GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB vs GeForce RTX 4090

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce RTX 4090, which comes with a clock speed of 2235 MHz and a GDDR6X memory speed of 1325 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 4 nm design. It is comprised of 16384 SPUs, 512 Texture Address Units, and 176 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		350 Watts
GeForce RTX 4090		450 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce RTX 4090 should theoretically be a small bit better than the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB overall. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4090		1042432 MB/sec
GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		934298 MB/sec
	Difference: 108134 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 4090 should be quite a bit (approximately 224%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4090		1144320 Mtexels/sec
GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		352800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 791520 (224%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 4090 is a lot (approximately 179%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4090		393360 Mpixels/sec
GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		141120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 252240 (179%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.