Informatique

[Justin Walker] We’re constantly analyzing memory requirements of the latest games and regularly review with game developers to understand their memory needs for current and upcoming games. The goal of 3080 is to give you great performance at up to 4k resolution with all the settings maxed out at the best possible price.

In order to do this, you need a very powerful GPU with high speed memory and enough memory to meet the needs of the games. A few examples - if you look at Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Metro Exodus, Wolfenstein Youngblood, Gears of War 5, Borderlands 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2 running on a 3080 at 4k with Max settings (including any applicable high res texture packs) and RTX On, when the game supports it, you get in the range of 60-100fps and use anywhere from 4GB to 6GB of memory.

Extra memory is always nice to have but it would increase the price of the graphics card, so we need to find the right balance.

[Justin Walker] We are talking about both. Games that only support traditional rasterization and games that support RTX (RT+DLSS).

[Qi Lin] Yes. The NVIDIA Ampere Architecture supports the highest HDMI 2.1 link rate of 12Gbs/lane across all 4 lanes, and supports Display Stream Compression (DSC) to be able to power up to 8K, 60Hz in HDR.

[Tony Tamasi] One of the key design goals for the Ampere 30-series SM was to achieve twice the throughput for FP32 operations compared to the Turing SM. To accomplish this goal, the Ampere SM includes new datapath designs for FP32 and INT32 operations. One datapath in each partition consists of 16 FP32 CUDA Cores capable of executing 16 FP32 operations per clock. Another datapath consists of both 16 FP32 CUDA Cores and 16 INT32 Cores. As a result of this new design, each Ampere SM partition is capable of executing either 32 FP32 operations per clock, or 16 FP32 and 16 INT32 operations per clock. All four SM partitions combined can execute 128 FP32 operations per clock, which is double the FP32 rate of the Turing SM, or 64 FP32 and 64 INT32 operations per clock.

Doubling the processing speed for FP32 improves performance for a number of common graphics and compute operations and algorithms. Modern shader workloads typically have a mixture of FP32 arithmetic instructions such as FFMA, floating point additions (FADD), or floating point multiplications (FMUL), combined with simpler instructions such as integer adds for addressing and fetching data, floating point compare, or min/max for processing results, etc. Performance gains will vary at the shader and application level depending on the mix of instructions. Ray tracing denoising shaders are good examples that might benefit greatly from doubling FP32 throughput.

Doubling math throughput required doubling the data paths supporting it, which is why the Ampere SM also doubled the shared memory and L1 cache performance for the SM. (128 bytes/clock per Ampere SM versus 64 bytes/clock in Turing). Total L1 bandwidth for GeForce RTX 3080 is 219 GB/sec versus 116 GB/sec for GeForce RTX 2080 Super.

Like prior NVIDIA GPUs, Ampere is composed of Graphics Processing Clusters (GPCs), Texture Processing Clusters (TPCs), Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), Raster Operators (ROPS), and memory controllers.

The GPC is the dominant high-level hardware block with all of the key graphics processing units residing inside the GPC. Each GPC includes a dedicated Raster Engine, and now also includes two ROP partitions (each partition containing eight ROP units), which is a new feature for NVIDIA Ampere Architecture GA10x GPUs. More details on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture can be found in NVIDIA’s Ampere Architecture White Paper, which will be published in the coming days.

[Qi Lin] The new flow through cooling design will work great as long as chassis fans are configured to bring fresh air to the GPU, and then move the air that flows through the GPU out of the chassis. It does not matter if the chassis is inverted.

The Founders Edition RTX 3090 is quieter than both the Titan RTX and the Founders Edition RTX 2080 Super. We haven’t tested it against specific partner designs, but I think you’ll be impressed with what you hear… or rather, don’t hear.

[Qi Lin] The 30 series supports 10bit HDR. In fact, HDMI 2.1 can support up to 8K@60Hz with 12bit HDR, and that covers 10bit HDR displays.

[Justin Walker] There were major breakthroughs in GPU architecture, process technology and memory technology to name just a few. An RTX 3080 is powerful enough to run certain games maxed out at 4k 144fps - Doom Eternal, Forza 4, Wolfenstein Youngblood to name a few. But others - Red Dead Redemption 2, Control, Borderlands 3 for example are closer to 4k 60fps with maxed out settings.

DLSS SDK 2.1 is out and it includes three updates:

- New ultra performance mode for 8K gaming. Delivers 8K gaming on GeForce RTX 3090 with a new 9x scaling option.

- VR support. DLSS is now supported for VR titles.

- Dynamic resolution support. The input buffer can change dimensions from frame to frame while the output size remains fixed. If the rendering engine supports dynamic resolution, DLSS can be used to perform the required upscale to the display resolution.

The recommendation is to run two individual cables. There’s a diagram here. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/30-series/rtx-3080/?nvmid=systemcomp

[Tony Tamasi] NVIDIA delivered high-speed I/O solutions for a variety of data analytics platforms roughly a year ago with NVIDIA GPU DirectStorage. It provides for high-speed I/O between the GPU and storage, specifically for AI and HPC type applications and workloads. For more information please check out: https://developer.nvidia.ia.com/blog/gpudirect-storage/

[Tony Tamasi] RTX IO allows reading data from SSD’s at much higher speed than traditional methods, and allows the data to be stored and read in a compressed format by the GPU, for decompression and use by the GPU. It does not allow the SSD to replace frame buffer memory, but it allows the data from the SSD to get to the GPU, and GPU memory much faster, with much less CPU overhead.

[Tony Tamasi] There is no SSD speed requirement for RTX IO, but obviously, faster SSD’s such as the latest generation of Gen4 NVMe SSD’s will produce better results, meaning faster load times, and the ability for games to stream more data into the world dynamically. Some games may have minimum requirements for SSD performance in the future, but those would be determined by the game developers. RTX IO will accelerate SSD performance regardless of how fast it is, by reducing the CPU load required for I/O, and by enabling GPU-based decompression, allowing game assets to be stored in a compressed format and offloading potentially dozens of CPU cores from doing that work. Compression ratios are typically 2:1, so that would effectively amplify the read performance of any SSD by 2x.

[Tony Tamasi] RTX 30-series GPUs are supported on Windows 7 and Windows 10, RTX IO is supported on Windows 10.

[Tony Tamasi] RTX IO and DirectStorage will require applications to support those features by incorporating the new API’s. Microsoft is targeting a developer preview of DirectStorage for Windows for game developers next year, and NVIDIA RTX gamers will be able to take advantage of RTX IO enhanced games as soon as they become available.

[Gerardo Delgado] NVIDIA Broadcast is a universal plugin app that enhances your microphone, speakers and camera with AI features such as noise reduction, virtual background, and auto frame. You basically select your devices as input, decide what AI effect to apply to them, and then NVIDIA Broadcast exposes virtual devices in your system that you can use with popular livestream, video chat, or video conference apps.

NVIDIA Broadcast does not record or stream video and is not a replacement for GFE/Shadowplay

[Jason Paul] For RTX 30 Series, we decided to focus improvements on the video decode side of things and added AV1 decode support. On the encode side, RTX 30 Series has the same great encoder as our RTX 20 Series GPU. We have also recently updated our NVIDIA Encoder SDK. In the coming months, livestream applications will be updating to this new version of the SDK, unlocking new performance options for streamers.

[Gerardo Delgado] The GeForce RTX 30 Series leverages the same great hardware encoder as the GeForce RTX 20 Series. We have also recently updated our Video Codec SDK to version 10.0. In the coming months, applications will be updating to this new version of the SDK, unlocking new performance options.

[Gerardo Delgado] All of the GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs that we announced today have the same encoding and decoding capabilities:

- They all feature the 7th Gen NVIDIA Encoder (the one that we released with the RTX 20 Series), which will use our newly released Video Codec SDK 10.0. This new SDK will be integrated in the coming months by the live streaming apps, unlocking new presets with more performance options.

- They all have the new 5th Gen NVIDIA Decoder, which enables AV1 hardware accelerated decode on GPU. AV1 consumes 50% less bandwidth and unlocks up to 8K HDR video playback without a big performance hit on your CPU.

[Richard Kerris] We are actively working with game developers on support for Omniverse Machinima and will have more details to share along with public beta in October.

Omniverse Machinima can be run locally on a GeForce RTX desktop PC or in the cloud. The benefit of running Omniverse from the cloud is easier real-time collaboration across users.

[Stanley Tack] A CUDA update will be needed for some renderers. We have been working closely with the major creative apps on these updates and expect the majority (hopefully all!) to be ready on the day these cards hit the shelves.

[Seth Schneider] NVIDIA Reflex is both. The NVIDIA Reflex Latency Analyzer is a revolutionary new addition to the G-SYNC Processor that enables end to end system latency measurement. Additionally, NVIDIA Reflex SDK is integrated into games and enables a Low Latency mode that can be used by GeForce GTX 900 GPUs and up to reduce system latency. Each of these features can be used independently.

No, NVIDIA Reflex is different. Ultra Low Latency mode is a control panel option, whereas NVIDIA Reflex gets integrated by a game developer directly into the game. Through native game integration and enhanced algorithms, NVIDIA Reflex is much more effective in optimizing a game’s rendering pipeline for lowest latency.

See our Reflex article here to learn more: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/reflex-low-latency-platform/

Unlike the NVIDIA Ultra Low Latency mode, NVIDIA Reflex provides an SDK that the developers must integrate. Having our technology directly in the game engine allows us to align game simulation and render work in a way that streamlines latency. We’ve currently announced support coming for top games including Fortnite, Valorant, Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Destiny 2. We look forward to adding as many titles as possible to our supported title list.

The industry has long optimized for FPS, so much so that there have been massive latency trade-offs made to squeeze out every last 0.5% FPS improvement. NVIDIA Reflex takes a new look at optimizing the rendering pipeline for end to end system latency. While our research shows that latency is the key metric for aim precision and reaction speed, we understand FPS is still an important metric; so NVIDIA Reflex aims to reduce latency while maintaining FPS. In the majority of cases, Reflex can achieve latency reduction without any FPS impact. In a few cases, gamers may see small 0-2% FPS impacts alongside larger latency gains -- a good tradeoff for competitive games. Of course, Reflex is a setting in-game, so gamers can choose for themselves. Based on our testing though, we believe you’ll find little reason to ever play with it off.

System performance is impacted by many factors and the impact varies between applications. The impact is typically less than a few percent going from a x16 PCIE 4.0 to x16 PCIE 3.0. CPU selection often has a larger impact on performance.We look forward to new platforms that can fully take advantage of Gen4 capabilities for potential performance increases.