Buying new GPUs is next to impossible these days, but that didn’t stop Nvidia from unveiling a new flagship GPU in the RTX 3080 Ti — along with a host of new announcements and features.
The stream began with an unusual announcement: Nvidia had made a Microsoft Flight Simulator mod. The company wasn’t able to host their in-person briefings in Taipei due to COVID, so someone within the company recreated a more accurate version of Taipei for Microsoft Flight Simulator — and the company would be releasing it for free after their Computex keynote.
After running through a string of software updates for different titles, Nvidia formally lifted the lid on the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti.
RTX 3080 Ti: Australian Price, Specs, Release Date
Nvidia began the pitch for the RTX 3080 Ti by highlighting that it was 1.5x faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, and a good replacement for users who invested in the GTX 1080 Ti years ago. While it’ll have a slightly slower boost clock than the RTX 3080 (1.67 GHz vs the RTX 3080’s 1.71 GHz), the 3080 Ti will have 10240 CUDA cores, 2GB more memory and a slightly faster memory bus.
Here’s the full list of specs:
The RTX 3080 Ti will be available internationally from June 3, although Nvidia couldn’t confirm at the time of writing whether Founders Edition cards would be available here.
As for pricing, Nvidia confirmed with Kotaku Australia that the RTX 3080 Ti’s MSRP would be $1,920 in Australia. Obviously that might not be the end price that users actually pay, as seen over the past year, so expect the more customised RTX 3080 Ti third-party models to approach the $2500 mark.
RTX 3070 Ti: Australian Price, Specs, Release Date
Being priced under the RTX 3080, it’s likely that the RTX 3070 Ti should be much more affordable for the majority of Australians.
The main difference between the RTX 3070 Ti and the RTX 3070 is that the former will need two 8-pin PCIe connectors, instead of the single PCIe 8-pin that powers the RTX 3070. The card is also a little bit longer at 267mm, compared to the 242mm of the RTX 3070, and the 3070 Ti gets a boost from GDDR6X memory.
Here’s the full spec list:
Nvidia confirmed to Kotaku Australia that the RTX 3070 Ti will have an MSRP of $959 in Australia, and will be available from June 10.
Alongside the release of the new GPUs, Nvidia showcased several trailers of games — some new, some old — getting access to ray-tracing and Nvidia tech.
Once the keynote began proper, Nvidia immediately dove into new gaming announcements for existing RTX owners. The first title to benefit was Dying: 1983, a Japanese inspired horror puzzler from Nekcom, which would be getting support for ray-tracing and Nvidia’s AI-upscaling technology, DLSS.
It’s not known whether the game will be released in English at this stage, although given the ambient noise behind the trailer, I think it might work a hell of a lot better without.
Rainbow 6: Siege is also getting DLSS, further boosting frame rates in the esports-centric shooter. Ubisoft’s Counter-Strike-esque tactical shooter was already pretty well optimised, and while Nvidia showed examples where Siege enjoyed almost double frame rates at 4K, this should help boost performance for those playing at lower resolutions.
New footage was also revealed for Icarus, the New Zealand-made survival game from Dean Hall’s studio, Rocketwerkz. Like everything with Nvidia, Icarus will be getting DLSS and raytracing support. Red Dead Redemption 2, a game notorious for pushing PCs to their limit, is also getting DLSS support (but not raytracing). No Man’s Sky, Wrench and Into the Radius were also announced as getting DLSS support in VR, although those titles had already been announced prior to Computex. Nvidia Reflex support was also being extended to more games, including CrossFire HD and Escape from Tarkov.
DOOM Eternal will also be getting raytracing and DLSS support in a free update. It’s worth noting that Nvidia’s video, recorded on an RTX 3080 Ti with raytracing enabled, didn’t have DLSS enabled according to the performance metrics overlay. Enabling DLSS should provide a sizeable bump to performance, although the fact that the RTX 3080 Ti could get over 100 FPS through the majority of gameplay without DLSS shows just how well optimised DOOM Eternal is.
Nvidia’s Computex keynote also took time to reveal new ultra-thin RTX 3080 laptops were unveiled. The Alienware x15 was the first model, a 15.9mm thin laptop with a 1440p screen and a RTX 3080 Max-Q graphics card. A 14-inch HP Envy 15 with an RTX 3060 was also announced the keynote, although Australian pricing and availability is unknown.
Separately to the briefing, Nvidia announced via release that Linux gamers would get the benefit of the AI-powered DLSS. Support for DLSS will be added to Proton later this autumn in an upcoming update:
- NVIDIA, Valve, and the Linux gaming community are collaborating to bring NVIDIA DLSS to Proton – Linux gamers will be able to use the dedicated AI cores on GeForce RTX GPUs to boost frame rates for their favourite Windows Games running on the Linux operating system. Support for Vulkan titles is coming this month with DirectX support coming in the [Australian autumn].
Leave a Reply