and are only exclusive to the Nvidia RTX 4000 GPUs.
This comparison post of Nvidia RTX 4080 vs Nvidia RTX 3080 will focus on their prices, architecture, performances, and everything there’s to know about these two desktop graphics cards.
See Also: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Price in UK and AvailabilityÂ
See Also: Nvidia RTX 4090 vs AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT: Which Is Better?Â
Nvidia RTX 4080 vs Nvidia RTX 3080: Specs Comparison
| Nvidia RTX 4080 | Nvidia RTX 3080 | |
| CUDA cores | 9728 or 7680 | 8704 |
| SMs | 76 or 60 | 68 |
| Memory Capacity | 16GB or 12GB GDDR6X | 10GB or 12GB GDDR6X |
| Memory Speed | 22.5 or 21 Gbps | 19 Gbps |
| Memory Bandwidth | 720 or 504 GB/s | 760 GB/s |
| TGP | 320W or 285W | 320W |
Price
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 was priced at $699 and even the custom editions from third-party retailers like MSI, EVGA, Asus, etc are selling for $799. However, the price has now dropped significantly. You can get the RTX 3080 for a price within or slightly higher than the MSRP.
The Nvidia RTX 4080 on the other hand is priced at $899 for the 12GB memory option, while the 16GB memory option is priced even higher at $1,199. And as usual, the custom editions by MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, etc will be more expensive than the MSRP of $899/$1,199.
Release Date and Availability
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 was launched in September 2022. While the RTX 4080 was announced on September 20, 2022, and the sale commences in November 2022. You can use the box at the bottom of this post to purchase either of them.
See Also: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Price in UK and AvailabilityÂ
See Also: Nvidia RTX 4090 vs Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti: Which is Better?
Performance
According to Nvidia, the RTX 4080 is about 2x to 4x faster than the RTX 3080 Ti. That’s depending on the game at hand. If that’s the case, the non-Ti model of the RTX 3080 is even far behind. Starting with their manufacturing process, the RTX 4080 uses the next-generation Ada Lovelace architecture with 76 billion transistors. That’s about 162% higher than the 26 billion transistors the RTX 3080 Ampere architecture offers.
The Nvidia RTX 4080 vs Nvidia RTX 3080 comes in two configurations. The RTX 4080 has the option of 12GB or 16GB GDDR6X memory with 7,680 and 9,728 CUDA cores respectively. Both configurations use the latest Ada Lovelace architecture built on TSMC 4nm node.
While the Nvidia RTX 3080 also features two configurations. The first has 10GB GDDR6X memory, with a CUDA Core count of 8,704. The second option comes with 12GB GDDR6X memory and a CUDA Core count of 8,960. Unfortunately, the RTX 3080 features last gen Ampere architecture which falls behind the Ada Lovelace architecture used by the RTX 4000 series.
The 3 games tested by Nvidia below show how faster and better the RTX 4080 is than RTX 3080/Ti.
Additionally, the new Ada Lovelace architecture introduces the 3rd Gen RT core and 4th Gen Tensor Core. This means Ray Tracing is better on the RTX 4000 series GPU and NVIDIA confirms Ada Lovelace supports DLSS 3 upscaling technology.
See Also: Nvidia RTX 4080 Specs and Features: Arrives in Dual Memory Options
See Also: Nvidia RTX 4090 Specs and Features: Introduces new RT and Tensor cores
Nvidia RTX 4080 vs Nvidia RTX 3080: Verdict
Is Nvidia RTX 4080 better than Nvidia RTX 3080? Yes! Absolutely yes, the RTX 4080 is more advanced. Users will notice the improvement in performance when gaming, rendering or carrying out heavy-duty workloads like 3D modeling, machine learning, and video encoding. Impressively, the RTX 4080 could even game in 8K.
| Nvidia RTX 4080 | Price |
| Buy on Amazon | $1,949.00 |
| Buy on Amazon(EUR) | €1,622.99 |
| Buy on Amazon(UK) | £1,411.53 |
