Nvidia RTX 3080: PCIe 4.0 vs 3.0 scaling analysis

Here we present frame rate figures for each test system used today, averaged across all 12 (plus 3 re-tested with RTX on) games on test today. These figures can disguise significant variations in performance from game to game, but provide a useful overview of the sort of performance difference we have seen.

There's a couple of key points to make here. First of all, if you've gone through our game-by-game breakdown, you will not be surprised to see PCIe 4.0 makes very little overall difference compared to PCIe 3.0. Almost nothing, in fact – at 1440p, the average difference between the 3900XT with PCIe 4.0 and the same CPU with PCIe 3.0, is a mere 2%, or 2FPS. At 4K, the difference is reduced to exactly nothing.

The other point to bring up is CPU bottlenecking. At 1080p, the 10900K is simply a faster gaming CPU than the 3900XT, performing 10% better on average despite its PCIe 3.0 limitation. Even at 1440p and 4K, it's simply averaging higher frame rates than the 3900XT with PCIe 4.0.

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