Everything Announced At NVIDIA’s GeForce Special Event

Hardware reveal events are generally pretty tame affairs due to the inevitable disappointment of never living up to expectations. Yet, NVIDIA’s GeForce Special Event broadcast today appeared to buck the trend with the event managing to rack up levels of excitement the likes of which we haven’t experienced in recent memory. And, that was even before the broadcast itself, aided, of course, by the anticipation riled up by months of rumors and wild speculation about the next-gen of Ampere gaming GPUs and all that they entail for PC gamers across the world.

Beamed straight from NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang rather grand and swanky kitchen, the GeForce Special Event certainly delivered – three ultra-powerful GeForce RTX 30-series GPUs no less – while packing in a few other choice surprises and even a handful of exclusive game trailers to boot.

Here’s a summary of everything NVIDIA covered.

Jensen Huang hosted a live event from his kitchen last night, unveiling key information on the 30-series Ampere GPU range that had only been speculated prior. One of the most anticipated pieces of information regarding these new cards was the release dates.

• RTX 3090 Release Date: September 24th
• RTX 3080 Release Date: September 17th
• RTX 3070 Release Date: October 

We got our first glimpse of the kind of performance we can expect from these groundbreaking cards last night. Below is a first look at what we can expect from Nvidia’s new Ampere GPUs:

• The RTX 3070 is set to offer the same performance as the RTX 2080Ti, at a fraction of the price.
• The RTX 3080 is up to 2x the performance vs previous generation (RT scenario). The new GPUs will offer a new thermal design with a push/pull system for better air distribution.
• The RT 3090 the most powerful graphics card in the world. The 3090 is up to 10 times quieter than the Titan RTX and is 30 degrees more efficient.

After showcasing what the RTX 30 series were capable of, Jensen unveiled the starting price of these hugely impressive GPUs:

• RTX 3070 Price: $499
• RTX 3080 Price: $699
• RTX 3090 Price: $1,499

With the Ampere GPUs offering much more performance potential when compared to last generation’s offerings, we were interested to see how much more power they would require. Here’s what Nvidia had to say:

RTX Turing 20 series:

• RTX 2080Ti PSU requirements: 650W
• RTX 2080 PSU requirements: 650W
• RTX 2070 PSU requirements: 550W

RTX Ampere 30 series:

• RTX 3090 PSU requirements: 750W
• RTX 3080 PSU requirements: 750W
• RTX 3070 PSU requirements: 650W

As with all new releases, there’s now a large crowd of individuals scouring the net for potential pre-order options for the next RTX 30-series ampere GPUs. Whilst it isn’t fully clear whether or not you’ll be able to pre-order right now, some sources have speculated some vendors will allow you to pre-order as soon as tomorrow at 12pm.

UK Pre-order Dates: Earliest reports see retailers like Scan offering pre-order dates from September 17th

US Pre-order Dates: Some sources speculate a pre-order date as soon as September 3rd, 12 pm

CA Pre-order Dates: No new information on Canada pre-order dates

Despite the new RTX Ampere GPUs bringing a brand new thermal design to the table, third party manufacturers will still be releasing their own uniquely designed AIB cards. There isn’t a great deal of information on what’s in store from these right now, however, we are keeping bang up to date with AIB releases here.

Early RTX 30-series AIB cards:

• ASUS NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 TUF GAMING
• Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 EAGLE
• Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING
• MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING X TRIO
• MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X
• ASUS NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 TUF GAMING
• Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 EAGLE
• Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GAMING
• MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GAMING X TRIO
• MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 VENTUS 3X

Huang kick-started the show by announcing that a suite of NVIDIA graphics technologies is heading to Epic Games’ battle royale shooter, Fortnite – a custom Ray Tracing map, NVIDIA DLSS, and NVIDIA Reflex. As NVIDIA explains:

“Immersive ray-traced effects, powered by GeForce RTX’s RT Cores, dramatically improve the fidelity and detail of Fortnite’s stylized world. With NVIDIA DLSS, performance is greatly accelerated thanks to Tensor Cores, found exclusively on GeForce RTX 20 and 30 Series GPUs. And NVIDIA Reflex reduces the time it takes for your actions, like your character’s movements, to be displayed on your monitor, increasing responsiveness.”

Second on the bill was news that NVIDIA has been busy working to mitigate the ever-present issue of lag in esports games. The result being NVIDIA Reflex, a tool available for the new GeForce RTX 30-Series GPUs and G-Sync monitors that analyzes and optimizes GPUs and games to limit latency and up refresh rates to 360 Hz. NVIDIA says Reflex is designed to lower latency to 30 ms or less.

“NVIDIA Reflex delivers the ultimate competitive advantage. The lowest latency. The best responsiveness. Powered by GeForce RTX™ 30 Series GPUs and NVIDIA® G-SYNC® monitors. Acquire targets faster, react quicker, and increase aim precision through a revolutionary suite of technologies built to optimize and measure system latency for competitive games.”

Leveraging the power of AI to transform even the most humble streaming setup into a home broadcast studio, NVIDIA Broadcast aims to level the streaming playing field. It takes run-of-the-mill webcams and microphones transforming them thanks to three core features: 

• Noise Removal: Remove background noise from your microphone feed – be it a dog barking or the doorbell ringing. The AI network can even be used on incoming audio feeds to mute that one keyboard-mashing friend who won’t turn on push-to-talk.
• Virtual Background: Remove the background of your webcam feed and replace it with game footage, a replacement image, or even a subtle blur.
• Auto Frame: Zooms in on you and uses AI to track your head movements, keeping you at the center of the action even as you shift from side to side. It’s like having your own cameraperson.

NVIDIA also introduced Omniverse Machinima, a new storytelling app geared towards gamers eager to craft gameplay into compelling narratives thanks to NVIDIA AI technologies – MDL/materials, Audio to Facial Animation, Physics/VFX, and AI Pose Estimation.

“Through NVIDIA Omniverse, creators can import assets from supported games or most 3rd party asset libraries into the platform. Creators can then automatically animate characters using an AI-based pose estimator and footage from their webcam. Characters’ faces can come to life with only a voice recording using NVIDIA’s new Audio2Face technology. Reality is effortlessly recreated with high-fidelity physics like particles and fluids, and physically accurate materials. After mixing, playing, and composing the scenes, path-traced rendering technology is enabled with one-click to final output with the highest fidelity using Omniverse RTX Renderer.”

While the game themselves could easily have brushed to the side in favor of NVIDIA’s fancy new pieces of kit, the GPU giant made sure to incorporate a number of titles showcasing RTX and the capabilities of the new Ampere cards, including the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Minecraft, and Cyberpunk 2077. Many of these will soon support RTX, NVIDIA DLSS, and the brand new NVIDIA Reflex. You can check out the glitzy new trailers just below.

Saving the best for last, CEO Huang announced three Ampere architecture-based GeForce RTX 30-Series – RTX 3070, RTX 3080, and RTX 3090. Each a beast in their own right, the three cards mark a notable improvement over the current Turing line-up with Shader, RT, and Tensor performance doubling in some instances. As NVIDIA rightly points out, the new Ampere gaming GPUs usher in a massive generational leap forward that, in many ways, epitomizes NVIDIA 20-year journey to offer the most cutting edge graphics cards on the market.

Here are the three announced GeForce RTX 30-Series GPUs alongside their key features and specifications.

RTX 3070

• 5,888 CUDA Cores
• 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM
• $499
• Available October

RTX 3080

• 8,704 CUDA Cores
• 10 GB GDDR6X VRAM
• $699
• September 17

RTX 3090

• 10,496 CUDA Cores
• 24 GB GDDR6X VRAM
• $1499
• September 24

And to end, the official blurb from NVIDIA:

“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.”