
NVIDIA heavily leverages AI in its consumer graphics stack, including an AI-based denoiser for RTX, and for the DLSS performance enhancing feature. The 2nd generation RTX is a combination of the new "Ampere" CUDA core that can process concurrent FP32+INT32 operations, 2nd generation RT cores that feature dedicated hardware with temporal components to accelerate raytraced motion-blur, besides a doubling in raytracing performance over "Turing" RT cores, and the new 3rd generation Tensor cores that leverage the sparsity phenomenon in deep-learning neural nets to accelerate AI inference performance by an order of magnitude over the previous generation. With the 2nd gen RTX, NVIDIA is introducing raytraced motion-blur, an effect that's so difficult to pull off in real-time, that it takes fixed-function hardware.

NVIDIA perfected a means of combining traditional raster graphics with certain real-time raytraced elements, such as lighting, shadows, reflections, ambient occlusion, and global illumination, to make the hybrid raster+raytraced 3D scene as true to life as possible. The new Ampere graphics architecture by NVIDIA brings you the 2nd generation of the company's RTX real-time raytracing technology. The RTX 3080 offers AAA RTX gaming at 4K UHD at a price you got 1440p-class graphics cards for. This is because the RTX 3080 10 GB is targeted squarely at gamers who want to play at 4K UHD with RTX raytracing turned on, unlike the RTX 3090, which has potential benefits for the creator crowd thanks to its massive 24 GB memory. The GeForce RTX 3080 "Ampere" is being pushed by NVIDIA as its latest flagship graphics card, even knowing that the faster RTX 3090 exists, too. We see a unique "V3" arrangement of fans on this massive graphics card. EVGA seems to have listened to what the high-end market wants in terms of aesthetics, and has given the FTW3 Ultra generous amounts of RGB lighting and product style.

The FTW3 Ultra in this review is a fully custom-design rendition of the RTX 3080 by EVGA, and is targeted at those who seek a well-rounded RTX 3080 card complete with all the overclocking features and RGB bling characteristic of premium-custom graphics cards. EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra is the company's premium air-cooled graphics card based on the swanky new GeForce RTX 3080 "Ampere" GPU that everyone wants a piece of.
