Oh Lawd he comin, the 30 series is here

The announcement that took the PC master race by storm

Earlier this year, every PC enthusiast was found at the receiving end of unexplainable ridicule. “Oh your $2500 PC can outperform a $500 console by a small margin, wow”. Sony and Microsoft had upset the entire market with their announcements of high performance gaming consoles that could outshine PC counterparts of much higher costs, these announcements left a lot of PC enthusiasts understandably conflicted. Was this the end of the Master Race?

Thankfully, one man and his team came to our rescue. Jensen Huang and Nvidia unveiled their 30 series GPUs with such grandeur that it left me speechless (a rather hard task to accomplish as those who know me may confirm). Not only do these GPUs completely blow their predecessors out of the water, but they also come at price points that we did not expect, not even remotely .

The RTX3070 (the entry level model of the 30 series), outperforms the RTX2080Ti (the best performing GPU of the last generation) and while the 2080Ti was priced at $1400 the RTX3070 is priced at $499. If this wasn’t enough, the RTX3080 will perform 2x better than the RTX2080Ti and will cost only $699. Double the performance, half the price. Yeesh. The last time that a 3rd in line GPU from Nvidia outperformed the top performing processor of the previous generation was in 2004m, 16 years ago. It’s safe to say that this is a significant advancement in making high performing computing more accessible.

The 3070 is capable of rendering 4k gameplay at 60FPS

The 3080 does the same thing at 120FPS or 4k 60FPS with Ray tracing on

The 3090 can render 8k gameplay at 60FPS

need I say more?

If you need a simpler, more entertaining visualization of the development, refer to this video.

To explain how this performance was achieved without going too far into the details, let’s take a look at the major changes from the previous generations. The following is a quote from their official release page

Powered by Ampere, NVIDIA’s 2nd gen RTX architecture, GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards feature faster 2nd gen Ray Tracing Cores, faster 3rd gen Tensor Cores, and new streaming multiprocessors that together bring stunning visuals, faster frame rates, and AI acceleration for gamers and creators.

GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs also feature several world firsts: they’re the first gaming-class graphics cards with up to 24GB of new, blazing-fast GDDR6X VRAM; they’re the first GPUs with HDMI 2.1, for 4K high refresh rate and 8K gaming; they’re the first discrete GPUs with support for the AV1 codec, enabling you to watch high-resolution streams using significantly less bandwidth; and our Founders Edition cards are the first with innovative dual axial flow through cooling solutions.

And of course, GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs come packed with new technologies for esports competitors, livestreamers, creators, and gamers alike – 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 comms; updates to NVIDIA DLSS make 8K HDR gaming a reality on the GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card; and new NVIDIA Studio enhancements make creative applications run faster than ever before.

So now I can finally dream of my next PC build with slightly lesser concern about the financial setback It would effect on me (still cheaper than buying a MacBook, I'm not a sheep)