Skip to main content

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 GPU promises 100 FPS gaming at 4K resolution

Nvidia had promised that its newest GeForce RTX 3080 GPU delivers twice the performance of the prior generation RTX 2080, but additional information on performance wasn’t available during the card’s special launch event. Now, it seems that Nvidia has followed up with some game demos showing the card can perform at a minimum of 100 frames per second in 4K with game settings turned to the maximum level.

Recommended Videos

“We’re constantly analyzing memory requirements of the latest games and regularly review with game developers to understand their memory needs for current and upcoming games,” said Nvidia director of GeForce product management Justin Walker in a Reddit discussion, according to a report on Techspot. “The goal of 3080 is to give you great performance at up to 4k resolution with all the settings maxed out at the best possible price.”

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

Walker’s claims were backed up by Nvidia’s released demo of Doom Eternal. Video capture that was uploaded to YouTube of the game showed that it can be played in 4K resolution with framerates that top out at 150 FPS.

And this same level of performance can be carried to other high-end AAA game titles, according to the company, which noted that gamers can expect consistent framerates of 60 FPS to 100 FPS at that resolution. Titles that enjoy this boosted performance, according to Walker, include Shadow of the Tomb RaiderAssassin’s Creed OdysseyMetro ExodusWolfenstein YoungbloodGears of War 5, Borderlands 3, and Red Dead Redemption 2 when played with the highest game settings and with ray tracing enabled.

During the launch of the RTX 3000 series, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang boasted that these new generation of graphics cards based on the company’s Ampere architecture will perform even better when more ray tracing is utilized in the game, a stark contrast and welcome change when compared to the previous generation of GPUs based on the Turing architecture. In our earlier tests of Turing, we found that even Nvidia’s flagship RTX 2080 Ti struggled with ray tracing performance, and framerates plummeted when higher resolutions were used.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

In addition to being able to run games at higher framerates, Nvidia’s latest RTX 3080 should also be better able to handle monitors with faster refresh rates. When played with faster 144Hz monitors, Walker said that titles like Doom Eternal and Forza 4 will be able to handle 144 FPS at 4K resolution, and more demanding titles, like Borderland 3, will likely be closer to 60 FPS in performance. The performance here should make the RTX 3080 a winner for e-sports.

To keep the price of the RTX 3080 affordable, however, Nvidia conceded that it had to make some sacrifices, one of which is RAM. The $699 card will only be available with 10GB of memory, and it appears that despite not having more memory, the faster GDDR6X RAM is still delivering impressive results in real-world performance. And if you need more performance, the chart-topping GeForce RTX 3090 is designed for 8K 60 FPS gaming.

Chuong Nguyen
Silicon Valley-based technology reporter and Giants baseball fan who splits his time between Northern California and Southern…
Bad news for AMD? Nvidia might fast-track the RTX 50-series
Two RTX 4060 cards side by side

Things are finally about to start heating up for some of the best graphics cards. Although we're still in the dark about final release dates, both AMD and Nvidia are said to be launching new GPUs in the first quarter of 2025. However, a new leak tells us that Nvidia might try out a different approach with the RTX 50-series, and that's bound to put some pressure on AMD at the worst possible time.

What's new? We've already heard that Nvidia is likely to announce the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080 at CES 2025, with its CEO Jensen Huang scheduled to hold a keynote during the event. However, the release dates for the rest of the lineup remained a mystery. Now, a previously reliable source sheds some light on the matter with potential details about the planned launch dates for the RTX 5070, RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5060, and RTX 5060 Ti.

Read more
25 years ago, Nvidia changed PCs forever
The GeForce 256 sitting next to a Half Life box.

Twenty-five years ago, Nvidia released the GeForce 256 and changed the face of PCs forever. It wasn't the first graphics card produced by Nvidia -- it was actually the sixth -- but it was the first that really put gaming at the center of Nvidia's lineup with GeForce branding, and it's the device that Nvidia coined the term "GPU" with.

Nvidia is celebrating the anniversary of the release, and rightfully so. We've come an unbelievable way from the GeForce 256 up to the RTX 4090, but Nvidia's first GPU wasn't met with much enthusiasm. The original release, which lines up with today's date, was for the GeForce 256 SDR, or single data rate. Later in 1999, Nvidia followed up with the GeForce 256 DDR, or dual data rate.

Read more
Nvidia may be working on a surprising new budget GPU
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card.

This is certainly unexpected. Hints of an upcoming Nvidia graphics card showed up in the PCI-ID database, and it's definitely not what you think. Instead of working on the RTX 50-series or refreshing a 40-series GPU, Nvidia is bringing back the slowest RTX 30-series card -- the RTX 3050 -- but with an Ada Lovelace chip. In theory, that could make this the first RTX 30-series GPU to have access to Deep Learning Super Sampling 3 (DLSS 3).

The GPU in question is a laptop version of the RTX 3050. It's hard to say why Nvidia would choose to release new versions of that particular card in 2024 (or beyond), but the RTX 3050 A exists -- VideoCardz found traces of it in the latest Nvidia drivers. Just the fact that there's an RTX 3050 in the works is surprising, but that it's based on the AD106 chip is what baffles me.

Read more