From popular graphics to high-performance laptop solutions
It is always interesting to talk about the most powerful hardware in the world, but in reality, much more people buy “strong middlings” that provide the best price / quality ratio. The new RTX 3060 comes with a trump card – it comes with 12GB of GDDR6 video memory. That’s more than the 3060 Ti and 3070, which have 8 GB, and even the 3080, which has 10 GB of memory – however, the faster and more advanced GDDR6x. In addition, the RTX 3060’s accelerated clock rate is the highest in the entire 30-series lineup. It’s very interesting how this will affect performance, but it will only be possible to find out during testing.
The recommended price for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 in Russia is from 32,990 rubles.
Due to the size of the tennis balls, it will be difficult to guess the performance gain of the RTX 3060 over previous generations, but by eye the card is on average 20% faster than the RTX 2060
NVIDIA has also announced a line of RTX 30-series mobile graphics cards. According to the company, the RTX 3060 Laptop will be faster than the previous laptop flagship RTX 2080 SUPER, the RTX 3070 Laptop should be 70% faster than the RTX 2070 laptops, and the RTX 3080 Laptop is about 10% faster and comes with 16GB of video memory. It sounds a little confusing, but we will find out the real performance after the release of the first tests.
All three graphics cards support new NVIDIA technologies:
- Dynamic Boost 2.0uses a neural network to dynamically allocate resources between the processor, graphics core and video memory for optimal performance. In theory, this can allow you to squeeze more FPS out of the laptop, without putting it into maximum performance mode, in which the cooling system is too noisy. Plus the technology can help save battery.
- Whisper Mode 2.0uses a neural network to control the speed of the fans so that the laptop does not sound like a jet fighter taking off during the game. It’s hard to understand how this differs from the current cooling management systems used in notebooks from leading manufacturers – but what if NVIDIA can do it more efficiently?
- Along with the new graphics cards, the entire RTX 30-series line will receive the Resizable BARfunction . This is what AMD called Smart Access Memory last fall, a technology that allows a processor to access video memory. However, NVIDIA’s solution is compatible with PCI Express 3.0 and 4.0, and in theory will not require new hardware. Now the processor can carry out operations only with blocks of 256 MB of video memory and that’s it. This amount remains unchanged for backward compatibility with older hardware. Resizable BAR allows the processor to reserve any amount of memory, and the video card to have access to all data simultaneously. In practice, this gives a performance increase of up to 10%.
- DLSS isno longer a new technology, but it will show itself in a new way in laptops. Artifacts are harder to spot on smaller screens with high pixel densities, even if you look for them, but rendering games at lower resolutions can not only increase frame rates, but also increase battery life and reduce heat generation. As we’ve written many times, DLSS is ideal for mobile devices.
Prices for laptops start at 99,999 rubles (GeForce RTX 3060), 139,999 rubles (GeForce RTX 3070) and from 199,999 rubles (GeForce RTX 3080).
What do all these announcements mean?
The 12GB VRAM in the low-end RTX 30th series shows that NVIDIA underestimated AMD, which has 16GB VRAM in all its 6000 series graphics cards. This does not help them much in performance in modern games, which rarely require more than 12 GB even in 4K, but with the new generation of consoles, we can expect that memory requirements will start to grow rapidly in the coming years. Mid-range graphics cards are usually bought by people who don’t update their hardware every year or two, so the bigger the buffer the better.
It is also a hint that we will soon see updated versions of older graphics cards with more memory. In the summer of 2020, there were rumors that NVIDIA was developing two versions of each video card of the 30th series – with regular and with double the amount of video memory. It is possible that very soon we will find out how true they are. On the other hand, even Cyberpunk 2077 in 4K at maximum settings with RTX turned on Psycho (above the Ultra preset) still does not require more than 12 GB of memory.
The mention of Resizable BAR in every slide is also a response from AMD, which last fall showed at its presentation how its top-end Radeon RX 6900 XT using Rage Mode (in fact, the power slider in MSI Afterburner to the maximum) and Smart Access Memory (rebranded Resizable BAR ) confidently beats the RTX 3090, while standing at half the size. In practice, it was difficult to achieve such results, especially if you enable DLSS from NVIDIA. Resizable BAR is a feature that has been part of the PCIe specs since 2008, it just didn’t really need to be implemented before. NVIDIA is working with Intel, AMD and motherboard manufacturers to successfully integrate the feature into as many existing computers as possible, and all laptops with the RTX 3060 Laptop, RTX 3070 Laptop, and RTX 3080 Laptop will support it by default, whether with Intel or AMD processors.
NVIDIA’s CES 2021 conference did not go without big announcements, but showed where the company will move this year. Low-end GPUs will take CUDA, RTX, DLSS, Reflex and Broadcast deeper, deepening the NVIDIA ecosystem, which now includes leading streaming, eSports and performance solutions. New mobile video cards add to the usual arsenal of neural networks that manage power and cooling. And the RTX 3060 hints at an upcoming update to the older cards in the RTX 30-series lineup, because it can’t be that the younger card has the most memory. We will wait for the upcoming announcements .
