If money was of no consideration and I could actually get my hands on one, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti would be a no-brainer.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has high 4k performance, more FPS, low temperatures and ray-tracing abilities, all packed into a stylish small form factor.
Significant worldwide GPU supply chain issues stemming from predatory reselling, tariffs on PC parts and an increase in crypto miners purchasing GPUs has resulted in GPUs such as the 3080 Ti being hard to come by.
Nvidia initially aimed to price the card at $999, but due to these issues, the price has inflated to approximately $1,804.99 and upwards.
For local pricing, we can look at MSI’s equivalent, the RTX 3080 Ti Suprim X 12G that is currently going for R40,999 on Evetech.com.
People are looking to secondary markets such as Amazon or Best Buy, but for South Africans, we will not see these GPU’s for a long time.
Specifications
| GeForce RTX 3080 Ti | |
|---|---|
| NVIDIA CUDA Cores | 10240 |
| Boost Clock (Ghz) | 1.67 |
| Base Clock (Ghz) | 1.37 |
| Standard Memory Config | 12 GB GDDR6x |
| Memory Interface Width | 384-bit |
| Ray Tracing Cores | 80 (2nd generation) |
| Tensor Cores | 320 (3rd generation) |
| NVIDIA Architecture | Ampere |
| Maximum GPU Temperature | 93C |
| Graphics Card Power | 350W |
Nvidia’s RTX 3080 Ti brings with it the option to enable ray-tracing (RTX).
When RTX is enabled in a video game, the path of light rays is traced around the environment leading to more realistic shadows, glowing lights and reflections.
The latest series of GeForce graphics cards boast the most significant generation leap in GPU development history with a 50-80% performance increase compared to older cards such as the RTX 2080.
Why not the RTX 3090
The 3090 is undeniably a slightly more powerful card. But only when applied to specific activities such as graphical rendering, video processing or working in 3D software.
The RTX 3090 benefits for gaming use are too marginal to grant the major price difference.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti ranks second, behind Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090. Table courtesy of Tomshardware.com.
With half the RAM, more power can be directed to the GPU, enabling the Nvidia GeForce 3080 Ti to turbo more often.
Possible issues
Despite the price, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti can bring CPU bottleneck problems if the other components of your PC are unable to keep up with the GPU.
You will also need a 4k or 1440p display to enjoy the card in all of its glory.
Despite these hiccups, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti remains my graphics card of choice.
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