[CES 2022] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050, RTX 3090 Ti for desktops and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3080 Ti for laptops

NVIDIA’s keynote at CES 2022 did address that it’s hard to get gaming-capable hardware today, and that’s why GeForce Now is one of their focus. They even announced partnerships with Samsung to bring GeForce Now to smart TVs. Along with that, they also announced a few new RTX ON titles… But hey, let’s check out the new hardware announced: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050, GeForce RTX 3090 Ti for desktops, and the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 — starting from $249

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 will follow in the footsteps of the GeForce RTX 3060, whereby NVIDIA will not be making a Founders Edition, and instead leave it up to their partners to come up with custom coolers. With the GeForce RTX 3060, this led to there being nearly no cards available at MSRP. But then again, it probably doesn’t exactly matter to us here in Malaysia, since we don’t have the Founders Edition cards here, and thus the MSRP matters little to us. For reference, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050’s MSRP is $249 (~RM1042).

With that out of the way, the GeForce RTX 3050 is claimed to offer 9 Shader-TFLOPS, 18 RT-TFLOPS and 73 Tensor-TFLOPS, which means that this card is about 30% slower than the GeForce RTX 3060. Considering its MSRP, it’s not exactly a great deal, even when comparing MSRP vs MSRP, as you will only be paying about 24% less money for 30% less performance. But coming from older cards, you are getting quite an upgrade, and NVIDIA assures that you will enjoying 60FPS+ experiences at 1080p, with raytracing and DLSS enabled. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 will be on shelves starting 27th January.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti — the new BFGPU

And on the other end of the spectrum… We have this. If you thought the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 was as good as it gets for gamers, well, think again. NVIDIA just made the much-rumored NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti official, with them dubbing it a “monster GPU”. Specifications are scarce, but Jeff Fisher, Senior VP of GeForce, shared some very interesting performance figures, and the fact that it will pack 24GB of GDDR6X running at 21Gbps. That’s quite a bit faster than the 19.5Gbps GDDR6X that the GeForce RTX 3090 is packing.

In any case, the claimed performance figures of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti are around 12.5% faster than the GeForce RTX 3090, with 40 Shader-TFLOPS, 78 RT-TFLOPS and 320 Tensor-TFLOPS. This sort of hints at the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti being based on the full GA102 die with all 84 SMs enabled, although we will have to wait for NVIDIA to unveil more specifications later this month.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU — faster than a TITAN RTX!

Along with the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, NVIDIA also dropped the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU. This GPU was quite heavily rumored as well. One thing that’s pretty interesting is that the GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU packed the full GA104 die with all 6144 CUDA cores enabled, so to go bigger, they either had to heavily butcher a GA102 die, or make a new die. Rumors are hinting towards the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU featuring a GA103 GPU, which probably makes more sense.

NVIDIA claims that the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU will deliver the fastest performance in a laptop ever, and that it is faster than the desktop TITAN RTX. NVIDIA is also targeting this at 120+FPS Ultra 1440p gaming, which is a touch higher than the 100+FPS Ultra 1440p gaming target of the GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU. Prices will be significantly higher though, with machines based on this new GPU starting from $2499, up from the $1999 starting price of the previous top-of-the-line mobile GPU.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU — 70% faster than GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER laptops

While I would say that the gap between the GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU and GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU is well-served by the range of power limits available, it seems that NVIDIA thinks otherwise. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU slots in between the duo, with it coming closer to the GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU than the GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU, something which wasn’t quite the case with the desktop GeForce RTX 3070 Ti… But I digress.

According to NVIDIA’s claims, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU will outperform the last-gen GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER laptops by a whopping 70%, which is a spectacular reason to upgrade. The starting price of $1499 is also very enticing, being just $200 more than the starting price for the GeForce RTX 3070 laptops. Now, it is probably worth mentioning that even with the fancy high core counts, the power limits set by OEMs might still see the GeForce RTX 3070 laptops outperforming some GeForce RTX 3070 Ti laptops. You can check out the following specs table to see the comparison between the mobile GPUs.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series Laptop GPU Specs

	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU
CUDA Cores	3840	5120	5888	6144	7424
Clocks (GHz)	1.28~1.70	1.29~1.62	1.04 ~ 1.49	1.25~1.71	1.13 ~ 1.60
Memory	6GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	8GB / 16GB GDDR6	16GB GDDR6
Memory bus width	192-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
TGP rating	60~115W	80~125W	80~125W	80~150W	80~150W
Target Performance	90FPS Ultra 1080p	90FPS Ultra 1440p	100FPS Ultra 1440p	100FPS+ Ultra 1440p	120FPS+ Ultra 1440p
Availability	26th January 2021	26th January 2021	1st February 2022	26th January 2021	1st February 2022
Prices Starting From	$999 (~RM4182)	$1299 (~RM5438)	$1499 (~RM6275)	$1999 (~RM8368)	$2499 (~RM10461)

4th Gen Max-Q Technologies — better gaming on battery?

On top of announcing the two new mobile GPUs, NVIDIA also announced their 4th Gen Max-Q technologies. Last year, the focus was on Dynamic Boost 2.0, Whisper Mode 2.0, Resizable BAR and DLSS with the 3rd Gen Max-Q technologies. This year, we have more. CPU Optimizer, Rapid Core Scaling and Battery Boost 2.0.

It seems that NVIDIA will be working with AMD and Intel to further improve the power sharing between the CPU and GPU, allowing the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series laptop GPU to have better control the power and thermals of the CPU to allocate more power to itself, delivering better gaming performance. NVIDIA is calling this CPU Optimizer, instead of calling it Dynamic Boost 3.0 or something.

Then there’s rapid core scaling, that allows NVIDIA to boost certain GPU cores’ clocks, while disabling some cores for a performance boost in creative workloads. This can apparently deliver 3X the performance when working in those apps, thanks to boosting the utilized cores, while disabling others.

Last but not least, Battery Boost 2.0 is apparently going to enable a better gaming experience on battery, while also delivering longer battery life, all with the power of AI. The battery life improvement is reportedly up to 70%, which is going to be massive, if real.

Pokdepinion: I honestly wonder how much extra FPS can you get with the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, but hey, I guess the people who can afford it won’t be really be too worried about the value aspect of things anyway.