Waxer

Yes agreed. I was assuming that pushing power limit over 400W would be accompanied by very beefy cooling, like with a powerful custom loop otherwise you would indeed get chips running hot and becoming less efficient. Vicious cycle. Pushing them much beyond FE will not be cheap. Meanwhile I've seen a tester get 4% better fps from just the memory overclock on his test card.

No. You can OC the memory... it is rated for 21Gb/s and running at 19. Also the GPU itself will run faster, but the constraint is the BIOS power limit. AIB cards like the FTW3 will have higher BIOS power limit allowing significant OC headroom. The early / low end cards of mostly power limited, not temperature limited, not voltage limited and not crashing. OCing will mean GPU power draw of over 400 Watts however!!!

It is pretty funny: FE went straight from "notify me" to "out of stock" at £649 in UK. Asus TUF went from £649 before release to £799.99 in the UK when I last looked. I ain't playing this game. I am checking out. I'll wait for the 6900 XT announcement and reassess then. Not saying I will not get Ampere, just that I will keep my money and make an informed decision. And I will not pay scalper prices for any of this consumer tech. All this stuff is landfill in 5 years time anyways. Alright... slight exaggeration, but it is not like buying AMD shares when they were at $2.50 / share!

https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-teases-geforce-rtx-3080-with-20gb-memory

Well the Founders Edition 3080 cards that were being tested were drawing peak power of 370W and mostly performance was power limited, not limited by silicon voltage, or crashing. Some of the 3x 8 pin AIB cards are rumoured to have power limits of c.420W. It is likely that Ampere will overclock well, if it get a high enough power limit. But that is 420W... on the 3080, not the 3090. And that is just the GPU, not total system draw. Now, if you are looking for a new electric heater for your study / office over winter, then I suggest you forget the space heater, buy one of these GPUs instead and overclock it. You get buttery smooth 4K gaming thrown in for free! I gotta say that the performance and test results seem yesterday were very interesting. Nvidia's Digital Foundry paid promotion of cherry picked benchmarks was accurate, but highly misleading with all sorts of shenanigans (like cherry picking game settings requiring 9GB and comparing a 10GB card to an 8GB previous generation card). Now we see a range of performance expectations on raster based games at 4K: the generational leap is very good, but not astounding. But the really kick in the nuts is the power consumption that comes with that extra performance. Now you might not care about polar bears and Saint Greta of Stockholm. But regardless of you do, you don't, picture this: you are in your DCS F-14B, Jester has a lock and you vector for an intercept and kick in afterburner. Do you hear the roar of the afterburner? No. You hear your GPU fans at 1,900 rpm and an annoying buzzzzz from GPU coil whine! And while 370W, 400W whatever might be quite cozy in the middle of December or January with snow outside, do I really want to run DCS in Summer when it will turn the office into a Turkish Sauna? I gotta say, all this has gotten my checking out the Big Navi rumours. If the 6900 XT can match or even exceed 3080 by some measure, and do that consuming less power and costing a bit less that could end up being the winner, winner, chicken dinner here. Rumours are top Big Navi will have 80 GPU compute units, 16GB of GDDR (so no fears of running into memory limits) narrower memory bus but bigger L4 cache so comparable effective bandwidth. And all this with TSMC 7nm+ goodness. Yeah the Samsung 8nm decision showed you that they were more focused on their profit margin than they were customer satisfaction.

Hmm... I've just read that coil whine might be a re-emerging problem on the 3080 and 3090.

Not that I have seen. MRTV plans to but he is in the queue for a GPU along with all the rest of us. I imagine the problem - as DCS is free for a few modules - is 1) DCS is even more niche than MSFS 2020 with lower sales, and for now lower e-sport viewing on twitch, 2) It is not the new game like MSFS 2020 and importantly 3) is not accessible in the same way as most PC games. I mean you don't need a joystick, but really you do need one. And to experience much more than crash you really need to spend at least a few hours reading manuals and figuring out key mappings. Most tech Youtubers and testers don't have time for that.

Tests specific for MSFS 2020 and 4K. Not exactly what we want, but warmer...

Good point. Plus the fps or % increase is not just the only relevant issue. You can make a strong case that 35 fps and minimums below 30fps, is only just playable. Whereas something more consistent with 40 fps becomes are more comfortable experience for a flight sim.(Obviously both unacceptably low for a first person shooter type game).

Not with a VIC-20 it won't. :thumbup: By hyping performance so much with the Digital Foundaries video I feel that they have shot themselves in the foot. Instead of being happy with c+20% at 1440p or - far more importantly - c+30% at 4K (cause really the 3080 is a 4K card... for 1440p a 2080 Ti is sufficient), instead people are disappointed by not getting c.50% improvement relative from a 2080 Ti. No doubt they thought they were being smart. But it is not looking that way right now. Regardless they will still sell out initial supplies.

@1440p Not at 4K

Listen to this video, here I forwarded to the bit talking about memory. You need to listen for about 2 mins. All is explained. Enjoy. Hope that helps / explains.

Summary of Hardware unboxed benchmarks, across 14ish mainstream games (one of them is MSFT 2000): 3080 vs 2080 Ti 1440p +21% fps average (range +3% to +33%) 4K +32% (range +22% to +43%) Seen nothing so far benchmarking VR. Seen nothing so far benchmarking DCS. DEFINITELY seen nothing benchmarking DCS in 4K VR. But at least those numbers give us something to go on.

Quick heads up for anyone considering watercooling a new RTX 3000-series card. I usually buy EVGA cards (various reasons); I remove the air cooler and fit a waterblock. I had originally thought the XC3 would be using an NVidia reference PCB.This cycle even the base model XC3 (and its derivatives like the XC3 OC, XC3 Black) use a custom PCB. It is closely based on the reference PCB, but EVGA did some minor tweaks to it meaning that waterblocks specifically designed for the reference PCB are NOT guaranteed to fit. Check online configurators before purchasing.

Nvidia can do that if they want to in reaction to Big Navi. Which launches (soft launch or actual launch we are not sure) late October.

I can explain. Currently estimated yields from Samsungs 8nm on Ampere is that: 10% of chips are bin 2 60% bin 1 30% bin 0 (This is actually pretty impressive for bin 1, so early in the production cycle of these chips.) Founders Edition use the bin 2 chips which have better silicon: more capable of overclocking and less reliant on higher voltages for stability at higher clock speeds. Therefore they consume less power and run cooler. Testers are being given the Founders Edition... surprise, surprise. You can recognise bin 2 chips as they are labeled with an "A" suffix. For example: GA102-A. (Typically the bin 2 chips are found closer to the centre of the silicon wafers as the individual chips are cut out.) El cheapo / regular bin 0 and bin 1 chips are labeled GA102. These will be the ones sent out to AIBs and used on the lower end cards like the Asus TUFs and the EVGA XC2s, the Eagles or whatever they are called. It is not clear what the higher end AIBs are using and whether they get the GA102-A chips... things like the Asus Strix and the EVGA FTW3. Certainly the Galax HOF and EVGA Kingpins will be using bin 2 and perhaps the AIBs will even bin these even further. Conclusion: people are better off getting the Founders Edition as you get 1) good binned chips, 2) a very expensive, high quality cooler, 3) it looks like the Founders Edition is about $150 cheaper than AIB cards with similar silicon. This puts me in a slight bind as I intend water-cooling and I don't fancy taking one of those Founders Edition cards apart to get to the goodies underneath. I don't want a bin 0 chip. And I don't want to pay $150 extra. Something has to give.

For the 3080: Reviews 16th Sept at 6am PST 17th Sept 2020 at 6am PST orders open from Nvidia and the AIBs. No "pre orders".

Nvidia are using "2" bin chips. EVGA starter cards either "0"or "1" bin. We don't know for sure. Also Nvidia FE has a slightly higher bios power limit to the non OC, reference, starter cards. Some higher tier EVGA cards might be using "2" bin and for sure have higher bios limits. I am trying to find details of what the power limits actually are. Hard information is sketchy so far. BTW... for 2000 series the performance difference for "2" bin overclocks were typically worth +c.2% performance increase.

Yeah, I think you would need to lower your settings most likely. However we will not really know until - at the very least - general, real work game benchmarks are out on the 16th Sept. Also will will not truly know until DCS itself is tested both in and out of VR with a Reverb. (G1 would be okay I presume as it has the same number of pixels to drive). So yeah... we don't know for sure. I will be watching the various reviews on Wednesday and trying to make an early decision. But, most likely I will shoot for a 3090 rather than the 3080. Hard choice however given the huge price differential. The 3080 is such good value.

Buy a 3090 and turn the shadows back *** ON *** BABY!!!

OK boomer! :megalol: Just kidding.

Ahh, I missed that link. Just seen it: thank you.

Let's be greedy... A-6B or E, F-4B or J (alongside the Mig-19 and Mig-21s). AND a South East Asia map!!! I imagine all the trees would make even an RTX 3090 cry for mommy.

Okay. Been following this thread for a while now, occasionally saying something myself. I feel that it is going round in circles now, so I will check out and leave you all to it. In summary for me: I am very interested in the AV-8B module. During COVID lockdown I've been spent time in it, for the first time since buying it. Superficially it is good, but the more you go through the tutorials the more you discover quirks where things are not working. At first you think "What am I doing wrong" only to discover that actually you are running into a systems issue or bug that is not fixed. Is it unusable? No. But it is sometimes very frustrating. And at the moment it does NOT meet my expectations. Rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, complain and give up on the module, I would rather seen Razbam work to bring the module up to the good quality standard set by other DCS modules. There is a lot of good work already done on the AV-8B, so it seems stupid to devalue all that good work by leaving things unfinished. I want it fixed. Eagle Dynamics getting involved to help Razbam achieve this sounds very constructive to me. I think moving the AV-8B out of Early Access unfortunately sent a very wrong message to paying customers like me. I also thing that Razbam plowing on with one or two dozen other projects also sets an impression of a lack of focus. I get that the artwork done on various pipeline projects does not take the resource of the coders required to work on the Harrier, but regardless it sends the wrong message. I am interested in the Lightning and Sea Harrier that Razbam has teased. If any other developed were working on these I would likely buy them during Early Access. However given that these are Razbam projects I will not be buying either until the AV-8B reaches a level of maturity significantly advanced from where it is now. There are a number of very well argued and constructive comments and criticism on this thread. (Some of it was kinda angry, but I understand why. Hey - people are free to express themselves how they want. But my experience is that throwing toys around should be done only on exceptional situations if you want good outcomes). It should really give Razbam the information they need to polish the Night Attack Harrier to the level it needs to be. I wish them luck. If they ignore the community feedback I can't see this will end well for them. And it damages Eagle Dynamics reputation to have a developer underperforming so badly. I'd rather see fewer, very high quality modules on DCS rather than numerous quality compromised modules. Checking out. I am off to fly my Viggen.

How do you know how much DRAM Navi 2 has?