GeForce RTX 3090 vs GeForce RTX 4080

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce RTX 4080, which comes with a clock speed of 2205 MHz and a GDDR6X memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 4 nm design. It features 9728 SPUs, 304 Texture Address Units, and 112 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 4080		320 Watts
GeForce RTX 3090		350 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce RTX 3090 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce RTX 4080 overall. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		958668 MB/sec
GeForce RTX 4080		734003 MB/sec
	Difference: 224665 (31%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 4080 is much (approximately 46%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce RTX 3090. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4080		670320 Mtexels/sec
GeForce RTX 3090		457560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 212760 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 4080 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4080		246960 Mpixels/sec
GeForce RTX 3090		156240 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 90720 (58%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.