OctaneRender 2020 – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, 3080 & 3090 Performance

Introduction

NVIDIA has launched their new GeForce RTX 30 Series video cards in a set of rolling releases during the fall of 2020, and has touted major advancements in performance and efficiency with this "Ampere" architecture. While gaming is almost always the media's focus during these kinds of launches, professional applications like OTOY's OctaneRender should see significant per-card improvements as well. Now that all three of the initial cards – the GeForce RTX 3070, 3080, and 3090 – are available, we can test them against each other and a wide range of previous-gen models to see how they perform.

If you want to see the full specs for the new GeForce RTX 3070, 3080, and 3090 cards, we recommend checking out NVIDIA's page for the new RTX 30 Series. But at a glance, here are what we consider to be the most important specs:

While specs don't always line up with real-world performance, it is a great sign that NVIDIA has roughly doubled the number of CUDA cores compared to the GeForce RTX 20 Series cards at similar price points. At the top-end of the new line, NVIDIA appears to have also combined the roles of the previous-gen RTX 2080 Ti and Titan RTX into the new RTX 3090. It has as much VRAM as the Titan did, but for $1,000 less – putting it in the same ballpark as the 2080 Ti, but with more than double the memory and CUDA cores.

Test Setup

Listed below are the specifications of the system we used for our OctaneBench testing:

For this test, we used the latest version of OTOY's OctaneBench 2020.1.5. This edition was the first that worked properly with the new GeForce RTX 3080 video card – our attempts to use the older 4.00 and earlier 2020.1 variants did not recognize the new card as a viable render device. This likely means that all RTX 30 Series cards will not work properly on previous releases of OctaneRender.

We ran the test twice on each GPU, with the best result being included in the graphs below. If you wish to compare performance to your existing system, you can download OctaneBench 2020.1.5 directly from OTOY. They also maintain a database of results that you can reference and contribute to.

Benchmark Results

Here are charts showing the performance of the new GeForce RTX 30 Series (in dark green)compared to the other cards we tested:

Performance Analysis

The raw performance of the new GeForce RTX 30 Series is amazing in OctaneRender! Lets break it down for each card:

NVIDIA's RTX 3070 is faster than any RTX 20 Series card was, making it an excellent budget option though it is limited by its 8GB of onboard memory.

NVIDIA's RTX 3080 is and more than twice as fast as the RTX 2080 Super for the same price. Combined with a 25% increase in VRAM over the 2080 Super (and the 3070), that increase in rendering speed makes it a fantastic value.

NVIDIA's RTX 3090 is 75% faster than the RTX Titan, which was the top consumer video card from last generation, while costing $1000 less and maintaining the same amount of VRAM. Moreover, the RTX Titan was only available from NVIDIA with their dual-fan cooling solution, meaning it could not be used effectively in multi-GPU configurations. The Founders Edition RTX 3090 that we tested for this article won't be well suited for that either, but other manufacturers have announced blower-style versions of the 3090 which should work in that type of configuration. At 350W of draw per card, though, current power supplies may not be able to run a full set of four.

When comparing these new cards to each other there are many trade-offs to consider. The RTX 3090 is about 20% faster for rendering in Octane than the 3080, which is not bad, but considering it also costs more than twice as much that isn't fantastic either. However, the 24GB of VRAM on the RTX 3090 is more than double what the 3080 offers (10GB) and the 3090 is also the only 30 Series card announced so far which supports NVLink. The RTX 3070 puts in a good showing, but for only $200 the 3080's ~40% faster speed and 25% additional memory make it less appealing. So for raw price:performance the RTX 3080 wins, but in terms of maximum performance, features, and support for rendering more complex scenes the GeForce RTX 3090 is clearly superior.

Are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, 3080 & 3090 Good for OctaneRender?

Yes, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, 3080, and 3090 are fantastic cards for OctaneRender! Which one is right for you will depend on several factors:

• RTX 3070 8GB – This is a solid budget card, for those who are just getting started with GPU rendering or on a limited budget.
• RTX 3080 10GB – This card is more affordable than the 3090 and offers better rendering performance-per-dollar if you consider the card alone. However, its lower amount of VRAM may limit the complexity of scenes you can render and it lacks NVLink support as well. If you aren't working with very complex scenes, though, one or possibly two of these would give great results for their price.
• RTX 3090 24GB – This card is about 20% faster for rendering than the 3080, with 140% more onboard memory and support for NVLink. That means it will be much better suited to working with large scenes and detailed geometry. Moreover, Gigabyte has released a dual-slot, single-fan version of this card which should allow multiple GPUs in a single system for increased performance.

As always, please keep in mind that these results are strictly for GPU-based rendering in OctaneRender. If you have performance concerns for other applications in your workflow, we highly recommend checking out our Hardware Articles (you can filter by "Video Card") for the latest information on how a wide range of programs perform with various GPUs, CPUs, and other hardware.