This upcoming holiday season gamers will finally get a chance to upgrade to next-gen when Microsoft and Sony launch the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, respectively. Hardcore gamers have another choice, however, and there’s no need to wait for the holidays: Nvidia’s newly revealed Ampere-based 30 series GPUs begin shipping this month.
Nvidia’s new flagship GPU, the GeForce RTX 3080, will be available for $699 starting September 17 while the RTX 3070 will launch in October for $499. The GeForce RTX 3090, meanwhile ships on September 24th for $1,499, and can render resource-hungry AAA games at 8K and 60 frames per second. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang boasted that the 30 series represents the “greatest generational leap in company history.”
While none of these GPUs are cheap in comparison to a self-contained console, hardcore gamers are used to the idea of upgrading their PC graphics cards every few years. The GeForce 20 series wasn’t seen as a huge leap forward from Nvidia’s Pascal architecture used with the GeForce 10 GPUs, but with next-gen consoles about to hit the market, the timing may be just right for Nvidia to encourage Pascal owners to upgrade. In fact, according to Interpret’s NMM: Global Profiles®, 13% of the world currently owns a gaming PC and about a quarter is ready to buy a new PC gaming rig within the next 12 months, with the strongest interest coming from the US and South Korea.
Consumer purchase intent aside, Nvidia is positioning its technology front-and-center in the esports and streaming world as well. The new Nvidia Reflex feature will reduce latency by up to 50 milliseconds (which could be vital in competitive gaming), and Nvidia Broadcast aims to introduce a whole host of streaming features for both professional and aspiring content creators.
