NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB Review Roundup
Written on September 17, 2020 by Matt BachIntroduction
On September 1st, NVIDIA announced the new GeForce RTX 30 Series, touting major advancements in performance and efficiency. While gaming is almost always a major focus during these launches, professional applications - especially those in the content creation fields - is becoming increasingly important.
To see how the new GeForce RTX 3080 10GB performs in real-world scenarios, we have reviews looking at a number of applications across rendering, game development, the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, and more. While this post includes a summary for each entry, we highly recommend reading the full article for programs you are interested in as we go into much greater detail in the individual reviews.
If you want to see the full specs for the new GeForce RTX 3070, 3080, and 3090 cards, we recommend checking out NVIDIAs page for the new 30 series cards. But at a glance, here are what we consider to be the most important specs:
| VRAM | CUDA Cores | Boost Clock | Power | MSRP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 2070S | 8GB | 2,560 | 1.77 GHz | 215W | $499 |
| RTX 3070 | 8GB | 5,888 | 1.70 GHz | 220W | $499 |
| RTX 2080 Ti | 11GB | 4,352 | 1.55 GHz | 250W | $1,199 |
| RTX 3080 | 10GB | 8,704 | 1.71 GHz | 320W | $699 |
| Titan RTX | 24GB | 4,608 | 1.77 GHz | 280W | $2,499 |
| RTX 3090 | 24GB | 10,496 | 1.73 GHz | 350W | $1,499 |
While specs rarely line up with real-world performance, it is a great sign that NVIDIA has doubled the number of CUDA cores compared to the comparable RTX 20 series cards with only a small drop in the boost clock. At the same time, the RTX 3080 and 3090 are also $500-1000 less expensive than the previous generation depending on which models you are comparing them to.
Since only the RTX 3080 is fully launched at this point (the 3090 is set to launch on Sept 24th, and the 3070 sometime in October), we, unfortunately, will only be able to examine the 3080 at this time. However, we are very interested in how the RTX 3070 and 3090 will perform, and when we are able to test those cards, we will post follow-up articles with the results.
Content Creation Workstations
Puget Systems offers a range of powerful and reliable systems that are tailor-made for your unique workflow.
Labs Consultation Service
Our Labs team is available to provide in-depth hardware recommendations based on your workflow.
Unreal Engine
Read the full article: Unreal Engine 4.25 - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Performance
Summary: In virtually every test we performed, the RTX 3080 outperformed both the 2080 Ti and Titan RTX by a wide margin while costing significantly less. At 4k resolutions, we see an average 60% improvement in FPS over the 2080 Ti, with some tests being nearly double the frame rate. In the worst cases, the RTX 3080 was neck and neck with the Titan, only loosing out when VRAM was a limiting factor.
OctaneRender
Read the full article: OctaneRender 2020 - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Performance
Summary: If you are on a very limited budget, or only have room in your workstation for a single video card, then the GeForce RTX 3080 is a great choice for OctaneRender. It has the highest single-card performance we have seen (though it will surely be eclipsed by the RTX 3090 later this month) and 25% more memory than the previous-gen model at the same price point.
At the same time, though, if you are accustomed to workstations with three or four powerful video cards stacked inside to give you the best rendering speeds possible... that may not be an option with this generation, or at least not for a while. Without rear-exhausting models it will be hard to cool even two of these beasts in a single system, and while the price:performance ratio of the RTX 3080 is undeniably great the raw performance of two RTX 2080 Ti cards (which were produced in single-fan, rear-exhaust variants) will still outpace it by a fair margin... not to mention three or four of those, which we routinely built into a single tower or rackmount workstation. We will have to wait and see when, or even if, we are ever able to offer that density of RTX 3000-series cards.
Redshift
Read the full article: Redshift 3.0 - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Performance
Summary: If you only have room in your workstation for a single video card, or are on a strict budget, then the GeForce RTX 3080 is a fantastic choice for rendering in Redshift. It offers the fastest single-card performance we have seen (though it is likely to be surpassed by the RTX 3090 later this month) and 2GB of additional VRAM compared to the previous-gen model at the same price.
However, if you are used to buying workstations with multiple high-end video cards stacked inside to give you the best rendering speeds possible... that may not be possible with this generation, or at least not yet. Without blower-style coolers it will be hard to cool even two of these cards in a single system, and while the price:performance ratio of the RTX 3080 is undeniably great the raw performance of two RTX 2080 Super or Ti cards (which were produced in single-fan, rear-exhaust variants) will still exceed it... not to mention three or four of those, which we often built into a single tower or rackmount workstation. Only time will tell when, or even if, we are ever able to offer that many RTX 3000-series cards in one computer.
V-Ray GPU Rendering
Read the full article: V-Ray GPU Rendering - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Performance
Summary: If you are operating on a budget, or only have room for a single video card in your workstation, then the GeForce RTX 3080 is a great GPU for rendering in V-Ray and V-Ray Next. It has the best single-card performance we've yet tested (though it is certain to be outdone by the RTX 3090 later this month) and 25% more video memory than previous-gen models at the same price point.
As good as that sounds, though, if you are someone who built workstations with three or four powerful video cards stacked inside to give you the fastest rendering times possible... that may not be an option with the RTX 3080 & 3090, at least not at this time. Unless single-fan, rear-exhausting cooler versions come out it will be hard to put even two of these GPUs in a single system, and while the price:performance ratio of the RTX 3080 is undeniable the raw performance of two RTX 2080 Ti cards (which were produced in single-fan variants) will still outpace it by a fair margin... not to mention three or four of those, which we routinely built into a single tower or rackmount workstation. We will have to wait and see if we are ever going to be able to offer that density of RTX 30 Series cards in a PC.
RealityCapture
Read the full article: RealityCapture 1.1 - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Performance
Summary: As of its launch today, the GeForce RTX 3080 is the fastest video card available for RealityCapture! That could change with the release of the RTX 3090 later this month, of course, but that card is also going to be several hundred dollars more expensive - so we will have to wait and see if it can justify that price increase in this application.
Metashape
Read the full article: Agisoft Metashape 1.6.4 - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Performance
Summary: As of its launch today, the GeForce RTX 3080 is the best single video card available for Agisoft Metashape! That could change with the release of the RTX 3090 later this month, of course, but that card is also going to be several hundred dollars more expensive - so we will have to wait and see if it can justify that price increase in this application. We will also look into whether multi-GPU configurations are viable with this new generation of GeForce cards, and if so whether they still provide any benefit for Metashape.
Pix4D
Read the full article: Pix4D 4.5.6 - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Performance
Summary: The RTX 3080 is a solid video card choice for Pix4D, but if you already have a high-end 10- or 20-series GeForce card then there probably isn't a reason to upgrade for this application. Most of the recent cards in the $400+ price range will give similar results.
DaVinci Resolve Studio
Read the full article: DaVinci Resolve Studio - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Performance
Summary: While performance when editing and doing basic grades may only be 10-25% faster with the new RTX 3080 compared to the previous generation RTX 20-series cards, when doing noise reduction or using OpenFX, the performance gap widens from a minimum of 30% faster compared to a Titan RTX to almost 2x faster compared to an RTX 2060 SUPER!
This also puts a single RTX 3080 10GB within spitting distance of a dual RTX 2080 Ti 11GB setup, which considering that is comparing a $699 GPU to a $2,400 pair of cards is extremely impressive.
Premiere Pro
Read the full article: Adobe Premiere Pro - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Performance
Summary: While the average editor likely won't notice much of a performance gain with the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 video card, in certain situations it can provide a healthy boost to performance. In an ideal situation where you are using multiple GPU-accelerated effects, you are looking at a 10% increase in performance compared to the more expensive RTX 2080 Ti, or a 20-40% increase in performance compared to the RTX 2080, 2070, and 2060 SUPER cards.
After Effects
Read the full article: Adobe After Effects - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Performance
Summary: For most users, After Effects is going to be CPU bottlenecked long before the performance of your GPU comes into play. However, in certain After Effects workloads, the new GeForce RTX 3080 is around 11% faster than the previous generation RTX 2080 Ti, 16% faster than the RTX 2080 SUPER, or a bit more than 20% faster than the older GTX 1080 Ti.
Photoshop
Read the full article: Adobe Photoshop - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Performance
Summary: Although Photoshop has a number of GPU-accelerated effects that make it important to have a supported GPU, there was effectively no difference in performance between the various NVIDIA and AMD GPUs we tested. The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB performs just fine, but it is no faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, not to mention the RTX 2060 SUPER or even the older GTX 1080 Ti.
Lightroom Classic
Read the full article: Adobe Lightroom Classic - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Performance
Summary: Adobe has been steadily adding GPU support into Lightroom Classic over the last few years, but just like Photoshop, the most important thing is to simply have a supported card. There is some difference between a low-end GPU and one like the new GeForce RTX 3080, but between cards that are roughly in the same ballpark, you will be hard-pressed to notice a difference.
At most, there is only a few percent difference between the RTX 2060 SUPER and the RTX 3080, and effectively no difference between the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 3080.
How well does the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 perform overall?
While the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB is certainly the most powerful GPU ever released, it is important to understand that different applications utilize the GPU in very different ways.
In GPU render engines like V-Ray, the RTX 3080 greatly out-performs the RTX 20-series cards, even beating the RTX 2080 Ti (which is significantly more expensive) by a large 60%. Unreal Engine also saw massive performance gains, averaging 60% higher performance over the RTX 2080 Ti.
Applications that are more CPU-focused like DaVinci Resolve or the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, however, have much more mixed results. In Resolve, the RTX 3080 can still be up to 35% faster than the 2080 Ti in certain situations, but this drops to just 10% faster in Premiere Pro and After Effects. And in Photoshop and Lightroom Classic where GPU acceleration is much less pronounced, there is very little performance gain to be had with the new RTX 3080.
One thing to note is that multi-GPU configurations - which can be a major consideration for some of these applications - are still up in the air at the moment. Unlike the previous generation, these new cards (including all the third-party models we have seen so far) do not vent a significant portion of their heat directly outside the chassis which may mean that using more than 2 GPUs will not be feasible without a complex and expensive liquid cooling setup. This is something we will be testing in-depth in the coming weeks and months.
In addition, there are still several RTX 30-series cards that have been announced but not yet launched. The even more powerful GeForce RTX 3090 24GB is set to launch on September 24th, while the more modest RTX 3070 8GB will be available sometime in October. Be sure to check back after these cards launch for the latest information on how these cards perform in professional applications.
Content Creation Workstations
Puget Systems offers a range of poweful and reliable systems that are tailor-made for your unique workflow.
Labs Consultation Service
Our Labs team is available to provide in-depth hardware recommendations based on your workflow.
Thank you for this. Makes it much easier to see all the charts in one go!
I'm glad you like this format! :)
Do you find it helpful to break out the performance by application, or would grouping it more by workflow (rendering, post production, photography, etc) be easier to digest?
I still think performance by application is more helpful. For instance Octane shows a much greater improvement over Redshift. So while it's useful to group it by workflow, I think that could just end up being additional posts.
Excited for the 3080 20Gb for DAIN and other machine learning programs
I've heard other people mention a 20GB variant on forums, but I've not heard anything about that from NVIDIA... is this a confirmed future card, or just something people are hoping for?
Something people are hoping for + “leaks”
Supposedly (according to the Videocardz post today) Gigabyte leaked out an SKU list on their products page with 20gb variants and 3070s with 16gb variants.
Still a grain of salt to be had since nothings really official.
On another note, is there any sort of benchmark for an application like Arnold GPU? I would expect similar gains but am just curious!
Yea, I don't trust leaks - especially ones that are screenshots of a webpage that conveniently no longer exists.
In other news, NVIDIA confirms a 20GB card in November! (This is fake, just showing how easy it is to edit an element on a webpage. I better not see this show up as a real "leak")
https://uploads.disquscdn.c...
Psh, too obvious of a fake - no increase in price! Doubling the RAM would at least add $100 to the price, probably $200-300 ;)
Fine. "Fixed"
https://uploads.disquscdn.c...
We don't currently test Arnold GPU, but it may end up being part of our Maya and 3ds Max benchmark testing eventually. I fully expect it would see improvements somewhere in the spectrum from Redshift to OctaneRender, though :)
According to Techgage, similar gains : https://techgage.com/articl...
Thank you for an actually useful review for content creation. The static from all the game oriented reviews makes it hard to make an educated decision.
Love this layout, William!
It was Matt's idea, and I'm glad folks are liking it :)
How is the 8K edit performance on the 3080? I am debating if the 24GB 3090 is worth it considering that it cost 2X the 3080.
That is in our full Resolve article, but here is a link right to the 8K chart: https://www.pugetsystems.co...
The problem with the RTX 3080 is that it only has 10GB of VRAM, whereas you really want a GPU with 20GB+ if you are going to work with 8K media. Otherwise, you will likely get constant "out of GPU memory" errors that are not conducive to a smooth workflow. Our benchmark doesn't load the Resolve UI, which lets us run 8K tests on GPUs with as little as 8GB of VRAM, but for actually working in Resolve I wouldn't recommend the RTX 3080.
Awesome! Any idea when you guys will be performing thermal studies?
That is a BIG topic with these cards - especially in multi-GPU setups. The problem is, we have to wait until we can purchase multiple cards in order to do all that testing, so it won't be for at least a few weeks depending on supply.
We plan to do a full write-up on different cooling configurations we are going to try, and which we end up deciding to use on our own workstations.
Thanks Matt, can't wait to see what you guys come up with!
Any chance we can get Nuke/NukeX/Cara GPU accelerated node performance numbers in the future? I understand that might be a little more niche, but it'd be incredibly useful.
Nuke is one we've wanted to add for a while. Once we get through Unreal/Unity/Maya/C4D/Avid, I think it is next on the list. But... that is a lot to get through, lol. We were going to tackle it sooner, but we got pretty much no support, help, or interest from Foundry, so it got bumped down a bit.
Completely understandable, I have had enough experience with them to know where you're coming from. I'm glad to see it on the road as atleast, thank you guys for your hard work.
You people are the real mpv for the professional community. Thanks for sharing your reviews!
Thank you for the kind words!! :)
With the new Nvidia Studio Drivers, will these 30 series cards perform better than lower end Quadros for AutoCAD and AutoCAD Architecture as well as Autodesk 3D Studio?
In my experience, the Studio drivers aren't about providing better compatibility with engineering and architecture applications - unlike Quadro cards / drivers, which are specifically focused on that sort of use case. You can sometimes still use consumer-level GeForce cards with them, but in certain programs that may limit functionality (like Solidworks, where you can't use some graphics modes without a certified Quadro card). I am under the impression that AutoCAD tends to be a little more loose about those sort of restrictions, but we do not specifically test graphics in that application at this time... so I can't say for sure. If you want to ensure the best compatibility, I would still stick to an official supported GPU list from Autodesk :(
Thank you for the info, much appreciated. I'm currently running the studio driver on a Nvidia 1660 TI card. Like you said, I really do not see any improvement in AutoCAD Architecture, although I suspect for the Adobe programs, there may well be some. For what it is worth, the Studio driver works well with the game I play too; probably not better than the game ready driver, but not noticeably worse.
I could be wrong, but I don't think there is actually any under-the-hood difference between the Game Ready and Studio drivers *of the same release number*. My impression is that Studio drivers should come out less often (the game ones come out about once a month, if I recall, and any time there is a big video game launch) and get more thorough testing from NVIDIA on professional applications prior to release. We use the Studio drivers here at Puget for that reason, but I would fully expect that game performance on Studio drivers would exactly match performance with the same-release-number Game Ready driver.
I don't think you'll see anything from Adobe either. We've done driver testing before, and performance pretty much never changes. What does change is stability and support for some new features. So sometimes you need a newer driver to get support for some new thing that increases performance, but the driver itself isn't really changing performance by itself.
https://www.gigabyte.com/Gr...
Here's a blower card if Puget is gonna test it.
Nice! I've sent that link over to our parts department so they can check on availability and qualification :)
Looks like EKWB is coming out with Water Blocks for the 30 series for those that go that route.
Awesome data! Thanks, Matt and Team Puget!