RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?

RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?
9 min read
12 November 2020

Is it worth paying $200 more to get  Nvidia’s new RTX 3080 graphics card,   or are you going to be just fine with the 3070? I’ve compared both in games at 4K,   1440p, and 1080p as well as content creator  workloads to help you decide which to pick.

Spec Differences

Let’s start with the spec differences, as you  can probably guess based purely on the names,   the 3080 is better for the most part. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?The 3080 has more and faster memory,   more CUDA cores, uses more power, and costs  $200 more, so let’s find out if it’s worth it.

Test PC Setup

RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?This is the system that I’m using to test out  both graphics cards, so an overclocked i9-10900K   at 5.2GHz with 32gb of DDR4-3200 CL14 memory in  dual channel.  We’ll first dig into the gaming results,   then check out cost per frame, power draw,  and content creator workloads afterwards.

Gaming benchmarks

RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?Microsoft Flight Simulator was tested in the  Sydney landing challenge. The difference at   1080p was the smallest out of all 11 titles  tested with the 3080 just 5% ahead of the 3070,   but at 1440p the 3080 was 26% faster in  average frame rate, then 34% faster at 4K,   so the difference expands as we increase  the resolution and become more GPU bound. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested using the games   benchmark tool. Again there wasn’t  that big of a difference at 1080p,   the 3080 was just 10% faster in average frame  rate, but at 1440p this increases to a 20% lead,   then 23% at 4K, which just for reference  is below average out of the titles tested. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode by  running through the same mission on both graphics   cards. At 1080p, the 3080 was able to hit the 200  FPS frame cap, and I think the cap is why its 1%   low shows as being worse off than the 3070. This  wasn’t the case at the higher resolutions though,   and at 1440p the 3080 was reaching 29%  higher average FPS, and 33% higher at 4K. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with  the games built in benchmark. The 3070 was   still able to pass 60 FPS with the highest  setting preset at 4K, however the 3080 was   doing 36% better here, the second best  result at 4K out of all 11 titles tested. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?For Control I’ll start with RTX off results.  I’ve found this game to be quite heavy on the   GPU even at 1080p, which is why the 3080 was  30% faster at 1080p, the biggest difference at   this resolution out of the games covered.

At  1440p and 4K, even the 1% lows from the 3080   were ahead of the average from the 3070, putting  the 3080 up to 33% faster in average frame rate.RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More? With RTX on and DLSS enabled the frame rates  increase on both a little at 1440p and 4K,   but decrease slightly at 1080p. In any case,   the margins don’t change too much with  ray tracing enabled, so let’s move on.RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More? I’ve tested Metro Exodus with  the game's benchmark tool,   and the 1% low differences were fairly minor when  compared to most other games covered, though the   difference to averages was bigger with the 3080  performing 26% higher at 4K or 22% more at 1440p. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?The results in death stranding were very close  to the 11 game average at all 3 resolutions,   so I suppose just looking at this  graph for the most part gives you   a rough idea of the actual differences  between the 3070 and 3080. At 1080p,   the 3080 was 19% faster than the 3070,  25% faster at 1440p, and 31% faster at 4K. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?The Witcher 3 was consistently the  third best performing game out of   the 11 I’ve tested here at all three resolutions,   so above average results for the 3080 in this  one, which was 36% faster than the 3070 at the   highest 4K resolution. Even the 1% low from  the 3080 was above the average from the 3070. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the  built in benchmark and was on the other side   of the spectrum. At both 1440p and 4K the  difference between the 3070 and 3080 was   the smallest out of all 11 games tested, with  the 3080 just 22% and 12% ahead respectively. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?Call of Duty Modern Warfare was tested in  campaign mode. The 3070 was still offering   above 60 FPS at 4K in this one, though the  3080 was delivering 26% higher average FPS   both at 4K and 1440p. The difference was  lower at 1080p, with the 3080 21% faster. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?Rainbow Six Siege was tested using the games  benchmark tool with Vulkan. Given the 3070 is well   above 100 FPS at 4K with max settings, you could  probably debate how useful the 3080 would be,   but nevertheless it was able to offer 30%  higher frame rates at this resolution.

1080p Results

RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?At 1080p on average over all 11 games tested  the 3080 was 18% faster than the 3070 in terms   of average FPS. The biggest difference was  seen in control, which is quite GPU heavy   even at this resolution, though the difference  with RTX off was larger than with it enabled.

1440p Results

RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?Stepping up to 1440p and the 3080 was now  26% ahead of the 3070, and control with RTX   enabled was now the best result. This trend is  expected as we move up to higher resolutions,   as the GPU can get to work and system performance  limitations depend less on the other components.

4K Results

RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?Finally at 4K the 3080 is now 31% faster  on average than the 3070 in the 11 games   tested here. Again Control with RTX enabled  saw the largest difference between the two,   so it seems that the better hardware for  ray tracing with the 3080 is helping it out,   granted there are many other non ray traced  games that saw similar performance differences.

Cost Per Frame

RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?The 3070 is the winner in terms of value  when we look at cost per frame. The   performance on offer is still quite good  compared to the 3080, but it’s also $200   cheaper too. $500 is already a fair  amount of money to spend on a GPU,   and I think most people will be satisfied with  the levels of performance on offer from the 3070.

Power Draw

RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?When we look at total system  power draw from the wall,   the system with the 3080 installed was  using around 27% more power, which isn’t   too bad given in this same game the 3080 was  also offering 33% higher average frame rate.

Performance Per Watt

RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?This results in fairly similar performance  per watt. The 3070 has a slight edge at 1080p,   then at higher resolutions where the  performance difference increases more,   the 3080 is slightly better at 4K,  but it’s really quite negligible.

Content Creation

It’s not all just about gaming though, let’s check  out some compute and content creator workloads. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?I’ve tested DaVinci Resolve with the Puget Systems  benchmark, and the RTX 3080 was scoring around 10%   higher than the 3070, so a much smaller  difference when compared to the games. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?It was a different story in the V-Ray benchmark  though, the 3080 was scoring 38% higher than the   3070. I’ve shown in other reviews that Ampere GPUs  are offering huge gains over Turing based options   from last generation in this test, the 3000 series  really seem to shine in compute heavy workloads. RTX 3070 vs 3080 GPU Comparison - 3080 Worth $200 More?Blender was tested with the Open Data  Benchmark with the BMW and Classroom tests,   and again there were nice  improvements with the 3080 here too,   which was 25% faster in the classroom  test and 30% faster in the BMW test.

Conclusion

The extra memory from the 3080 could be  especially useful in these types of workloads,   especially if say you have a 3D rendering  project that just needs more memory capacity,   granted an extra 2gb of VRAM isn’t  that much, but it is faster too.

Given Nvidia’s next higher VRAM option  is the 3090 with 24gb at $1500 USD,   it could be worth waiting for Radeon’s  6000 series. Those have 16gb of VRAM   which just might make more sense than  this.

In case you have found a mistake in the text, please send a message to the author by selecting the mistake and pressing Ctrl-Enter.
JT 547
Joined: 4 years ago
Comments (0)

    No comments yet

You must be logged in to comment.

Sign In