RTX 3080 vs RTX 3090

Looking for hardware purchasing advice, first I will tell you the situation.

I am upgrading from my trusty 4790k GTX 980 and a 3440 x 1440 100hz Gsync screen.

Parts I have already

  • 3840 x 1660 175hz gsync Acer Predator X38P UWQHD+
  • Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master
  • 32GB 3600Mhz CL14 DDR4

What I have paid for but don’t have yet

  • Asus Strix 3090 (Pre-paid on launch)
  • AMD Ryzen 9 5900x (Waiting for launch)

My screen has 6,144,000 pixels
4k is 8,294,400 pixels
1440P is 3,686,400 pixels
My old ultra wide is 4,953,600 pixels
So my screen is harder then 1440P but not 4k.

Here is my question. I want to get ~144FPS on this screen in wow on ultra settings.

  1. At my not not quite 4k ultra wide resolution would I see benefit in the RTX 3090 over the 3080?
  2. With the CPU bound game, would I see little difference between them for that reason as well? I am thinking the Ryzen 9 5900x will do pretty good.
  3. Will neither the RTX 3080 or RTX 3090 get me ~140 FPS in this game on ultra at my resolution and I’m delusional.

It isn’t too late for me to swap down to a RTX 3080 and save $1,614
I have the money for a RTX 3090 and I have already paid but I could potentially spend that money elsewhere.

Also looking for any other advice regarding this from anyone who has knowledge.

:slight_smile: Thank you very much.

  1. Depends on the game. For WoW not really. 3090 isn’t double the perf for double the price.
  2. Assuming AMD holds true to the better perf with the newer generation CPU, yes you’ll see a difference as you will be able to maintain higher fps in both lower bounds and upper bounds.
  3. You can hit 100+ fps easily with either cards. Maintaining it, is a different story.

My opinion if you’re just gaming.
get the ryzen 7 instead and 3080.
Invest the rest else where.

I’m not really a fan of buying a “top of the line” graphics card unless you need it for a job. I’m still rocking a 1070 and I’m pleased with the performance in WoW.

Eventually, I’ll upgrade, but it’s not going to be because of WoW. And by then, I’ll be able to get a card that’s as good as a 3090 for less money.

From all the benchmark talks and reports out there, the 3090 is really meant for high-end content creators or if you play graphically-demanding games like Crysis Remastered or Flight Sim 2020 on a regular basis, that are known to bring lower models to sub-60 FPS at your settings. Unless money isn’t an issue, it has a poor price:performance ratio for gamers, compared to the 3080.

Since WoW is CPU-bound, you’ll get better results with a CPU with better single-core performance, like the 5900x.

I will be getting the 5900x not that my 4790k at 4.7ghz hasn’t done me well.

Basically I want to make sure I’m making the most of the screen I got.

The 4790k and the 980 actually would sit around 85-98fps on near ultra settings at 3440 x 1440.

I want to make use of my ~150hz 3840 x 1660 on ultra.

So I figured I would need a RTX 3090 for that?

If money isn’t a concern then yes the 3090 will be able to maintain what you want more often. However if you’re speaking strictly WoW, the 3080 and 3090 will not matter too much. You’re more likely to hit CPU limitations before hitting GPU limitations for WoW.

Though this isn’t counting ray tracing. I doubt it would do much but I haven’t kept up too much with Ray Tracing news.

A 3090 should not be in anyone shopping cart unless you actually need that vram. So unless your doing modeling/rendering just get a 3080.

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While the RTX 3090 is terrible price to performance, you are also gaming at almost 4k resolution so you’ll utilize the additional VRAM of the RTX 3090.

current 2080ti’s dont even come close to maxing out vram in 4k games

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The 3090 is a Titan card without Titan features. Not a good gaming value. The 3080 will be fine but neither will get you a constant 144hz 4K experience in all aspects of WoW. Your CPU will help but how much remains to be seen when it’s released.

Overall as long as you’re not ray tracing then you should be fine. Ampere cards skimped out on resources to Raytrace due to Samsung’s node limitations.

I have a RTX 3090 FE and a Ryzen 3950x.

Without the ray traced shadows enabled it can do 4k@144hz at 144fps with settings at 10.

With the current ray traced shadows implementation it is not going to let you get in the 144fps range of you have it on.

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Good thing the RT shadows look actually not great this game.

Finding anyone playing 4k on a RTX 3080 is difficult it seems. Everyone is giving 3090 4k results or low resolution 3080 results.

A 3080 will 100% give you 144fps at 4k as long as your cpu is not the bottleneck. A 3090 is not that much more powerful than the 3080.

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It’s not impressive for WoW. Minecraft is nicer.

Note that Minecraft RTX, uses Ray traced lighting, reflections and shadows. WoW only has ray traced shadows.

Something wrong with his setup.

His FPS was overall low even with ray tracing off

The GPU utilization was very low and the ray tracing didn’t affect FPS much at all.

Suspect his CPU was bottlenecking the GPU heavily.

You’re right, Faerin. However even with more effects Minecraft doesn’t hit up rasterizers as much as other games. That’s why the raytracing cores have less cache space to contend with. The A100 or Quadros for example will probably have much nicer perf than RTX cards just because they had enough die space to do both.

Puppycatbug, the’s definitely running an older CPU so you’re correct. We don’t know if the 50% perf drop is linear or not yet. Nvidia is supposedly releasing a large batch near RNDA2 launch. Hopefully, we’ll see more people. Kinda wish I sold my 3080 after testing now.

You still have time I think to make a profit.

Someone offered me about 50% more than I paid for a 3080. No way I was going to say no :). I’ll just buy one in a few weeks for cheaper.

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Given the nature of CPU bound WoW, i’m in the camp of the 3080 and spend the extra elsewhere. It’s not worth the marginal gains.

I’m on a 3950x, and waiting to get my hands on a 3080 to go with my 34" Ultrawide.