Into the Gaming World: GeForce RTX 30 series
NVIDIA Corporation founded in 1993 is an American MNC based in Santa Clara, California. It designs graphics processors, mobile technologies, and desktop computers. It was founded by three computer scientists Jensen Huang, Curtis Priem, and Christopher Malachowsky. It is the leading manufacturer of high-end Graphical Processing Units(GPUs). In addition to GPU manufacturing, Nvidia provides parallel processing capabilities to researchers and scientists that allow them to efficiently run high-performance applications. They are deployed in supercomputing sites around the world.
NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 20 Series was a game-changer, it brought together real-time ray tracing at 60+ FPS with high levels of detail, artificial intelligence, programmable shading and best in class performance for gamers worldwide. Launched nearly two years ago, the RTX 20 Series introduced some of the most powerful GPUs. On July 9th 2019, the Super lineup for the series was announced. This increased performance by up to 25%, giving the ability to experience the latest blockbusters with the highest settings at even faster frame rates.
The Super lineup of the RTX 20 Series crushed the notion that NVIDIA’s ray tracing cards sacrificed performance to enable a ray-traced future. These Super cards packed much more firepower for both ray tracing and traditional games, with little or no price increase compared to their non-Super predecessors. PCWorld’s testing confirmed the substantial increase in performance and only NVIDIA’s RTX 20 Series cards contain dedicated hardware for real-time ray tracing.
Rumours about the RTX 30 Series have been around since January 2020 and on 26th August 2020, NVIDIA released a video on their YouTube channel teasing it. In the video titled “The Remarkable Art & Science of Modern Graphics Card Design”, they talked about the designing of a graphics card, the cooling as well as the power. The company talked specifically about the new 12-pin power connector and showed a GPU. Overall, the video talked about the four stages behind designing a graphics card with heating being a primary challenge.
NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang during the unveiling of the new GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs, said that it’s delivering the company’s “greatest generational leap in company history.”
The GeForce RTX 30 Series is NVIDIA’s second-generation RTX GPUs, delivering up to twice the performance and power efficiency over previous-generation GPUs. The RTX 30 Series GPUs also feature several world firsts:
- first gaming-class graphics cards with up to 24 GB of new ultra-fast GDDR6X VRAM
- first GPU with HDMI 2.1 for 4K high refresh rate and 8K gaming
- first discrete GPUs with support for the AV1 codec which allow one to watch high-resolution streams utilising significantly less bandwidth.
The Founder’s Edition of the cards are the first with innovative dual axial flow through cooling solutions.The GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs also come packed with new technologies for esports competitors, livestreamers, creators, and gamers alike. The NVIDIA Reflex reduces system latency, providing split-second PC gaming responsiveness; NVIDIA Broadcast turns any room into a home broadcast studio with AI-enhanced video and voice communications; updates to NVIDIA DLSS( Deep Learning and Super Sampling) making 8K HDR gaming a reality on the GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card; the NVIDIA Studio enhancements that make creative applications run faster than ever before; and the NVIDIA Omniverse Machinima, based on the Omniverse 3D workflow collaboration platform (Machinima is the art form of creating shorts and movies from video games). With Omniverse Machinima, creators will be able to:
- Use their webcam to drive an AI-based pose-estimator to animate characters.
- Drive face animation AI with their voice.
- Add high-fidelity physics like particles and fluids and make materials physically accurate.
The lineup consisting of GeForce RTX 3070,3080 and 3090 was launched on 17th September 2020, with the GeForce RTX 3080 being the first to be released at $699, i.e $300 less than the price at which the RTX 2080Ti was launched. The date for the 3090 has been set to 24th September at $1,499 and the 3070 is due in October and priced at $499 as per the official NVIDIA site.
The GeForce RTX 3080 was sold out immediately after launch resulting in inflated prices on Ebay. GeForce RTX 3080 listings have flooded the auction site with jacked up pricing. There is even one listing where the high bid is north of $70,000. #SoldOut was also trending on Twitter. Some would-be RTX 3080 owners were saying that the cards sold out before the Add to Cart button even worked for them, while others claimed the cards sold out in 15 seconds. This is not surprising for a major graphics card launch without pre-orders, but it is upsetting for people, who were hoping to get a card at launch without paying a premium to RTX 3080 scalpers, who already had their $1,000 – $1,200 listings up before the card even launched. The launch of the GeForce 1080 also saw a similar situation.
Online retail is more important than ever right now, with many unable or unwilling to enter brick-and-mortar stores in the midst of the pandemic. As a result, such product launches are more susceptible to bots. The stock is expected to be replenished anywhere between 2 weeks to 2 months from now, though the shortage can be expected to last into next year, given the cards performance and the potential for cryptocurrency miners to start adopting it as a new standard.
–Dhruv Sinha
SY B.Sc. Economics