Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti vs RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080 Ti Specifications Revealed – New launch date

I originally wrote this post at the start of January after the Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti was teased at CES. The launch was then revealed as being the 27th of January, but this data came and went with no sign of the card. Then rumours suggested a February launch. Again, this came and went with no word from Nvidia at all.

New Launch Date

It now looks like Nvidia have sorted out whatever problems they had and will be launching the card on the 29th of March 2022. Obviously, based on the recent delays, I'd take this date with a pinch of salt.

One cause of concern is that Nvidia is reportedly setting the announcement, on-shelf availability and review embargo time exactly the same.

Sceptics may see this as a way to ensure that early sales remain high even though the performance difference between the RTX 3090 Ti and standard RTX 3090 is negligible.

Nvidia RTX 3090 has dropped in price

I wrote the below pricing speculation on the 4th of January since then prices have started to decline and availability increased. Back then the cheapest card on Overclockers was £2300. On the 10th of March, this has now dropped to £2000, a 13% drop. That's still significantly higher than the RTX 3090 MSRP of £1400/$1,499, but at least it is moving in the right direction.

Similarly, the Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti prices have dropped, I reported that the cheapest price in January was just shy of £1600, but this has now dropped down to just under £1300, which is a significant 18.75% decrease in price. Though that's still 23.8% higher than the £1050 MSRP of the Founders Edition.

What this means to the Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti price is anyone's guess. But I'd bet good money that the retail pricing is well above £2k.

Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti vs RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080 Ti Pricing

The launch will no doubt ruffle a few feathers. For over a year now, GPU availability has been a nightmare, and this has led to a massive increase in price from the MSRP.

Therefore it is perhaps the pricing and availability of this card that is the most important thing. At the moment, the price of the RTX 3090 Ti remains unknown.

However, the MSRP of the RTX 3090 is £1400/$1,499, and the RTX 3080 Ti is £1,049/$1,199.

Back in January when I wrote this, the cheapest RTX 3090 on Overclockers was £2300, admittedly it is not a Founders Edition, so there is a premium to pay only many of the third party cards, but this is not normally a 64% price difference.

As for the Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, you could pick up an Inno3D iChill X4 for just £1,589.99 where the price hike is 52% greater than the MSRP of the Founders Edition.

So where does that leave the Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti? It is a bit hard to tell, the RTX 3080 Ti is $500 more (71%)  than the RTX 3080 at MSRP, and the jump from RTX 3080 to RTX 3090 is a bit more than double.

However, even if Nvidia double the MSRP of the RTX 3090, that's only £2800. It's an insane amount but not a huge jump from the current retail price of the RTX 3090.

Some sites believe it will launch for as little as $2,000/£2,00. This is certainly possible, but if they do, the stock will last fractions of a second on launch and inevitably cause a huge backlash from buyers. But then again, charging close to three grand for a graphics card will also likely cause to backlash.

Either way, there are going to be a lot of bitchy comments about Nvidia later on today.

Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti vs RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080 Ti Specification

Nvidia	RTX 3080	RTX 3080 Ti	RTX 3090	RTX 3090 Ti
GPU Clusters	68	80	82	84
CUDA Cores	8704	10240	10496	10752
RT Cores	68	80	82	84
Tensor Cores	272	320	328	336
Base Clock	1440 MHz	1365 MHz	1395 MHz	1560 MHz
Boost Clock	1710 MHz	1665 MHz	1695 MHz	1860 MHz
Memory (GDDR6X)	10 GB	12 GB	24 GB	24 GB
Memory Speed	19 Gbps	19 Gbps	19.5 Gbps	21 Gbps
Memory Bus	320-bit	384-bit	384-bit	384-bit
Bandwidth	760 GB/s	912 GB/s	936 GB/s	1,008 GB/s
TDP	320W	350W	350W	450W
MSRP (Founders Edition)	$699	£1,049/$1,199	£1400/$1,499	£2000-3000?

The law of diminishing returns applies when you look at ultra high-end gear, and this is certainly the case here.

Nvidia has made incremental changes in comparison to the RTX 3090, but it will be the most graphics card on the market, and that's all they need to do to guarantee success.

Memory speed is increased by 7.7%, going from 19.5 Gbps to 21 Gbps which in turn provides a 7.7% bandwidth improvement making this the first card to break the 1 TB/s bandwidth barrier.

Base and boost clocks see a nice bump with 11.8% and 9.7% respectively hitting 1560 MHz/1860 MHz.

CUDA cores increase by 256, which sounds more impressive than a 2.4% increase. You get a couple of extra GPU clusters, too (2.5% increase).

All of this should add up to a nice bump in performance. I suspect the benefits will be somewhat limited for gamers, but professional users that can cut time down on intensive rendering tasks could claw back the increased cost of this card.

All of these increases also means an increase in TDP going from 350W to 450W and the PSU requirements are believed to be 1000W!!

[Originally Posted on 4th of January 2022]