Our prediction for what NVIDIA has in store.
The tech community is buzzing with speculation about NVIDIA’s new series of graphics cards that are expected to be released in September 2020. What would you say if I told you I could see into the future? You would probably call me crazy! Let me unhinge the mystery of what performance we can expect from NVIDIA this year.
The performance of future processors and graphics cards may seem like a complicated topic, however, if you know where to look and which questions to ask, we can unravel the complexities and formulate expected benchmarks using simple math and statistics.
What do we know now?
We have reasonably reliable information on the upcoming core counts and power consumption of the 3000 series. By looking at the trends of performance gains throughout the last 6 years and translating that into a “performance factor”using a couple of formulas, we can anticipate how benchmarks will play out with the new cards.
The 2080Ti is certainly the current flagship card with 4352 cores. The card was released in 2018 and when we compare what each individual core lends to gaming performance, we can assume that core performance increased in 2019 and will increase again in 2020. We know this because a 2080 Super is capable of only slightly less performance as the 2080Ti with only 3072 cores. Memory optimization, architectural improvements, and manufacturing processes all lend a hand in creating better overall performance.
We also know that we can cram a lot more cores into a smaller space as the process nodes continue to improve and shrink. The 3080Ti is rumored to have 5376 cores. We know that there are diminishing returns when adding additional cores due to increased power draw and challenges around heat dissipation and thermal throttling. NVIDIA seems to be taking cooling very seriously with an apparent major re-design of the heatsinks to address the additional cooling requirements. We should see ample processing power from their new graphics cards which could be further enhanced through water cooling.
Virtual Benchmarks
We calculated all of the performance gains from added cores, increased core efficiency gains, as well as diminishing returns of adding more cores. We then took that information and trended it since 2014 to determine a reasonable target the new cards will be capable of achieving. That enabled us to forecast what we expect to be very similar to real world benchmarking performance in one of my favorite games, The Witcher 3.
By our calculations, the 3080Ti should be capable of 1080p framerates up to 32% faster than the 2080Ti. This is reasonable by our estimations and we believe the true benchmark performance will add up.
How will the other new 3000 series cards stack up? We did the math on those as well!
We expect the 3070 to be around 34% faster than the 2070 Super, making it a great upgrade from previous generation cards. The 3070 will be a solid contender in fair priced graphics cards.
The 2060 Super is an amazing card that truly optimized its architecture and takes full advantage of core count and overall design. We anticipate the 3060 to come in around 20% higher in benchmarks, which means that if you already have a 2060 Super you will likely not feel the itch to upgrade until late 2021.
Will it be worth upgrading your computer and graphics card at the end of 2020? If you are more than two generations back on your current hardware it might make sense to start planning an upgrade. As far as graphics cards go it looks like NVIDIA understands the sweet spot for hardware performance from one generation to the next. Below we present a comparison, by percentage, of modern graphics cards versus the GTX 970 from 2014.
For those lucky enthusiasts currently running a 2080Ti the logical upgrade path would be direct to the 3080Ti. Many will be satisfied with their current cards for a couple more years, however, with overall improvements to real-time ray tracing and other advanced graphics engine features we expect the 3000 series to out-perform previous generation cards significantly on future game titles. We also expect the 3000 series to show stronger performance gains comparatively in 1440p and 4k as CPU bottlenecks will become more apparent at 1080p with previous generation CPUs from both Intel and AMD essentially capping the framerates to the CPU. If you are spending 3000 series money on your computer, we recommend switching over to at least 1440p @ 144Hz to take full advantage of the capabilities that will be provided.
You certainly will not be disappointed if the upgrade path you choose will net you more than 30% performance gains. With modern titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 coming out later this year, the pressure and desire to upgrade is real. We believe our estimations for performance gains will be proven out once the real benchmarks start rolling in. Until then, let us all keep speculating and building up speed in the 3000 series hype train because that is how we do.
TL;DR
In short, yes, the 3000 series is worth the hype. We can’t wait to see the actual benchmarks to see how close our predictions are.
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