With the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti now on sale, many gamers want to know if they should opt for this new Nvidia Ampere card or just go for the RTX 3080.. Comparing the RTX 3070, RTX 3070 Ti, and RTX 3080 cards, the RTX 3070 Ti falls right in the middle in terms of price, so
the question is whether the performance of the RTX 3070 Ti boosts performance accordingly to make it worth buying.
All this, of course,
assumes that everything is stabilizing in the graphics card market, that stocks of the RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3080 are widely available and the prices of both fall thereafter. Until then, most of us are probably just looking for the graphics card we can get our hands on without paying the insanely high markups charged by speculators on eBay and StockX. So let's take a look at the RTX 3070 Ti vs. the RTX 3080 and see how the two cards compare in terms of price and performance for
determine which is the best graphics card to buy for your budget.
Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti vs RTX 3080: Price
In terms of price,
the RTX 3070 Ti sits right in between the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, starting at $599 / €529 / AU$979 for the Founders Edition. Generally speaking, aftermarket cards from MSI, EVGA, Asus and others will be more expensive. The RTX 3080, meanwhile, starts at $699 / €649 (around AU€1,050). The RTX 3070, meanwhile, starts at $499 / €469 / AU$809 for the Founders Edition. Assuming you can get one of these cards at these prices,
the RTX 3070 Ti is significantly cheaper and even with inflated graphics card prices right now, it will probably be cheaper than a comparable RTX 3080 anywhere. The real key here is what you get for the money, and in this case we still have to say that the RTX 3080 is the better bang for the buck, even though it's around $100 / €60 / AU$200 more expensive. Today's best RTX 3080 deals
(Image credit: Nvidia)
Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti vs RTX 3080: Specifications
This is what the RTX 3070 Ti works with:
- CUDA cores: 6.144
- Boost Clock: 1,77 GHz
- Basic Clock: 1,575 GHz
- VRAM: 8GB GDDR6X
- Memory interface: 256 bit
- Memory Clock Speed: 1,188 GHz
- TDP: 290W
The RTX 3080, meanwhile, has some very significant improvements over the RTX 3070 Ti:
- CUDA cores: 8.704
- Boost Clock: 1,71 GHz
- Basic Clock: 1,44 GHz
- VRAM: 10GB GDDR6X
- Memory interface: 320 bit
- Memory Clock Speed: 1,188 GHz
- TDP: 320W
Between the two cards, the RTX 3080 has 2.560 more Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) cores than the RTX 3070 Ti. This is easily the biggest advantage of the RTX 3080, as the CUDA cores are what do all the graphics processing.
CUDA kernels break down the different tasks needed to render an image, such as lighting, geometry, etc. they work on those tasks in parallel, stitching them together at the end to draw an image to the board's video output.
The more CUDA cores the card has, the faster it can produce frames, which in turn results in better frames per second while gaming or doing other similar graphical tasks. Besides,
the RTX 3080 has an additional 6GB GDDR2X VRAM, which means you can load more of the textures, models, or other data needed to render graphics directly into memory, giving all those CUDA cores what they need to work faster. Speaking of faster, the RTX 3080 also has a 320-bit memory bus compared to the RTX 256 Ti's 3070-bit memory bus, which means the RTX 3080 will also transfer more data per cycle to and from memory. than the RTX 3070 Ti. This will allow CUDA kernels to run much smoother while running, further improving performance. Where the RTX 3070 Ti has a bit of an advantage is that its clock speeds are slightly higher, but it's just not fast enough to compete with the RTX 2.560's extra 3080 CUDA cores it just zergs anything you throw at it, so clock speed is not as important a factor here. Now, the RTX 3070 Ti isn't supposed to improve on the RTX 3080 (that would be the RTX 3080 Ti), but the RTX 3070 Ti is supposed to partially bridge the gap between the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, so what so well does it do that? Not very good, honestly.
As we discussed in our RTX 3070 Ti vs RTX 3070 in-depth review, the performance of the RTX 3070 Ti isn't much better than the RTX 3070, especially when it comes to high-performance graphics like 1440p and 4K gaming.
(Image credit: Nvidia)
Obviously, the RTX 3070 Ti brings it closer on paper to the RTX 3080 in terms of performance, but we're not talking about a huge performance boost here. Most gamers probably won't notice a difference at 1440p, or even 1080p on ultra settings with ray tracing enabled.
Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti vs RTX 3080: Which one to buy?
The RTX 3070 is slightly cheaper than the RTX 3080So the lower performance of the RTX 3070 isn't much of a loss when you consider the savings on price. AND
This is simply not the case with the RTX 3070 Ti the performance is slightly better, but it's also much more expensive, so you're not getting enough of a performance boost to justify the price you pay for the RTX 3070. If you're willing to spend the extra $100 / €60 / AU$170, for an RTX 3070 Ti over what you'd pay for the RTX 3070, you can also double that and go with a graphics card where you'll absolutely see a performance boost that justifies the price increase. It's the difference between getting great 1440p gaming and great 4K gaming. The only way we don't recommend going for the RTX 3080 is if you really have
a tight budget $599 / €529 / AU$979 is the absolute maximum you're willing to pay for a new graphics card. If so, we'd recommend sticking with the RTX 3070 and using that extra money saved for a night out with friends or to upgrade an older gaming peripheral.
Ultimately, the RTX 3070 Ti just doesn't make much sense at this price point.