Nvidia’s RTX 3080 Ti and 3090 Ti graphics cards aren only a bit faster than the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 that came before them, but they are proving much easier to get ahold of at their (admittedly high) recommended retail prices.
Today, Scan’s selling both models at RRP, with the 3080 Ti costing £1049 and the 3090 Ti costing a cool £830 more than that. These are both high-end cards with a price tag to match, but the Founders Edition models are generally the cheapest you’ll find – so we thought you should know about this unprecedented stock situation!
So are these a great buy? I’d say if you’re in the market for a GPU and don’t want to pay extortionate prices, then the 3080 Ti Founders Edition isn’t a bad bet. Katharine’s RTX 3080 Ti review of a Zotac model revealed performance around 10% faster than the 3080 in the best case scenario, 4K gaming, with smaller margins at lower resolutions. Over at Digital Foundry, we also tested the card, this time the Founders Edition, and got similar results, with the RTX 3080 Ti generally falling within a couple of percentage points of the RTX 3090 or about 15 percent faster than the 3080 at 4K.
That makes the 3080 Ti a better value card than the (admittedly incredibly expensive) 3090, but not as good a value card as the 3080 or any of its smaller siblings – at least when you go by RRP. In the real world, the cheapest RTX 3080 I can find on Amazon is £1109, so getting the Ti model for £50 less is comparatively excellent.
Meanwhile, the RTX 3090 Ti hasn’t seen an RPS review, but reports from other outlets report gains in the five to ten percent region over the RTX 3090. If those are accurate, then the card is by far the fastest GPU money can buy, but you’ll have to turn over nearly two thousand of your Earth pounds to do so – and for most people, that calculus won’t really make sense. Still, within the tiny number of people that do want the best possible GPU with no regard for forthcoming RTX 40-series cards, the Founders Edition is likely to be the cheapest option available for the immediate future.
What do you think of the RTX 3080 Ti and 3090 Ti? Would you ever buy such an expensive graphics card? Let us know in the comments below.
