Redshift 3.0 - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 & 3090 Performance

Introduction

On September 1st 2020, NVIDIA launched the new GeForce RTX 30 Series, touting major advancements in performance and efficiency. While gaming is almost always the media's focus during these kinds of launches, professional applications like Maxon's Redshift should see significant per-card improvements as well. The RTX 3080 became available back on September 17th, and now the RTX 3090 has launched on the 24th, allowing us to test both cards against a wide range of previous-gen models to see how they perform.

There is a downside to this product launch for GPU-based rendering, though: the new cooler design that NVIDIA has introduced on their Founders Edition RTX 3000-series cards is even worse for multi-card configurations than the last generation. Thankfully, Gigabyte has announced a single-fan, blower-style variant of the RTX 3090 though - which should allow for workstations with multiple video cards and higher performance. When those cards are available, we will test how the RTX 30 Series scales in Redshift as more GPUs are added.

If you want to see the full specs for the new GeForce RTX 3070, 3080, and 3090 cards, we recommend checking out NVIDIA's page for the new RTX 30 Series. But at a glance, here are what we consider to be the most important specs:

While specs don't always line up with real-world performance, it is a great sign that NVIDIA has roughly doubled the number of CUDA cores compared to the GeForce RTX 20 Series cards at similar price points. At the top-end of the new line, NVIDIA appears to have also combined the roles of the previous-gen RTX 2080 Ti and Titan RTX into the new RTX 3090. It has as much VRAM as the Titan did, but for $1,000 less - putting it in the same ballpark as the 2080 Ti, but with more than double the memory and CUDA cores.

Test Setup

Listed below are the specifications of the system we used for our Redshift testing:

*All the latest drivers, OS updates, BIOS, and firmware applied as of September 14th, 2020

To test each video card, we used the latest demo version of Redshift: 3.0.28. We also tried the older 2.6.41 demo that we have used in previous reviews, but it looks like the new RTX 30 Series cards do not work properly in versions of Redshift prior to 3.0. That release also added RTX support to Redshift, so the benchmark included in this new demo version should show improved performance on 20 Series cards as well.

If you wish to compare performance to your existing system, you can download the demo version of Redshift directly from their website (free account required).

Benchmark Results

Here are charts showing the performance of the new GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 compared to the other video cards we tested:

Performance Analysis

The raw performance of the new GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 is amazing in Redshift! Lets break it down for each card:

NVIDIA's RTX 3080 is faster than any RTX 20 Series card was, and almost twice as fast as the RTX 2080 Super for the same price. Combined with a 25% increase in VRAM over the 2080 Super, that increase in rendering speed makes it a fantastic value.

NVIDIA's RTX 3090 is 60% faster than the RTX Titan, which was the top consumer video card from last generation, while costing $1000 less and maintaining the same amount of VRAM. Moreover, the RTX Titan was only available from NVIDIA with their dual-fan cooling solution, meaning it could not be used effectively in multi-GPU configurations. The Founders Edition RTX 3090 that we tested for this article won't be well suited for that either, but other manufacturers have announced blower-style versions of the 3090 which should work in that type of configuration. At 350W of draw per card, though, current power supplies may not be able to run a full set of four.

When comparing these new cards to each other there are many trade-offs to consider. The RTX 3090 is about 15% faster for rendering in Redshift than the 3080, which is not bad, but considering it also costs more than twice as much that isn't fantastic either. However, the 24GB of VRAM on the RTX 3090 is more than double what the 3080 offers (10GB) and the 3090 is also the only 30 Series card announced so far which supports NVLink. So for raw price:performance the RTX 3080 wins, but in terms of maximum performance, features, and support for rendering more complex scenes the GeForce RTX 3090 is clearly superior.

Are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 & 3090 Good for Redshift?

Yes, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 are fantastic cards for rendering in Maxon Redshift! Which one is right for you will depend on several factors:

• RTX 3080 10GB - This card is more affordable ($699 vs $1499) and thus offers better rendering performance per dollar. However, its lower amount of VRAM may limit the complexity of scenes you can render (though Redshift does support out-of-core memory).
• RTX 3090 24GB - This card is about 15% faster for rendering, with 140% more onboard memory and support for NVLink. That means it will be much better suited to working with large scenes and detailed geometry. Moreover, Gigabyte has announced a dual-slot, single-fan version of this card which should allow multiple GPUs in a single system for increased performance.

As always, please keep in mind that these results are strictly for GPU-based rendering in Redshift. If you have performance concerns for other applications in your workflow, we highly recommend checking out our Hardware Articles (you can filter by "Video Card") for the latest information on how a wide range of programs perform with various GPUs, CPUs, and other hardware.

Tags: Hardware Acceleration, NVIDIA, RTX 2060 SUPER, RTX 2070 SUPER, RTX 2080 SUPER, RTX 2080 Ti, Titan RTX, RTX 3080, GPU Acceleration, GPU, Render, Rendering, Video Card, GTX 1080 Ti, Redshift, Maxon, RTX 3090