Nvidia Announces New Monster Gaming Graphics Cards (RTX 3080 and RTX 3090)

But, can they run Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 at its highest settings?

The Nvidia RTX 3080 starts at $699 and the performance is being promised as twice that of the prized gaming graphics card the Nvidia RTX 2080.

If that’s not good enough for the avid hungry gamer, Nvidia also announced a new monster RTX 3090 which is double the price of the RTX 3080. The difference being, the RTX 3090 promises to support 8k gaming, nevermind the fact most people are not gaming at 4k in 2020.

The RTX 3090 is a massive card, not just in price, but also in physical size. It measures 313mm in length, compared to 285mm for the RTX 3080. It will also take up 3 slots worth of space, in comparison to the average of 2 slots. This means you’ll probably want to consider a full-size tower case instead of a mid-size tower.

We are still a few years away from 8k gaming being a thing, in my opinion. We are only now just seeing gamers begin to embrace 4k gaming and even then, most people don’t have the machines or budgets capable of true 4k gaming.

Can the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 run Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 at its highest settings?

This is the one question I have. MSFS 2020 has shown in benchmarks that right now, you cannot achieve a smooth 60fps at ultra settings on hardware currently available on the market. Considering the performance is doubled compared to the 2080 and the 3090 looks like an excessive beast, maybe it’s possible now?

Another issue with MSFS 2020 is that it has also shown it is CPU bottlenecked and can only utilise a maximum of 4 cores (until a future update and presumably Direct X 12 upgrade changes that).

The RTX 3080 looks like a good buy, but unless you’re a die-hard GPU fanatic who wants to get the most frames possible out of your gaming experience or you’re doing GPU intensive activities, the RTX 3090 is probably beyond the budget for many, especially considering the price of the RTX 3090 is that of a decent gaming PC build.

Even so, this, in theory, should see the price of the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti come down substantially in the coming months. You don’t need a 30XX Nvidia card, the 2080 is still a mighty fine option if you’re looking to save some money for more RGB or a better case.

However, buried in the lede here is Nvidia announced an RTX 3070 card priced at $499. If you’re a 2080 Ti buyer, you would be understandably pissed off right about now, Nvidia is saying the RTX 3070 is faster than the RTX 2080 Ti which sells for 3 times the price.

You can see eBay is being flooded with RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti cards as we speak. Buyers are attempting to recoup some of their money before the market completely collapses and the prices plummet.

While Nvidia can throw fancy graphs and performance metrics at us all day long, the real story will be told during benchmark testing. Have we reached a point in hardware where the CPU is the bottleneck again? We’ll have to wait until the cards are released to see the true numbers, but we appear to be witnessing a new generation of graphics cards being born.