Indian esports tournament platform, The Esports Club announced its latest esports event, the Dell Gaming TEC Pro League for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The TEC CS:GO Pro League powered by WD Black is open to gamers and teams from India, Bangladesh & Sri Lanka and will begin in October, running every month till the end of February with a total prize pool of INR 1,500,000 or 15 lakhs.
The tournament is being hosted in association with ZOTAC Gaming & ACT Fibernet. The total prize pool of INR 1,500,000 is split between 5 seasons, featuring INR 300,000 each season along with a WD Blue NVME SSD for the top MVP in each division.
Format and Registration
After an initial qualifying phase, the top 24 teams from India, Bangladesh & Sri Lanka would be divided into 3 Divisions. Each season will last for three weeks, with each division competing for its own independent prize pool. At the end of every season, the top three teams from each division will get promoted into the next division with the bottom three teams in each division being relegated. The bottom three teams in Division 3 are eliminated from the league at the end of the season, and a new open qualifier will allow three new teams to enter the league through division 3 each season.
Ishaan Arya, Co-Founder & Head of Business Development, The Esports Club, said, “We are extremely excited to be entering the CS:GO esports ecosystem. I feel the TEC Pro League format has a lot to offer and will help create a bit more stability in the Indian esports ecosystem while also allowing teams to constantly compete and improve with high stakes every single month.”
Deepak Gupta, Country Head ZOTAC Gaming, said, “At ZOTAC We’re always looking for the best possible ways to encourage and engage with our esports audience as we look to reinforce the notion ‘Frames Win Games’. The TEC Pro League format is amazing, and will really help develop the esports talent in India. ”
Ravi Karthik, Head of Marketing, Innovation & Customer Experience ACT Fibernet, said, “The concept of gaming has grown exponentially and we are at a juncture where the industry is unveiling platforms to hone and foster talent further. In this dynamic sphere, the need of the hour is to render support and strengthen the community to ensure that the spirit of participating and realizing one’s potential continues. ACT Fibernet’s endeavour is to continue pushing boundaries and innovating to build a robust infrastructure to enable the community’s growth. Gamers can feel the advantage of gaming on ACT Fibernet’s future ready networks that are especially built to provide a seamless experience with lowest pings. ”
The Esports Club has organized major tournaments in Valorant, Rainbow Six Siege in the past. The launch of Valorant has impacted the South Asian CS:GO scene with many players leaving to play the game. This will be one of the premier CS:GO IPs in the region and it will be interesting to see if new names and players are able to deliver on the big stage.
FlyToMoon has finally confirmed its fifth player to be Vladimir “RodjER” Nikogosyan after the latter stood in for the team at the Omega League: Europe Division. The CIS team revealed this through their twitter handle earlier today.
RodjER has been signed in as the permanent player of the FlyToMoon roster after putting up a great show with the team and winning the Omega League: Europe Divine Division. The Russian/Armenian player was called to stand-in for FlyToMoon at the Omega League after Ilya “ALOHADANCE” Korobkin parted ways with the organization citing a lack of enthusiasm to play competitive matches. After failing to qualify to the playoffs in the Immortal Division, the team came back stronger in the Divine Division sweeping 5men 3-0 in the grand finals to become the champions. This win cemented the choice of RodjER as the fifth and final player of the squad.
RodjER has been trying out on different teams since he split with Virtus.Pro in November 2019.
He had a short stint with Winstrike Team before the team disbanded in February 2020 due to unsatisfactory results.
RodjER then joined HellRaisers but the term with the organization proved to be short-lived as he became a free agent in July 2020. Since then, he has been playing a lot of pubs and looking to find a suitable squad to join. It looks like the support player has finally found his mojo with FlyToMoon and would look to serve the organization longer than his former teams.
FlyToMoon’s final roster:
Alik “V-Tune” Vorobey
Bogdan “Iceberg” Vasilenko
Victor “GeneRaL” Nigrini
Vladimir “RodjER” Nikogosyan
Andrey “ALWAYSWANNAFLY” Bondarenko
The team definitely has loads of experience and a talented youngster in the form of carry player V-Tune. FlyToMoon will look forward to delivering strong performances in the Tier1 scene as well. Currently, they are playing the OGA Dota PIT Season 3: Europe/CIS closed qualifiers and their next series against Ninjas in Pyjamas is scheduled to begin today at 20:30 IST. A series win will make them qualify to the main tournament where they face the likes of Team Secret, Nigma and OG.
NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3080’s launch was without a doubt a disappointment for a large audience who were planning to upgrade their graphics cards. NVIDIA and several retail outlets did apologize for all the issues that occurred on launch day with almost all them blaming it on the unprecedented demand for the next-gen graphics card. Now ZOTAC (via Videocardz) has revealed just the extent of demand that the witnessed during the launch day.
ZOTAC Reveals That They Received Almost 20,000 Orders For Their GeForce RTX 3080 Trinity Through Amazon Alone
According to a tweet that has now been removed, ZOTAC reveals that the company received almost 20,000 orders for a single SKU at one of the largest retail outlets, aka Amazon. ZOTAC listed its RTX 3080 Trinity model over at Amazon UK and as soon as the sales embargo went up, the model saw orders that reached almost 20,000. To be clear, that’s just one SKU in the ZOTAC lineup as there are going to be more models coming in the future. With that said, other models from different partners were also listed at Amazon EU but we don’t know if they also received similar orders.
Almost 20,000 pre-orders have been received and, with the best of intentions, we cannot serve them in a short time, as much as we wanted. So again: We are infinitely sorry, but we also don’t know what went wrong here. — ZOTAC on Twitter (Videocardz)
The ZOTAC GeForce RTX 3080 was listed for around 699 Euros but is now listed as “Out of Stock” and is stated that due to limited stock, they cannot fulfill all of the orders. So the remaining orders would either be canceled or users who play the waiting game would have to wait for weeks or even months before getting their cards.
Aside from the low stock, the cards that are available are now priced slightly higher than what they were during the launch day. An example as quoted by Computerbase is the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 3080 which is a very solid card with great cooling potential over the Founders Edition but its pricing has been raised from 699 Euros to 799 Euros. This is something that’s more so a retailer suggested pricing that NVIDIA cannot control and is mostly dependent on supply and demand. Since the stock is low, we can expect the prices of several models to be raised up until the issue is taken care of.
ZOTAC also pointed out that the GeForce RTX 3080 Trinity is their base model and by design, it is separated from the higher-end models which will be launched later. This should explain the limited overclocking capabilities of the first round of RTX 3080 graphics cards. ZOTAC has planned out its Trinity OC and AMP! OC edition graphics cards for launch later with higher binned GPU dies that could allow for higher out-of-box factory overclocks and better performance in general.
It’s by design – it’s also a way to seperate our higher end models from the basic Trinity models.
In regards to performance, we aren’t sure why the card is performing the way it is based on early feedback. We have been told that the 3080 Trinity is actually beating FE in some tests as well – so we may be seeing a broad range of varying performance or massive inconsistencies. We really aren’t sure yet – there are still other reviews to come out and feedback is still very early, but comments are important to us no matter if they are negative or positive, or based on early reporting. It’s a part of improving – it’s why we are here running this sub, so we can talk and have open discussions and collect feedback.
For comparison, the ASUS GeForce RTX 3080 ROG STRIX OC which aims to be the flagship variant features a significantly higher overclock then the existing models. It comes with a boost clock of 1935 MHz and even has faster-clocked memory dies. The Founders Edition comes with a boost clock of up to 1710 MHz while the fastest Gaming X Trio variant from MSI that I reviewed a few days back runs at a boost clock of 1815 MHz. Following are the Game and OC mode profiles that the ROG STRIX graphics card has to offer:
The ROG STRIX variant didn’t arrive at the launch but is expected to hit the market in the coming months.
Users who are looking for even higher clocks out of the box and better overclocking capabilities should definitely wait and see what ASUS and the rest of the manufacturers have planned out for Ampere RTX 30 series cards. At the same time, do expect to pay a hefty premium for these models.
FURIA has been having a great time at ESL Pro League Season 12: North America currently leading the group stage leaderboard with five wins and a loss. Their in-game leader Andrei “arT” Piovezan has played a big role in this success due to his unique aggressive playstyle which makes FURIA an extremely difficult team to deal with.
In a recent AMA (Ask Me Anything) session held by arT on Reddit, the Brazilian went on to reveal why his aggressive CT-side tactics were so effective among other things like, how important is physical and mental health in esports, swapping the AWP between him and Henrique “HEN1” Teles, his plans for the future, and more.
arT Reveals Why His Aggressive CT Playstyle Is So Effective
One of the Reddit users (PuzzleheadedPainOuch) in a recent AMA session held by arT had asked the Brazilian captain why his “Super aggressive CT playstyle still works against teams even now, when they know that you’re always going to be pushing?”
Answering his question the 24-year-old revealed that his aggressive playstyle works because the enemy team can’t play around as usual when they are getting pushed so quickly, they cannot be passive instead “They have to be active to win the round, and expose themselves while doing so.”
He also specifically stated that his CT-sided playstyle is not super aggressive, he does not just run in blindly taking a gamble but makes calls “Based on information or something which is more solid than a coinflip.”
Apart from this arT goes on to talk about the importance of physical and mental fitness in esports saying that “Confidence is key in CS, having a fit life will improve yourself in different ways. Just having a good sleep schedule, and an overall better life is always gonna make you perform better no matter what.”
Speaking about the AWP situation arT says that he is the one who gets the bolt action rifle over HEN1 if his role in that particular round or scenario requires it, “If I don’t need it, he gets it.” On his plans regarding the future arT says that he is still uncertain but he would love to stay involved in esports in the future as well.
FURIA has had a great 2020 so far despite competitive Counter-Strike shifting online due to the global health situation. They have had a bit of a rough time in RMR tournaments so far not having won even one of them, but maybe the upcoming IEM New York 2020 might be their first!
The specifications for AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards have reportedly been confirmed by Rogame. According to his information, AMD’s next-generation RDNA 2 (Navi 2X) lineup of GPUs would initially feature two chips with vastly different memory configurations.
In his tweet, Rogame says that he has confirmed the memory configurations of at least two Navi 2X GPUs based on the RDNA 2 architecture. These GPUs include the Navi 21 and Navi 22. AMD’s Navi 21 is based around the “Big Navi” GPU design which will power the flagship variants in the Radeon RX 6000 series lineup while the Navi 22 GPUs will power the high-performance lineup around the $500 US price range.
Coming to the VRAM configurations, it is said that Navi 21 will feature 16 GB VRAM. From previous leaks, we have seen an alleged engineering sample with the “Big Navi” GPU that featured 16 GB of Samsung’s GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit wide bus interface. In addition to that, the Navi 21 chip is likely to be housed by the Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU.
The second variant, the Navi 22 GPU, is said to feature 12 GB of VRAM and that would most likely be featured across a 192-bit bus interface. Based on the specifications, the Navi 22 GPU could be used in cards that would be the successor to the Radeon RX 5700 XT series. We can’t say for sure what AMD will call them but they could either be branded as the Radeon RX 6700 XT or Radeon RX 6800 XT series cards.
🧐
I’ve now got confirmation for both :
> Navi21 16GB VRAM > Navi22 12GB VRAM
I have no idea if these are full die or cut down SKUs
Rogame also mentions that it is currently unknown if the two variants he has confirmed are based on the full (Navi 21/22) GPU dies or a cut-down variant. The lower bus interface on flagship cards is slightly weird but there’s a possibility that these are just early engineering boards. Do note that 16 GB and 12 GB VRAM are also possible with 512-bit and 384-bit bus interface so AMD is also open to that option when the final specifications are released.
We still have over a month to go till the line-up reveal but AMD and the tech press are providing us with a handful of teaser and leaks in the meanwhile.
AMD Radeon RX 6900 Series With Triple-Slot Cooling Solution:
As for the designs themselves, the Radeon RX 6000 flagship cooling design looks amazing with the red and black design. The card features a triple axial-tech fan setup on the shroud and has a large aluminum heatsink that runs beneath it. The card has a LED-lit Radeon logo on the side and there is a large cut out on the side for the fans to vent out hot air. This design is very reminiscent of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 series Founders Edition cooler. The card will feature dual 8-pin power and display ports would include a USB Type-C (VirtualLink), 1 HDMI, and 2 DisplayPort connectors.
The card also features a fancy backplate along with a retention bracket to hold the cooler in place. The Radeon RX “Big Navi” GPU looks like it will come in the standard 2-slot reference design which is the same as NVIDIA’s flagship RTX 3080 but not as huge as the triple-slot GeForce RTX 3090.
AMD Radeon RX 6800/6700 Series With Dual-Slot Cooling Solution:
Moving over to the second variant, the dual-slot card features a design similar to the triple-slot offering but with a slightly compact form factor. This shroud is said to be designed for the AMD Radeon RX 6800 or Radeon RX 6700 series cards. The card features a dual axial-tech fan design and has the large “R” logo in the middle and on the fans too which represent the Radeon brand.
The card also features the LED-lit Radeon logo on the sides and has the large cut out to vent out the heat from the aluminum heatsink. There are two 8-pin power connectors on the card but we may also see 8+6 or configurations for the more power optimized variants. The card also comes with a dual-slot form factor and should feature a similar I/O as the Big Navi graphics card. It is expected that this cooler should house the Navi 22 GPU which is slightly smaller but still larger compared to AMD’s Navi 10 (RDNA 1) GPU for the Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards.
AMD will officially be unveiling its Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card family on October 28th. The second half of 2020 would definitely be interesting times for all the hardware enthusiasts and mainstream PC gamers who are looking forward to upgrading their PCs with the best hardware.
How fast do you think AMD’s Big Navi (RDNA 2) GPU Powered Radeon RX graphics cards will be?
Team Nigma fans will have to keep cooling their heels to watch captain Kuro “KuroKy” Salehi Takhasomi play, as he is still recovering from the arm injury he sustained in July 2020. The organization revealed this on their social media handle earlier today announcing that coach Roman “rmN-” PaleyrmN will be standing in during the OGA Dota PIT Season 3: Europe/CIS.
KuroKy’s absence from the team and rmN’s performances
Nigma is going to be playing without its captain for the third consecutive tournament as Kuroky’s arm injury is taking a lot of time to recover. Coach rmN- has been standing-in for him in Nigma’s previous two tournaments, OMEGA League: Europe Immortal Division and OGA Dota PIT S2: Europe CIS.
rmN- has not let the captain’s absence be felt as he has been playing reasonably well, even helping the team emerge victorious at the OGA Dota PIT S2: Europe CIS. Clockwerk and Warlock have been two of his signature heroes which have been seen in the recent tournaments.
An interesting thing that could be seen in the OMEGA League: Europe Immortal Division was star player Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barkawi taking the charge for in-game drafting. In KuroKy’s absence, rmN- was expected to take charge of the drafting duties. But Nigma’s offlane player Borislavov “MinD_ContRoL” Ivanov in a post-game interview, revealed that Miracle- has been playing a lot of pubs lately and is well-versed in hero drafting and in-game calling which has lead him to become the defacto drafter for Team Nigma in KuroKy’s absence.
Though Team Nigma’s performance has not fallen down in the absence of captain KuroKy, the team has been missing his “leadership” when things don’t go the way they’re supposed to, according to the Nigma players who spoke about this in post match interviews at the Omega League.
Without KuroKy in their lineup, Nigma managed to win the OGA Dota PIT S2: Europe CIS. They were also reasonably successful in the OMEGA League: Europe Immortal Division securing a Top 3 finish, only dropping games to the runner-up, OG in the playoffs.
Team Nigma is scheduled to play their first match of the OGA Dota PIT Season 3: Europe/CIS on September 23. Fans of the team will be hoping for a speedy recovery for KuroKy so that he is back in action at ESL One Germany that is set to begin on October 5, 2020.
We are in the midst of the greatest roster shuffles of all time and each day is bringing some spicy changes. In what will probably be the biggest CIS shuffle in recent times, Roman “RAMZES666” Kushnarev might be returning to his former team Virtus.Pro. Ramzes left Virtus.Pro in late 2019 after enjoying substantial success with the team for nearly 3 years.
Evil Geniuses signed Ramzes, in a very surprising move to many, in September 2019. A Russian player in the North American region was a very odd combo to most Dota 2 fans. After the pandemic halted LAN tournaments, we have not seen the full EG squad in action because of ping disparities among regions. Filipino player, Abed Azel L. Yusop has not been able to play with the team since then and Ramzes was only able to play with the team in the recently concluded OMEGA League: Europe Immortal Division. Now, as per reports from cyber.sports.ru and metaratings.ru, Ramzes will join the old Virtus.pro roster under the leadership of Alexey “Solo” Berezin. If this is the case, Ramzes will be replacing Igor “iLTW” Filatov, who has been standing in for the team since April 2020.
Alleged Virtus.Pro Final Roster:
Roman “RAMZES666” Kushnarev
Vladimir “No[o]ne” Minenko
Roman “Resolut1on” Fominok
Bakyt “Zayac” Emilzhanov
Alexey “Solo” Berezin
Speculations regarding the rosters of VP.Prodigy, Na’Vi and Team Spirit
VP.Prodigy, was initially reported to be signing Na’Vi linchpin Illias “illias” Ganeev and Gambit Esports mid-laner Danil “gpk” Skutin in place of Albert “eine” Garaev and Rostislav “fn” Lozovoi respectively. However, Na’Vi’s latest roster changes makes illias an unlikely prospect for VP Prodigy.
As per Metaratings.ru, fn and eine have already left the squad. If these reports emerge out true, VP.Prodigy will have the most promising young talent in the form of gpk and epileptick1d.
Na’Vi, after releasing three of their players, is reportedly acquiring Vasily “AfterLife” Shishkin, or coach Anatoly “boolk” Ivanov and carry Igor “iLTW” Filatov” as per the CIS Portal for their next tournament, ESL One Germany 2020. In all likelihood, they will be under a tryouts phase with Na’Vi considering the fact that COO Aleksey “xaoc” Kucherov recently stated that the new team will build step-by-step.
The former manager of HellRaisers Dmitry “Korb3n” Belov is also reportedly assembling a new roster for Team Spirit with “Miposhka” Naidyonov and Vitaly “so bad” Oshmankevich. Both these players are competing in the ESL One Germany 2020 – Open Qualifier #1 under the banner of Yellow Submarines. Team Spirit has only 3 active members in its current roster but the team has inoperative since May 2020 with its players mostly standing in for other teams.
ESL Germany 2020 will likely spill the beans regarding the final rosters as most of these teams are playing in that tournament.
Cloud9 after more than a week of having signed Alex “ALEX” McMeekin for three-years in a deal worth $1.65 million have announced two more players, William “mezii” Merriman and Ozgur “woxic” Eker. While the former is a 21-year-old British player who has previously not played top-tier CS:GO, the latter is the former mousesports player who had late last month stated that “I’ll be back to the top” following his unexpected departure, this might be his golden opportunity.
Cloud9 Announces Both Woxic And Mezii As Their Next Two Players
According to a tweet by Henry “HenryG” Greer, Cloud9 acquired mezii from Team GamerLegion by paying a transfer fee of $83,000 signing him for a period of three years in a deal worth $426,000. The 21-year-old Brit does not have a lot of experience to back him up but his talent has not gone unnoticed, we have already seen ALEX bring the best out of ZywOo in his time with Vitality and hopefully, he can groom this young lad in the same way as well.
The Turk who was recently benched by mousesports after a string of disappointing performances was quickly picked up by Cloud9 as their primary AWPer and ‘star player’. He has also been signed for a period of three years in a deal worth $1,365,000 which includes the player’s buyout as well.
Cloud9 have now revealed half of their lineup as HenryG had earlier mentioned that they will be playing with a six-man roster. The three remaining players will be announced in the next few weeks, the Cloud9 roster at the moment looks as follows,
Alex “ALEX” McMeekin [IGL]
William “Mezii” Merriman [Rifle / Support]
Ozgur “woxic” Eker [AWP]
Aleksandar “kassad” Trifunovic [Coach]
Henry “HenryG” Greer [General Manager]
PRODUCT INFO
MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio
17th October 2020
Type Graphics Card
Price $759.99 US
Keeping their tradition alive of launching a new GeForce graphics architecture every two years, this year, NVIDIA introduces its Ampere GPU. The Ampere GPU is built upon the foundation set by Turing. Termed as its biggest generational leap, the NVIDIA Ampere GPUs excel previous generations at everything.
The Ampere GPU architecture has a lot to be talked about in this review, but so does the new RTX lineup. The Ampere lineup offers faster shader performance, faster ray tracing performance, and faster AI performance. Built on a brand new process node and featuring an architecture designed from the ground up, Ampere is a killer product with lots of numbers to talk about.
The fundamental of Ampere was to take everything NVIDIA learned with its Turing architecture and not only refine it but to use its DNA to form a product in a completely new performance category. Tall claims were made by NVIDIA when they introduced its Ampere lineup earlier this month & we will be finding out whether NVIDIA hit all the ticks with its Ampere architecture as this review will be your guiding path to see what makes Ampere and how it performs against its predecessors.
Today, we will be taking a look at the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition graphics card. The card was provided by NVIDIA for the sole purpose of this review & we will be taking a look at their technology, design, and performance metrics in detail.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Gaming Graphics Cards – The Biggest GPU Performance Leap in Recent History
Turing wasn’t just any graphics core, it was the graphics core that was to become the foundation of future GPUs. The future is realized now with next-generation consoles going deep in talks about ray tracing and AI-assisted super-sampling techniques. NVIDIA had a head start with Turing and its Ampere generation will only do things infinitely times better.
The Ampere GPU does many traditional things which we would expect from a GPU, but at the same time, also breaks the barrier when it comes to untraditional GPU operations. Just to sum up some features:
New Streaming Multiprocessor (SM)
New Turing Tensor Cores
New Real-Time Ray Tracing Acceleration
New Shading Enhancements
New Deep Learning Features For Graphics & Inference
New GDDR6X High-Performance Memory Subsystem
New 2nd Generation NVLINK Interconnect
New HDMI 2.1 Display Engine & Next-Gen NVENC/NVDEC
The technologies mentioned above are some of the main building blocks of the Ampere GPU, but there’s more within the graphics core itself which we will talk about in detail so let’s get started.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Pricing Per Segment
NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 series is made up of a diverse portfolio of graphics cards. Currently, you will only be limited to the higher-end configurations starting at $499 US for the GeForce RTX 3070, $699 US for the GeForce RTX 3080, and $1499 US for the GeForce RTX 3090. NVIDIA themselves call the GeForce RTX 3080 as the flagship graphics card and not the GeForce RTX 3090.
The RTX 3080 & RTX 3070 are both priced well and in-line with their predecessors but the GeForce RTX 3090 goes all out with a price of $1499 US. NVIDIA calls the GeForce RTX 3090 as the “BFGPU” and as per the terminology, it seems like this is a new marketing name for the Titan graphics card. It is likely that we could see a Titan based card under the Quadro branding with faster specs out of the box but the GeForce RTX 3090 is purely a gaming graphics card first with all the horsepower for intense professional and workstation workloads.
With that said, the GeForce RTX 3080 replaces the RTX 2080 SUPER at the same price point and the GeForce RTX 3070 replaces the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER at the same price point. Given this trend, we might see the more mainstream variants cost just as much as their RTX 20 SUPER series cards but with a higher performance out of the box.
NVIDIA GeForce GPU Segment/Tier Prices
Graphics Segment
2014-2016
2016-2017
2017-2018
2018-2019
2019-2020
2020-2021
Titan Tier
Titan X (Maxwell)
Titan X (Pascal)
Titan Xp (Pascal)
Titan V (Volta)
Titan RTX (Turing)
TBA
Price
$999 US
$1199 US
$1199 US
$2999 US
$2499 US
TBA
Ultra Enthusiast Tier
GeForce GTX 980 Ti
GeForce GTX 980 Ti
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
GeForce RTX 3090
Price
$649 US
$649 US
$699 US
$999 US
$999 US
$1499 US
Enthusiast Tier
GeForce GTX 980
GeForce GTX 1080
GeForce GTX 1080
GeForce RTX 2080
GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
GeForce RTX 3080
Price
$549 US
$549 US
$549 US
$699 US
$699 US
$699 US
High-End Tier
GeForce GTX 970
GeForce GTX 1070
GeForce GTX 1070
GeForce RTX 2070
GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER
GeForce RTX 3070
Price
$329 US
$379 US
$379 US
$499 US
$499 US
$499
Mainstream Tier
GeForce GTX 960
GeForce GTX 1060
GeForce GTX 1060
GeForce GTX 1060
GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER GeForce RTX 2060 GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GeForce GTX 1660
TBA
Price
$199 US
$249 US
$249 US
$249 US
$399 US $349 US $279 US $229 US $219 US
TBA
Entry Tier
GTX 750 Ti GTX 750
GTX 950
GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050
GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050
GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650
TBA
Price
$149 US $119 US
$149 US
$139 US $109 US
$139 US $109 US
$159 US $149 US
TBA
In addition to the specs/price update, NVIDIA’s RTX technologies are being widely adopted major game engines and APIs such as Microsft DirectX (DXR), Vulkan, Unreal Engine, Unity, and Frostbite. While there were only three RTX titles around the launch of the RTX 20 series cards, NVIDIA now has at least 28 titles that utilize their RTX feature set to offer real-time ray tracing with more coming soon.
In addition to that, with the upcoming consoles confirmed to feature ray tracing, developers can also make use of the RTX technology to fine-tune future games for the GeForce RTX hardware. Currently, NVIDIA has 13 game engines that are leveraging their RTX technologies for use in their upcoming and existing games while both Vulkan and DirectX 12 Ultimate APIs are part of the RTX ecosystem on the PC platform.
So for this review, I will be taking a look at the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio. The Gaming X Trio comes in at a $60 US premium over the reference MSRP with a price of $760 US. At this price, you get a triple-fan cooling solution and a factory overclock out of the box. Let’s find out how well the GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio performs compared to the last-generation Gaming X Trio RTX 2080.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Graphics Card
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is a force to be reckoned with. It is the ultimate gaming GPU that is surprisingly much faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti which is its Turing based predecessor but is also much cheaper at just $699 US. The GeForce RTX 3080 carries more cores, more memory, higher performance efficiency, and also carries next-generation ray-tracing and tensor cores that make this a truly next-generation graphics card.
NVIDIA designed the GeForce RTX 3080 not just for any gamer but all gamers who want to have the best graphics performance at hand to power the next-generation of AAA gaming titles with superb visuals and insane fluidity. It’s not just the FPS that matters these days, its visuals, and a smoother frame rate too and this is exactly what the GeForce RTX 30 series is made to excel at. There’s a lot to talk about regarding NVIDIA’s flagship Ampere gaming graphics cards so let’s start off with the specifications.
At the heart of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card lies the GA102 GPU. The GA102 is one of the many Ampere GPUs that we will be getting on the gaming segment. The GA102 GPU is the fastest gaming GPU that NVIDIA has produced. The GPU is based on Samsung’s 8nm custom process node designed specifically for NVIDIA and features a total of 28 Billion transistors. It measures at 628mm2 which makes it the 2nd biggest gaming GPU ever produced right below the Turing TU102 GPU.
The new shader core on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture is 2.7x faster, the new RT cores are 1.7x faster while the new Tensor cores are up to 2.7x faster than the previous generation Turing GPUs. The 2nd Generation RT core delivers dedicated hardware-accelerated ray-tracing performance & features twice the ray/triangles intersection with concurrent RT graphics and compute operations.
For the GeForce RTX 3080, NVIDIA has enabled a total of 68 SM units on its flagship which results in a total of 8704 CUDA cores. In addition to the CUDA cores, NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3080 also comes packed with next-generation RT (Ray-Tracing) cores, Tensor cores, and brand new SM or streaming multi-processor units. The GPU runs at a base clock speed of 1440 MHz and a boost clock speed of 1710 MHz. The card has a TDP of 320W.
In terms of memory, the GeForce RTX 3080 comes packed with 10 GB of memory and that too the next-generation GDDR6X design. With Micron’s latest and greatest graphics memory dies, the RTX 3080 can deliver GDDR6X memory speeds of 19.0 Gbps. That along with a bus interface of 320-bit will deliver a cumulative bandwidth of 760 Gbps.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series ‘Ampere’ Graphics Card Specifications:
Graphics Card Name
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090
GPU Name
Ampere GA104-200
Ampere GA104-300
Ampere GA102-200
Ampere GA102-300
Process Node
Samsung 8nm
Samsung 8nm
Samsung 8nm
Samsung 8nm
Die Size
395.2mm2
395.2mm2
628.4mm2
628.4mm2
Transistors
17.4 Billion
17.4 Billion
28 Billion
28 Billion
CUDA Cores
4864
5888
8704
10496
TMUs / ROPs
TBA
TBA
272 / 96
TBA
Tensor / RT Cores
152 / 38
184 / 46
272 / 68
328 / 82
Base Clock
TBA
1500 MHz
1440 MHz
1400 MHz
Boost Clock
TBA
1730 MHz
1710 MHz
1700 MHz
FP32 Compute
TBA
20 TFLOPs
30 TFLOPs
36 TFLOPs
RT TFLOPs
TBA
40 TFLOPs
58 TFLOPs
69 TFLOPs
Tensor-TOPs
TBA
163 TOPs
238 TOPs
285 TOPs
Memory Capacity
8 GB GDDR6
8/16 GB GDDR6
10/20 GB GDDR6X
24 GB GDDR6X
Memory Bus
256-bit
256-bit
320-bit
384-bit
Memory Speed
14 Gbps
14 Gbps
19 Gbps
19.5 Gbps
Bandwidth
448 Gbps
448 Gbps
760 Gbps
936 Gbps
TDP
180W?
220W
320W
350W
Price (MSRP / FE)
$399 US?
$499 US
$699 US
$1499 US
Launch (Availability)
October 2020
15th October
17th September
24th September
In case you want to read our full NVIDIA Ampere GPU architecture deep dive and GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition review, head over to this link.
The group stage of BTS Pro Series Season 3: Americas came to a close earlier today with Quincy Crew topping the table with 16 wins out of 18 matches. Team Zero, the stack formed by Jacky “EternaLEnVy” Mao and the Brazilian team, Havan Liberty were the two teams that were knocked out of the tournament. The playoffs begin on September 20 00:30 IST with CR4ZY going up against 4 Zoomers in the Lower Bracket R1.
Havan Liberty’s performance and “Worrying Scenario” in the region
Following the departure of Havan Liberty from the tournament, the team’s coach Filipe “Astini” Astini took to twitter to summarise the team’s performance and highlight the state of tournaments in the North/South America division. He stated that Havan Liberty was out of the BTS Pro Series with a 5-5 match win record against the South American teams whereas a 0-8 against the North American teams. Astini added that the scenario in the Americas region is worrying with no tournaments scheduled in the next 3 months.
Havan Liberty gave their best shot in the tournament and performed decently, the coach of Havan Liberty added at the end of his statement.
Currently, the Europe/CIS has OGA Dota Pit S3 is kicking off on September 20, followed by ESL One Germany and the Omega League Season 2. China has an ongoing LAN tournament featuring the best teams in the region, the China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 1. Southeast Asia also has a couple of smaller LAN events according to the Dota 2 client.
So the lack of tournaments for the Americas region is indeed worrying especially considering Valve’s statement earlier this season.
“However, there are still going to be a lot of teams, casters, organizers and fans around the world that are not going to be meaningfully served based on the current trajectory and that is our fault for not pushing on those and supporting them enough.”
However it looks like not all is lost for the Americas region. David “GoDz” Parker, founder of Beyond the Summit, replied to Astini’s tweet stating that tournaments are indeed being planned for this region.
The competitive Dota 2 scene is having a rough season with the DPC 2020-21 getting interrupted because of the coronavirus pandemic. After immense backlash from the community in regards to lack of online tournaments, Valve had recently updated about its intention of holding various tournaments in collaboration with third parties in the coming months.
