Ampere · 2020
The RTX 3080 was NVIDIA's big step up in the 2020 Ampere desktop lineup, built around 8,704 CUDA cores, 10GB of GDDR6, and a wide 320-bit bus feeding 760GB/s of bandwidth. It was the card most enthusiasts pointed to for 4K gaming that generation, and it remains comfortable at 1440p ultra or 4K high settings with ray tracing and DLSS both switched on.
Running at a 320W TDP, it demands a case with strong cooling and a power supply to match - this is strictly a desktop part, never found in a laptop chassis. It sits a tier above the RTX 3070 and below the 3080 Ti and 3090, making it the card most people actually needed rather than the one with the biggest number.
Strong 1440p/4K gaming and demanding creative workloads.
10 GB GDDR6X memory.
Push performance beyond base clock.
PCIe 4.0 x16
Power-hungry flagship desktop card - plan cooling and PSU headroom.
The NVIDIA RTX 3080 is a high-end dedicated GPU with 10GB of GDDR6X memory, suited to demanding gaming and content creation workloads.