parpnant Nvidia 3000 GPUs: Where Data Scientists, Gamers, and Scalpers Colide | by Samuel Mohebban | Towards Data Science 555K Followers = You have 2 free member-only stories left this month. Sign up for Medium and get an extra one Nvidia 3000 GPUs: Where Data Scientists, Gamers, and Scalpers Collide Overview of the new Nvidia Ampere collection; different GPU benchmarks, specs, rumors, and manufacturing issues; and my experience trying to actually buy the 3000 series GPUs myself htps:ltowardsdalascience.com/nvidia-2000-gpus-where-dala-sciantsls-gamers-and-scalpers-colide-7a9a6(34061! 1aer In this blog, I will explain the hype around the new Nvidia Ampere 3000 series GPUs, how they compare to the Turing 2000 series cards, and the current benchmarks available today for each RTX generation. I will also go over rumors for upcoming variants of the 3080, as well as the reports from users saying the cards they received were defective. At the bottom of the article, I will go over my opinion and the advice I have for anyone trying to get them, regardless if it's for gaming, data science, or flexing on the latter two. Why is Nvidia so Popular? Nvidia has always been a winner within the GPU space, but it's for a variety of reasons and not just their “power”. When you want to compare computational power or the amount of TeraFlops (TF) between Nvidia and AMD GPUs, there is actually no big difference- and often, AMD comes out on top in this regard. For example, when comparing the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 ($~400) and the Nvidia 2080 (~$700), you see the cracks in the argument that Nvidia is the most powerful. When comparing the TeraFlop performance between these cards, the AMD Radeon 64 comes out on top in every aspect (FP16, FP32, and FP64). So if AMD offers cards that are more powerful (in terms of TF) at a much lower cost, then why is Nvidia regarded as the best manufacturer of GPUs? The real answer comes when looking at the bells and whistles that Nvidia offers, and how they target multiple different types of customers ranging from Graphic Designers, Data Scientists, and most importantly, Gamers. When it comes to games, the amount of TF does not equate to the gaming experience they provide. Looking at the Vega 64 and RTX 2080, the RTX 2080 crushed the Vega in every single gaming benchmark, averaging a 20%-50% increase in Frames Per Second(FPS) [Vega 64 vs 2080 Benchmarks]. I know some might be thinking, why on earth did you use the comparison between the Vega64 and RX 2080? I know these cards are completely different in terms of their usage, but 1 wanted to illustrate that just saying “more powerful” is only half the story. There are multiple reasons why Nvidia is better than AMD in terms of GPUs, and only some of these reasons are specific to the way you plan to use the hardware. I will go into what I mean in more detail throughout the rest of the blog post. htps:/towardsdalascionce.com/nvidla-2000-gpus-where-dala-sciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscollde-7a9a6IS4061! anaparpneant Nvidia 3000 GPUs: Where Data Scientists, Gamers, and Scalpers Colide | by Samwel Mohebban | Towards Data Science Photo Credit: Florian Olivo (Unsplash) ‘The reason the RTX GPUs are so powerful in modern games is due to their technology of ray tracing and the implementation of what Nvidia calls CUDA Cores. CUDA cores were created for gaming, but the icing on the cake for Nvidia is that they are also really impressive in deep learning and Artificial Intelligence- allowing this technology to have a wider target audience. Having more CUDA cores does not only increase your ability to implement neural networks and advanced algorithms, but when applied to games they create more realistic graphics and much higher FPS rates. RTX 2000 Series (Turing Architecture) To fully understand why the 3000 series is getting so much attention, it is important to know the past generation of Nvidia cards and the huge jump in performance the 3000 series has. For the sake of consistency, I will stick to these cards: Nvidia 2060, 2060S, 2070, 20708, 2080, 2080S, 2080ti, and Titan RTX. htps:/towardsdalascionce.com/nvidla-2000-gpus-where-dala-sciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscollde-7a9a6IS4061! anaparpneant Nvidia 3000 GPUs: Where Data Scientists, Gamers, and Scalpers Colide | by Samuel Mohebban | Towards Data Science Nvidia Turing 2000 Series (Photo by Author) Above we can see the difference in performance across each GPU within the 2000 series lineup. I want to note that prior to this generation, there were no Super cards. The implementation of Super is thought to be a response to AMD’s aggressive pricing strategies, as Nvidia filled the price gap between each model to make their products more enticing than compared to AMD's cheaper cards. I also want to note that the pricing that is listed above is not the release price but rather the current prices on Amazon and Newegg. The retail price for these cards when they came out were about 20%~40% more for each card. One major jump from this series to the 3000 series is the core clocks, Bit bandwidth, and most importantly, the CUDA core count. As we can see above, the flagship card in the 2000 series has 4606 CUDA cores, a bit bandwidth of 384-bit, and 1350-1770 MHz clock speeds; and was priced at launch for a whopping $2,500. This performance is impressive, but compared to the new 3000 series lineup these specs get blown out of the water. Nvidia 3000 Series (Ampere Architecture) In this generation of GPUs, Nvidia really outdid themselves. They not only created a lineup that crushed their last ones, but they added a new pricing strategy that is very unconventional of them as a hardware company. Below you can see the specs for the new series. Every card marked with *** is considered to be rumored and not definite in terms of pricing and specs. htps:/towardsdalascionce.com/nvidla-2000-gpus-where-dala-ciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscolide-7a9a6(S4061! anaparpneant ‘Nvidia 3000 GPUs: Where Data Scientss, Gamers, and Scalpers Colide | by Samuel Mohebban | Towards Data Science Nvidia Ampere 3000 Series vs. Turing 2000 Series (Photo by Author) As you can see above, the pricing not only halves their last generation, but the low tier 3000 series cards are faster than their flagship? I added a question mark here because like you, I just don’t understand. Looking at the 3080 which is priced at ~$700 USD we can see there are almost 50% more CUDA cores and achieves clock speeds higher than the previous flagship RTX Titan- I know, crazy right... By creating these cards and pricing them like this, Nvidia made their own previous generation products completely irrelevant- well that is, for gamers. This brings me to my next topic, memory. The memory bandwidth across the 2000 series and 3000 series is a bit different, as the 3080 contains only 10GB, 1 less than the previous generation 2080ti which contains 11GB. For gamers, 1GB loss does not matter as much as long as the FPS rates and Ray Tracing cores increase, which they did. However, for deep learning and graphic designers, this ‘was a little disappointing. The memory bandwidth available in graphics cards is very crucial for using state of the art (SOTA) techniques. Here is an article explaining how memory bandwidth is important, and which GPUs are necessary for certain deep learning techniques. In the article, the author, Tim Dettmers explains the following: Research that is hunting state-of-the-art scores: > =11 GB * Research that is hunting for interesting architectures: > =8 GB * Any other research: 8 GB * Kaggle: 4-8 GB « Startups: 8 GB (but check the specific application area for model sizes) © Companies: 8 GB for prototyping, >=11 GB for training Considering this, although the lack of memory bandwidth for the 3080 was disappointing, the inclusion of a whopping 24gb 3090 model makes up for the pain some people felt. Looking at the new 3090 series, it not only packs more CUDA cores, but also 2GB more of memory than the RTX Titan- and don’t forget its $1,000 cheaper! htps:/towardsdalascionce.com/nvidla-2000-gpus-where-dala-sciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscollde-7a9a6IS4061! enazenro ‘Nvidia 3000 GPUS: Where Data Scientists, Gamers, and Sealpers Colide | by Samuel Mohebban | Towards Data Science 3080 20GB Rumors If you are one of the few people that had the chance to buy the 3080 GPU on release day, you might be looking at the chart with panic. Although it is not definite, there are countless leaks from well-established sources saying there will be a 3080 20GB variant. Personally, when I read these I felt very relieved as I was trying to buy a 3080 myself. The idea behind this release is that Nvidia will release this variant during the same week as AMD’s Big Navi release. AMD announced some specs for their next-generation 6000 series cards, showing that their flagship will contain a total of 16GB memory and will be faster than the 3080. This increase is impressive as well, but Nvidia holding out on a 20GB model is genius considering it will be more enticing than the Big Navi release. This article by Carly Page outlines the leaked specs and how they compare to the Nvidia 3000 series. If it is true that AMD created a card that is faster than the 3080, having more memory in the 3080 will push customers towards Nvidia and away from the AMD launch. The first leak comes from the GIGABYTE website. As you can see here, they posted various redemption codes for the 3000 series launch and included cards that have not yet been announced. When I saw this, I was already convinced it was true, especially since Nvidia has yet to correct these rumors and stayed quiet. A few days after this leak, there was another coming from Galax, another GPU manufacturer. In this leak, a roadmap during an internal presentation was shown to feature a 3080 20GB variant. Considering these two leaks within the same week, and Nvidia not saying a thing about it, it is clear in my opinion that this release may actually happen. From a machine learning perspective, the introduction of a card with 20GB priced below $1000 would be a game-changer- especially for me as I currently use an RX 580 8GB card. However, from a gaming perspective, these increases in memory are not that important for most people. I will go into my opinions on the massive hype around 3090 and why some people should not be as excited if they plan to use it just for gaming. Reports of Broken/Defective Cards htps:/towardsdalascionce.com/nvidla-2000-gpus-where-dala-sciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscollde-7a9a6IS4061! ona2222024 ‘Nvidia 3000 GPUS: Where Data Scientists, Gamers, and Sealpers Colide | by Samuel Mohebban | Towards Data Science As users began actually receiving their cards, there have been a number of reports that the cards are not working as they are supposed to, or that their card was shipped without a box, causing bending and aesthetic damage to the cards. The former issue of cards being sent without a box is outlined in this article, where the authors explain this is the fault of distribution partners such as Newegg. On the other hand, to fully understand why cards are crashing and not working properly, you have to also know how the distribution and manufacturing of the cards work. When Nvidia creates a GPU, there are different versions that go out into the market. For example, every founder's edition card are those that Nvidia creates themselves, and is thought to have the best silicone quality and specs in order to create the full experience the cards are designed for. On the other hand, Nvidia also licenses their designs to third-party manufacturers such as EVGA and ASUS, where these companies are given the minimum specs required for these cards to work. The issue that a lot of people are having is due to these minimal requirements, and the layout of the capacitors on these cards. As you can see below, the image on the left is a Founder's Edition card containing two rows of large capacitors and one row of very small capacitors (middle row). Looking at the card in the middle, we see that there are only the small capacitors in each row, making this card more expensive to manufacture. While lastly, the Zotac cards, which is one of the cards reporting issues, have only the larger, cheaper capacitors. These issues are not problematic in the sense that these cards are defective, but rather they cannot boost to the clock speed they are intended to. What capacitors are made to do is allow for safe and stable energy transfer. Having only the large capacitors can make the card unstable, and can cause crashes when the card tries to boost itself. In this video by JayzTwoCents, he explains why this is happening and possible fixes for those that are having this issue. Left (Founders Edition), Middle (ASUS TUF), Right (Zotac) [Photo Credit: JayzTwoCents & Igor’s Lab! htps:/towardsdalascience.com/nvidla-2000-gpus-where-dala-ciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscollde-7a9a6IS4061! maparrot ‘Nvidia 3000 GPUs: Where Data Scientss, Gamers, and Scalpers Colide | by Samuel Mohebban | Towards Data Science Photo Credit: Giphy. My Opinions Before I get into it, I want to note that people have the freedom to buy what they want and that's it. These opinions are just expressing how money can be spent in better ways, and how the whole scalping era of GPU hardware is absolutely pointless as I believe people will get burned badly in trying to do so. Although the new 3000 GPU launch is incredible in terms of performance upgrades, there have to be some things considered if you are just using these GPUs for gaming. As an avid gamer myself, I feel as though I can provide input for why certain models should not have been sold out so fast as it makes no sense to spend that type of money to see minimal performance increases. Looking at 3090 compared to the 3080, there are plenty of benchmark videos on Youtube that show there is not a considerable difference in FPS performance despite the $700 price gap. In this article, the authors lay out benchmark performances and show there is only a 10% increase in performance across the 3080 and 3090. Also considering the CUDA cores, there are of course more in the 3090, but being that they are both well above the past generation flagship models the htps:/towardsdalascionce.com/nvidla-2000-gpus-where-dala-sciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscollde-7a9a6IS4061! ana2222024 ‘Nvidia 3000 GPUS: Where Data Scientists, Gamers, and Sealpers Colide | by Samuel Mohebban | Towards Data Science extra 2000 CUDA cores make little to no difference for games. I may be biased as | am a data scientist obsessed with neural networks, but I believe the 3090 is best suited for data science and machine learning. The extra 14GB of memory may seem sexy at first glance, but the only time it will actually make a difference in your gaming experience is if you are playing on an 8K monitor, which I am sure a very very small portion of gamers are doing. Yes, some could argue, “Well Sam! Its future proof”. While that is correct, all the hype around getting it now just makes no sense to me. Not only do you need a high- end processer, like an i9 or Ryzen 9 (which can cost between $700-$1000), but you most definitely have to upgrade your power supply as well. So if you are one of the avid gamers that bought the 3090, you not only spent the $1500 on the card, $200 on the PSU but unless you have the CPU that can handle the GPU, you are seeing literally no difference in your experience (unless you are upgrading from a GTX 900 series card or lower). Scalping Moving onto my next point, SCALPERS! I have never been a sneakerhead myself, but now I understand the pain they deal with every launch. You would think that these big companies, especially one like Nvidia that has such a big hand in machine learning, would have anticipated this or developed algorithms to detect scalpers. Of course, this is an oversimplification of the difficulty of creating such algorithms, however, I still believe Nvidia has enough time between now and the next launch in late October to fix it. htps:/towardsdalascionce.com/nvida-2000-gpus-whore-dala-sciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscollde-7a9a6IS4061! ona2aran0n ‘Nvidia 3000 GPUs: Where Data Scientss, Gamers, and Sealpers Colide | by Samuel Mohebban | Towards Data Science Photo Credit: lerino (Memedroid) From my perspective, people saw the opportunity to buy a product that was getting a lot of hype. However, unlike sneakers, graphics cards are not limited in their production. Yes, this release had limited stock, but not because Nvidia wanted it that way but because of decreased production due to COVID-19. For example, big sneaker companies like Nike will announce they are releasing a shoe and they are only making a few hundred and that it. In this case, Nvidia is constantly making more each week and plans to go back to a normal production schedule in the next few months. Scalpers thinking they can buy a card and price it at $1000 higher than the retail cost is just surprisingly dumb. Yes, maybe some had success in selling theirs on eBay, but I will bet that it was so few. Just because there are hundreds of listings on eBay for these new cards at a $1000-$2000 upcharge does not mean people are buying them. htps:/towardsdalascionce.com/nvidla-2000-gpus-where-dala-sciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscollde-7a9a6IS4061! soneparrot ‘Nvidia 3000 GPUs: Where Data Scientss, Gamers, and Scalpers Colide | by Samuel Mohebban | Towards Data Science Photo Credit: Giphy. My Experience Trying to Buy 3090 To fully understand the gravity of the situation, let me walk you through my experience trying to buy the 3090 at my local Micro Center on launch day. I woke up extra early because I knew there would be a line outside before the store opened. To be honest, because I did not plan on camping out the night before I knew the chances of me being able to get my hands on a 3090 were slim considering the launch of the 3080 a week before, but I still wanted to try and see the chaos for myself. I finally arrived at the Micro Center about 20 minutes after they opened, and with no surprise, there were dozens of people camping outside the store. As I am walking up to the entrance, I see two people walking out of the store holding their brand new 3090s. As soon as the campers outside the store saw them, two people rushed up to the lucky buyers and asked them if they could buy the cards off them for $500 more than what they had just paid for it inside. ‘The answer I heard made me soo disappointed. When these people were asked if they ‘were willing to sell the cards, their answer was this: “Well, I was planning on selling the card on eBay for $4000”. I thought to myself... how dumb is that... $4000??!?!? This logic is so ridiculous considering you can buy a pre-built pe with a 3090 inside for just under $4000. So if someone was that desperate for the card they could buy the pre-built, remove the card, and sell the other parts and spend exactly what the card is worth. Of course, I do not wish bad upon anyone, and the opportunity to make $1000 is very important to some people considering the economy today; however, I just hope a lesson is learned that shoes and GPUs are completely different things. htps:/towardsdalascionce.com/nvidla-2000-gpus-where-dala-sciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscollde-7a9a6IS4061! nnaparrot ‘Nvidia 3000 GPUs: Where Data Scientss, Gamers, and Scalpers Colide | by Samuel Mohebban | Towards Data Science Photo Credit: Giphy. My Advice My advice is simple. If you do not currently have a graphics card and you have been waiting for this release, then by all means go out and try to get one. I've been there, I know the excitement of building a computer and trying it on your very own games so 1 am not downplaying that at all. However, if you cannot get the card, Irecommend getting an interim card such as the 1660 or RX 580. You can find these cards on eBay for under $200 and they work great. Currently, I have an RX 580 8GB that I bought for $125. In every game, (Fortnite, League of Legends, COD Warzone) I get amazing frames at 1080p. The beauty of these cards is they are cheap to buy, and there will always be a market for resale when you are done with them. If you are in a rush to get a gaming pc, buy one of these cards and use it until you feel that buying the new-gen 3000 cards is not as much of a hassle. For example, let say you buy an RX 580 for $150. Once you feel that the 3000 series cards are easy to get, sell the RX 580 for $100 to guarantee a quick sell. After doing that, you only spent $50 on an interim card and was able to have the gaming experience you wanted rather than wait with nothing. Ifyou are a data scientist, my advice is bleaker (this is what | am experiencing right now). Currently, am working on a few different projects that have been a headache to get to work with my graphics card, so the thought of being able to upgrade was really exciting. Because these launches have been a disaster, the only thing to do is wait. For me, I plan on waiting until late October when AMD/Nvidia release new cards, and htps:/towardsdalascionce.com/nvidla-2000-gpus-where-dala-sciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscollde-7a9a6IS4061! vane2222024 ‘Nvidia 3000 GPUS: Where Data Scientists, Gamers, and Sealpers Colide | by Samuel Mohebban | Towards Data Science maybe I will camp out at the store- I am not sure yet. In my opinion, the scarcity of the cards will start to decrease as Nvidia increases their production and distribution as they have in the past. Photo Credit: Giphy. Thope I was able to lay out some good advice. If you are in a similar position as lam, do not worry- we are in this together :) Just a few more months and stock will be replenished, and the scalpers will see that this move was a bad business decision. Sign up for The Daily Pick By Towards Data Science htps:/towardsdalascionce.com/nvidla-2000-gpus-where-dala-sciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscollde-7a9a6IS4061! sanaparrot Nvidia 3000 GPUs: Where Data Scientists, Gamers, and Scalpers Colide | by Samuel Mohebban | Towards Data Science Hands-on real-world examples, research, tutorials, and cutting-edge techniques delivered Monday to Thursday. Make learning your daily ritual. Take a loo! Your email [__camenovene] By signing up, you will ereate a Medium account i you dont already have one, Review our Privacy Policy for more information ‘about our privacy practices. Some rights reserved @) Gaming Nvidia. DeepLearning Amd ~—_—Data Science CPs eee htps:/towardsdalascionce.com/nvidla-2000-gpus-where-dala-sciontsls-gamers-and-scalperscollde-7a9a6IS4061! vane