The presentation of the GeForce RTX 40 left many with a very important question , is it better to wait for its launch and make the leap to the new generation or is it worth buying a GeForce RTX 30? Some may see this issue as something very simple because they are totally clear about what they are going to do, such as those who bought a GeForce RTX 30 relatively recently and do not plan to change for a couple of generations, but for others it is a Quite a complex issue.
To help all those who are in that situation of doubt and who do not know what to do, I have decided to put together this guide, in which we are going to see five reasons to buy a GeForce RTX 30 and another five to wait for the GeForce RTX 40 . It is important that you keep one thing in mind, and that is that in the end the ones who have to make the decision are you, and that with this type of article my goal is not to tell you what you have to do, it is to help you make the right decision.
However, it is likely that even after finishing reading this guide you will still have some more questions. If this happens, I invite you to leave it in the comments , since I will be happy to help you solve it. That said, I think we are ready to start, make yourselves comfortable, you have many interesting things to read.
Five reasons to buy a GeForce RTX 30
1.-You will not have to wait to access the mid-range
NVIDIA has announced that the GeForce RTX 4090 will arrive on October 12, and that the 12GB and 16GB GeForce RTX 4080 won’t be available until sometime in November , so it’s clear that the lower-priced mid-range models they will not arrive until the first quarter of 2023.
This would leave us with an approximate wait of between 4 and 6 months , assuming that there is no delay and that everything goes according to plan. Therefore, if you want to buy a GeForce RTX 4060 you will have to wait almost half a year, and if what you want is to get a GeForce RTX 4050, I am sorry to tell you that the wait will be even longer, and that it will probably end up around nine months (second quarter of 2023).
If you can wait perfect , but if you need a mid-range graphics card with some urgency , be clear, it is better that you consider buying a GeForce RTX 30. Remember that, with the current prices of NVIDIA’s mid-range, it is better to buy a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti than a GeForce RTX 3060, since the price difference between the two is small, but the first yields much more.
2.-You have more models to choose from
And these will be better adapted to the particularities of each user, since not everyone needs or can afford to buy a high-end model. I have already told you in the first point, NVIDIA is going to launch the high-end GeForce RTX 40 first, and these will ultimately be the only ones that will be available on the market this year.
If you want a mid-range model with a price of less than 300 euros , be clear, you should opt for the GeForce RTX 3050, a model that I have already seen available for between 279 and 299 euros, although when it drops to that price it usually runs out quickly because there is still a high demand, especially within that price range.
NVIDIA will eventually release a GeForce RTX 4050 as well, but as I said before this won’t arrive until well into 2023. Again the key is whether you can, or want, to wait that long to change your graphics card , it all depends on your personal situation and of your needs. Note that right now there is also a wider variety of custom versions of the GeForce RTX 30, and from different builders.
3.-Prices are falling and will become more and more affordable
It is true that in the retail channel prices have not yet finished going down as much as they should, but prices are becoming more affordable, and as soon as they continue to drop they will become more and more interesting . In the end, I think it’s just a matter of time, and it makes no sense to keep the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti in the 1,000 euro range when you can buy the 12 GB GeForce RTX 4080 for a little more.
Another interesting option is found in the second-hand market, where the price drop is being much more bulky after the presentation of the GeForce RTX 40. Taking a quick look, I have found models like the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti for 360-380 euros , and I have also seen the GeForce RTX 3060 for 300 euros. Those prices are interesting, and for 300 euros we have a graphics card with 12 GB of graphics memory, very capable with ray tracing and compatible with DLSS Gen2.
However, be very careful if you decide to resort to the second-hand market. Try to buy near your home to pick up the graphics card in hand and if possible try before buying. In the event that none of what I have said is feasible, resort to platforms that allow you to recover the money if there is a problem with the purchase, or if the product is defective.
4.-They are still very powerful graphics cards
This is indisputable. It is true that the GeForce RTX 40 marks an important generational leap compared to the GeForce RTX 30, especially in ray tracing and for the value offered by DLSS 3, but let’s not lose the north , the current generation continues to offer excellent performance and they have with state-of-the-art specialized hardware.
NVIDIA did such a good job with Ampere that even a modest GeForce RTX 3050 is capable of running games in 4K and high or maximum qualities, thanks to the magic of DLSS 2 . For example, in Red Dead Redemption 2 with high quality and DLSS in performance mode it maintains 39 FPS on average, while in other less demanding games like DOOM Eternal and Death Stranding it achieves 63 FPS and 80 FPS on average, also with DLSS in performance mode. and maximum quality.
In bones as hard to crack as Cyberpunk 2077, it reaches 46 FPS with medium quality in 4K and DLSS in performance mode, and moves Control without problem in maximum quality and 4K with DLSS in performance mode, since it maintains 44 FPS on average. Be clear, the GeForce RTX 30 still have a lot of life ahead of them, even in their cheapest versions.
5.-They adapt better to less powerful equipment
It is the classic bottleneck issue that we have discussed so much on previous occasions. It will be useless to buy a very powerful next-generation graphics card if your processor is not up to the task , or if the rest of the components of your computer are not up to the task either. For these cases, it is better to resort to a mid-range model that does not end up being limited by the CPU or the power supply.
With the performance data that I have seen, and taking into account that one of the great values of the GeForce RTX 40 series is going to be the DLSS 3, it is clear that we are going to need a processor with a high IPC to be able to take full advantage of them in games. In case someone has gotten lost, I’ll explain it to you in a simple way, DLSS 3 starts from a very low rendering resolution, and the lower the base resolution, the greater the impact of the CPU on performance.
If you have a Ryzen 3000 or a Core Gen8 processor, it would be a more balanced option to go directly for a GeForce RTX 30. Remember that even if you have a high-end CPU within those generations, such as a Ryzen 9 3950X, this is not a guarantee , since that games prioritize IPC once we hit 6 cores and 12 threads. This is the reason why a Ryzen 5 5600X performs much better than that one in games.
Five reasons to wait for the GeForce RTX 40
1.-They mark a huge leap in ray tracing
One of the aspects that NVIDIA has highlighted the most has been the performance improvement in ray tracing that it has achieved with the Ada Lovelace architecture . This is, in fact, one of the most important keys that we must be clear about when we talk about the GeForce RTX 40 .
The use of third-generation RT cores has made it possible to double the calculation rate of ray-triangle intersections, and the introduction of technologies such as SER, Displaced Micro-Meshes and Opacity Micro-Mask make such a difference that it would triple the performance in ray tracing in front of Ampere.
This advance has made possible the introduction of a mode known as “Overdrive” in Cyberpunk 2077, which greatly increases the realism of ray tracing at the cost of increasing the workload that this technology represents. With this mode, 635 ray tracing operations are generated per pixel, while in Battlefield V ray tracing only produced 39 operations per pixel.
2.-You will have access to the third generation DLSS
And this represents a huge improvement, in fact I think it is the most important next to the performance increase in ray tracing. DLSS 3 is no longer limited to intelligently rescaling and reconstructing the image, but is capable of rendering an entire frame without resorting to previously rendered pixels, and without the need for CPU intervention.
Thanks to this, DLSS 3 can generate an additional frame for each partially rendered frame, and with minimal cost. The difference it makes is so big that it can quadruple performance, and it also greatly reduces the impact the processor has when running CPU-intensive games.
DLSS 3 will coexist with DLSS 2. Both will be supported, but it is clear that the one that will receive the most important improvements and optimizations will be the first , and therefore it will be the one that will evolve better and better, both in quality and performance.
3.-They will receive important improvements at the driver level
The GeForce RTX 30 have been on the market for almost two years now, and during all that time they have been receiving improvements at the driver level , which means that although they will continue to receive support for many years, we should no longer expect significant performance increases through new drivers.
This is something totally normal that happens with all generations of graphics cards . To understand it, one of the best examples we have in the GeForce RTX 2060, a graphics card that when it arrived was halfway between the GeForce GTX 1070 and the GTX 1070 Ti, and that in the end has managed to outperform the GeForce GTX 1080 in many current games.
The GeForce RTX 40 will be polishing and fine-tuning its performance with the arrival of new drivers, which means that the different models that NVIDIA launches could end up performing better than other GeForce RTX 30-series solutions that they did not outperform at launch.
4.-They offer higher performance in rasterization
Beyond the ray tracing performance and the value of DLSS 3, we must not forget that in the end this new generation of NVIDIA is also more powerful than the previous one in raw terms. Without going any further, the GeForce RTX 4090 exceeds 80 TFLOPs in FP32 , a figure that more than doubles the 35 TFLOPs of the GeForce RTX 3090.
In games the performance difference in rasterization is also going to be big. It is true that we still do not have all the data necessary to establish a well-adjusted comparison, but the presentation made by NVIDIA confirmed that the GeForce RTX 4090 will be between 50% and 100% more powerful than the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti in rasterization.
Obviously the performance will vary depending on each game and its own optimization , since we are talking about raw power in rasterization excluding ray tracing and DLSS. All in all, even in the worst possible scenario, the values we are seeing are quite positive.
5.-Powerful models with reasonable consumption will arrive
We will have to wait, but if we can make it to the end it will be worth the wait. The launch of the GeForce RTX 4060 and 4050 should take place in the first and second quarters of 2023 , respectively, and both graphics cards will represent a significant leap compared to current models, they will give us access to DLSS 3 and they will have very contained consumption.
A GeForce RTX 4050 could end up offering incredibly good performance thanks to DLSS 3, and its TGP should be around 125-150 watts. These two values would make it a real candy for those who need to upgrade their PC without having to completely change it, and without worrying about the power supply.
The GeForce RTX 4060 could also become one of the best mid-range models in history, as long as our forecasts are met, although we can assume that its price will be above what we are used to seeing within that range. Its consumption should not be high either, and it is likely that it will end up being less than 200 watts.
