The RTX 3060 Ti is the cheapest GPU in Nvidia's lineup, while the RTX 2080 Ti used to be its flagship. However, there's a generational gap between them, and hardware accounts for only some of their differences. Nvidia recently announced that its cheapest RTX-30 series GPU would still have all of the advantages that the Ampere architecture GPUs came with.
Before Ampere came into the picture, the RTX 2080 Ti was touted as the company's powerhouse GPU back in 2018. It was built on the company's Turing architecture and utilized technology that was ahead of its time, such as ray tracing. Although the GeForce 20 series was eventually overshadowed by the latest RTX-30 GPUs, which came with performance gains significant enough to be regarded as the “greatest generational leap” over Turing. This led to more affordable yet powerful GPUs like the RTX 3070, which is even comparable to the best what that last generation's Turing architecture had to offer at half the price.
Based on its specs sheet, even the cheapest GPU on the Ampere roster has enough oomph to compete with the RTX-20 series' flagship. The RTX 3060 Ti's 4864 processing CUDA cores are more than both the regular RTX 2080 Ti and its Founders Edition's 4352. Although, the advantage tips a little bit to the RTX 2080 Ti when it comes to memory, given its 11GB GDDR6 and larger 352-bit Memory Interface Width compared to the cheaper RTX 3060 Ti's 8GB GDDR6 and 256-bit configuration.
RTX 3060 Ti & RTX 2080 Ti: Pros & Cons
While comparing the RTX 3060 Ti to the BFGPU can be a bit overkill, it's much more competitive against the last generation's RTX 2080 Ti. The RTX 2080 Ti's advantage in the memory department might be a factor when it comes to productivity, or when rendering graphic-intensive workloads. However, it won't make much of a difference when it comes to casual use or gaming, as the RTX 3060 Ti has enough processing power to handle most tasks including newer games.
Hardware differences aside, the RTX 3060 Ti also comes with other benefits such as streaming optimizations, Nvidia Reflex, and the most up-to-date software. At just $399, the RTX 3060 Ti is more equipped to handle next-generation gaming, while the RTX 2080 Ti, despite being already a generation behind, still currently costs over $1,000. Then there's the issue of availability, as the RTX 2080 Ti is still set to be out-of-stock on Nvidia's site for quite some time. Overall, Nvidia's RTX 3060 Ti still presents the most value, even when compared to GPUs within its price range, but it won't take long before its availability follows the RTX 2080 Ti's footsteps.
Source: Nvidia