In the battle for frame rates and resolutions, gamers splashing out on high-end graphics cards want to know they are getting a level of performance that justifies the price. For this reason, news on the latest graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia is highly anticipated, and a new leak suggests that the latter will be bringing major boosts in performance to the next generation cards, including theGeForce RTX 3080.

If the reveal by Twitter user KatCorgi is accurate, the GeForce RTX 3080 will be 20% faster thanthe current generation RTX 2080 Ti, which hardware site WCCFTech calculates to mean a 50% boost over the equivalent RTX 2080. The RTX 3080 will be one of a range of cards based on Nvidia’s new Ampere GPU architecture, and is rumored to use the new GA102 GPU core, which will also power the high-end RTX 3080 Ti card. Other rumored specs for the GTX 3080 include 10 GB of GDDR6X memory, and 4352 CUDA cores, the same as the RTX 2080 Ti.

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The leak does not provide details of how the figures were reached, but WCCFTech suggests that a 20% faster card would result in 50% better performance at 4K resolution, and a 40% performance increase at 1440p resolution. This compares well to the apparent performance gains that AMD will make with its upcoming Navi 2X series processors, which are rumored to have a 10-15% performance improvement over the RTX 2080 Ti.

One apparent drawback of the new Nvidia cards is that they will require a significant power draw to achieve these results, with KatCorgi also stating that the RTX 3080 will have a gigantic TGP of 320 watts, drawing almost 25% more power than the current RTX 2080 Ti. This would fit with previously leaked images which show a huge heat sink and fan, and therumored new large 12-pin 12v power connection for the RTX 30 series cards. With AMD stating that their RDNA2 based Navi 2X processors will have a 50% improvement in power per watt, the next generation could see two differing approaches to the performance versus efficiency debate.

The huge rumored performance numbers and equally huge power draw figures suggest that Nvidia are looking to break some records in the fight against AMD, whoseNavi 2X processors will feature in the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Despite moving to a more efficient 7 nm process, it appears that the GeForce RTX 3080 will use those gains to reach for higher performance than even the staunchest Nvidia fan is likely to have expected.

Of course, most of the current information on the GeForce RTX 3080 is based on rumors and leaks. So gamers will have to wait for Nvidia and AMD release their new ranges before knowing for sure just how big those gains really are, andwhich route will provide the best performance for the dollar.

Nvidia RTX 3080 is rumored to launch in September 2020, no official date has been announced.