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Over the last few years, the GPU market has proved to evolve into a swerving road. In mid-summer, 2021 prices for cards were two to three times over MSRP. Now, however, the market has somewhat improved, with GPU retailers no longer able to take advantage of price gouging anymore and consumers can now get premium graphics cards for much lower prices.
This begs the question if a GPU like the RTX 3080 Ti is worth it in 2022. With Nvidia’s recent release of its new 40 series in mind, buying an RTX 3080 Ti for $900 does not seem like a very smart decision.
RTX 3080 Ti vs RTX 3090
When both cards were released in 2021, people were buying up GPUs for both gaming and crypto mining with both looking like great investments at the time. However, now we see the aftermath. The RTX 3080 Ti offers a 2% to 4% lower performance than the 3090, disabling two SMs and cutting in half the VRAM capacity. This is not a major problem if we take into account the 14% to 20% performance improvement over the RTX 3080.
The real problem comes with pricing. The RTX 3080 Ti is normally sold for around only $100 lower than the RTX 3090, and almost $500 more than the classic 3080. For around $100 more you can get the powerful RTX 3090 with double the VRAM capacity.
Is 3080 Ti enough for 4k gaming?
Having that difference in mind, and the specs of an RTX 3080 Ti, this is not the best GPU for 4K gaming. The Ampere technology of the RTX 3080 Ti does not have enough power to play today’s 4K video games. That is when it comes to playing the new RTX 4080 which is almost at the same price will offer twice and even three times better performance than the RTX 3080 Ti and with the great help of ADA Lovelace hardware-raytracing and AI-powered graphics.
In conclusion, buying an RTX 3080 Ti was never worth it, and even less now that Nvidia is dropping the new 40 series and AMD will be launching their new GPU, as well.
