The Nvidia Ampere graphics cards are the real deal, with the the Geforce RTX 3090, RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 taking the performance ceiling to new heights for PC gamers.

Nvidia claims this is the biggest generational leap it’s ever made for its GeForce graphics cards. That’s no surprise considering the RTX 3070 offers more power than the RTX 2080 Ti, and the RTX 3090 is said to be the world’s first 8K-capable gaming graphics card.

We’ve also reviewed the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, which blew away the RTX 2080 Ti. This is the very first graphics cards capable of a respectable 4K performance, especially with ray tracing activated.

New RT and Tensor cores will also provide a performance boost for features such as ray tracing and DLSS, making sure these new GPUs feel like proper next-gen hardware.

We’re hoping to have our review live for the RTX 3090 very soon, but in the meantime, read on for everything you need to know about the new Nvidia Ampere graphics cards.

Related: Nvidia RTX 3080 review

Nvidia Ampere release date – When will Nvidia RTX 3ooo launch?

The RTX 3080 is available to buy right now, although it looks like stock is limited so you’ll have to act quick.

The RTX 3090 will arrive a little late, becoming available to buy on 24 September 2020. The Nvidia RTX 3070 won’t be available until October, with Nvidia yet to provide an official release date.

There’s yet to be any word on Nvidia RTX 3060, although previous rumours have pointed at a November release. There’s every chance this graphics card still exists, with Nvidia potentially waiting closer to the release date before announcing it.

Related: AMD Big Navi

Nvidia Ampere price – How much will RTX 3000 cost?

Nvidia has confirmed the prices for all of its Ampere graphics cards, with the RTX 3090 being the most expensive at £1399 ($1499).

Meanwhile, the RTX 3080 is confirmed to see a price of £649 ($699) and the RTX 3070 will cost a reasonable £469 ($499). These figures are actually significantly lower than what was previously rumoured, which will no doubt please potential buyers.

The RTX 3060 wasn’t confirmed, but previous rumours have indicated that it will cost $400, which may still be the case if it launches at a later date.

It’s worth noting that these prices are for the official Founders Edition graphics cards. Third-party manufactures (such as Asus and MSI) will also be launching their own models, and will see variations in price.

Buy the RTX 2080 Ti from Scan Computers for £1,077.98

Related: Intel Core i5-10600K review

Nvidia Ampere specs

Nvidia Ampere GPUs will use Samsung’s 8nm custom process, featuring a whopping 28 billion transistors.

New RT Cores deliver 2x the throughput compared to Turing, which should result in a huge performance boost for the likes of ray tracing. New streaming multiprocessors should also help Ampere be more efficient than the previous generation graphics cards.

The third-generation Tensor cores also improve AI-powered technologies such as Nvidia’s DLSS feature. This technology can reduce the workload of the GPU by up-scaling the picture quality to your desired resolution. With DLSS getting a boost for the Ampere generation, we can expect the up-scaling to be even more efficient than before.

As you can see in the table below, Nvidia has increased the number of CUDA Cores by a sizeable number for each graphics card. Clock speeds aren’t as high as some of the Super Turing cards, but that only opens up the opportunity for Nvidia to launch Super variants of the Ampere graphics cards in the future.

Related: RTX 3090 vs RTX 3080

Nvidia CUDA Cores Boost Clock Speed (GHz) Memory Graphics card power (W) RTX 3090 10,496 1.70 24GB GDDR6X 350 RTX 3080 8704 1.71 10GB GDDR6X 320 RTX 3070 5888 1.73 8GB GDDR6 220 RTX 2080 Ti 4352 1.64 11GB GDDR6 260 RTX 2080 Super 3072 1.82 8 GB GDDR6 250 RTX 2070 2560 1.77 8 GB GDDR6 215

It was also confirmed that high-end Ampere cards will feature Micron G6X video memory, which Nvidia claims is the fastest in the world. The RTX 3090 will feature an incredible 24GB G6X, while the RTX 3080 will see 10GB G6X which is still pretty darn high. The RTX 3070 is seemingly still stuck at 8GB GDDR6, but Nvidia promises it will still be more powerful than the RTX 2080 Ti.

Nvidia previously confirmed the new Ampere graphics cards will use a new 12-pin PCIe power connector, although bundled adaptors should help those with outdated 8-pin connectors. The power draw for each Ampere card has been confirmed, with the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 requiring a lot of wattage at 350w and 320w respectively. This may well mean you’ll need to upgrade your PSU in order to accommodate the next-gen graphics cards. Fortunately, the RTX 3070 is only slightly more power thirsty than the RTX 2070.

Related: Ray tracing explained

Nvidia Ampere performance

The three Nvidia Ampere graphics cards aim for very different performance levels, with each catering to specific markets.

The RTX 3090 has been confirmed to be the first ever 8K-capable consumer gaming graphics card, that can apparently hit 60fps at this ridiculously high resolution. This should mean that the RTX 3090 should breeze through 4K gaming too, although we’ve no performance figures to prove this.

The RTX 3080 is made with 4K gaming in mind, and is apparently up to 2x faster than the RTX 2080. Nvidia suggests you can expect consistent 60 frames-per-second when playing games in Ultra HD.

And finally, the RTX 3070 is designed for 1440p gaming, although is powerful enough to run select games in 4K too. Nvidia suggests this graphics card is faster than the RTX 2080 Ti graphics card, despite being half the price.

All three graphics cards should also see a boosted performance for features such as ray tracing and DLSS compared to Turing too. This means we could get improved advanced lighting visuals while the AI can lend a hand at maximising performance efficiency.

Nvidia posted a video of Doom Eternal in 4K, with side-by-side comparisons of the RTX 3080 and the RTX 2080 Ti. The video showed the RTX 3080 see a performance between 110fps and a whopping 180fps, while the RTX 2080 Ti was only capable of hitting 110fps at its absolute peak.

Check back with Trusted Reviews in the coming weeks for our review on all the new Nvidia Ampere graphics cards.

Computing Editor Formerly the Staff Writer at Stuff Magazine, Ryan's been writing about tech since he graduated from Cardiff University. At Trusted Reviews he is focussed on everything computer-related, giving him a v…