The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is the new budget entry point for NVIDIA GPUs, offering a great balance between price and performance. It starts at a lower price than the GTX 1080, while offering better performance across the board.
With a much better gaming experience at higher resolutions, along with ray tracing, upgrading to the RTX 3070 from the GTX 1080 is a no-brainer if you want one of the best graphics cards.
RTX 3070 vs GTX 1080: Specifications
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is a serious hardware upgrade from the GTX 1080. The new Ampere GPU, GA102, is manufactured on Samsung’s 8nm process. The GTX 1080, on the other hand, has a GP104 chip, manufactured on the 16nm TSMC process.
This jump really means a lot in terms of raw power, as the RTX 3070 has 17.4 billion transistors, compared to 7.2 billion on the GTX 1080. Here’s the rest of the specs. technique for both cards.
The RTX 3070 includes RT and Tensor cores, exclusive to the RTX series. This, in addition to the number of transistors, means that the RTX 3070 is significantly more powerful than the GTX 1080, which can also be seen in actual performance.
RTX 3070 vs GTX 1080: Performance
The RTX 3070 has sharper performance than the GTX 1080, with greater frame rates at 1440p and 4K. As a result, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is an obvious choice for an upgrade, especially if the goal is better frame rates and next-gen gaming experiences. Here are some real-world in-game FPS comparisons, courtesy of PC Benchmarks.
The GTX 1080 was last year’s performance king and it still performed well enough at 1080p and showed acceptable performance at 1440p. However, the RTX 3070 beats it in every respect, other than that it delivers ray tracing. Not to mention, it has a bunch of other next-gen gaming features that the GTX 1080 simply isn’t capable of.
At 1440p, the GTX 1080 struggled to hit the 60 FPS mark with some more intensive titles, while the RTX 3070 did it with ease. The RTX 3070 can even hit 144 FPS with a few tweaks, while the GTX 1080 requires a significant reduction in graphics settings to do so.
While the RTX 3070 is a solid performer at 1440p, it doesn’t stop there. It also works very well at 4K. However, the GTX 1080 clearly struggles to achieve what we call a smooth 4K gaming experience.
Upgrading to the RTX 3070 means you’ll get a much better 1440p and 4K gaming experience, and enhance images with ray tracing.
Is It Worth Upgrading?
While the GTX 1080 is a first-rate card, it isn’t always going to run at better resolutions and shows its age with more modern titles. The RTX 3070 is a first-rate improvement, with noticeable overall performance gains. In the span of generations, NVIDIA`s GPU lineup has packed in quite a few upgrades, and it shows actual global overall performance improvements.
The one large problem with the RTX 3070 however, is its availability. New GPUs are very difficult to discover a way to the quick delivery and heavy demand, and because of this many RTX 3070 are being offered at exorbitant charges which are marked up way above the real retail rate.
While the soar from a GTX 1080 to an RTX 3070 is recommended, it isn’t always really well worth dispensing more money over the retail rate, specifically for the reason that appealing supposed rate tag is a large cause for this improvement is a rewarding one. Buying an RTX 3070 at an appropriate rate would require a few ready and making plans for your part.
An improvement to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 can also require a few different improvements on your system. The card consumes 40W extra electricity than the GTX 1080. This way that in case your cutting-edge electricity delivery unit (PSU) is already at its limit, you would possibly need to upgrade it.
You may also not get exceptional results from your RTX 3070 if the performance of the system, specifically the CPU, is not sufficient to run along with it.
If you’ve got got a terrific, however, and may play the waiting game, then the RTX 3070 will be a good upgrade over the GTX 1080.