Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000  series graphics chips.

Nvidia unveils GeForce RTX 3080 GPU with 28 billion transistors

Nvidia has unveiled its 28-billion transistor Ampere-based 30 series graphics chips for PC gamers. The new chips will shore up PC gaming just as the next-generation consoles arrive from Microsoft and Sony for the holidays.

The Santa Clara, California-based company unveiled its Ampere graphics processing unit (GPU) architecture in May. But it built the first A100 chip with 54 billion transistors — the on-off switches that are the building blocks of all things electronic — for artificial intelligence, scientific computing, cloud graphics, and data analytics. Now, a variant of the chip that powers upcoming supercomputers will take 3D graphics in PC games to a new level.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.