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What is Nvidia Ampere?

In This Article

In This Article

If you’ve been looking to buy a new graphics card in recent years, you’ve likely come across the term ‘Nvidia Ampere’. But what is it, and why is it important to know?

We’ve created this Nvidia Ampere guide to provide all the important information. So without further ado, here’s everything you need to know.

What is Nvidia Ampere?

What is Nvidia Ampere?

Nvidia Ampere is a microarchitecture for Nvidia’s 3000-Series generation of graphics cards. This means you’ll find it inGPUssuch as theRTX 3090,RTX 3080,RTX 3070,RTX 3060.

Nvidia named the microarchitecture after French mathematician and physicist André-Marie Ampère. It first launched in May 2020.

For Nvidia’s consumer graphics cards, Ampere uses a 8nm process node from Samsung, which is a noticeable upgrade on the 12nm process node found in the preceding Nvidia Turing generation – having a smaller process node generally results in a higher performance.

The Nvidia Ampere generation was the first to offer support for GDDR6X memory, while also introducing third-generation Tensor Cores and second-generationray tracingcores.

Ampere not only supports ray tracing, butDLSStoo. This is Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling, using artificial intelligence and upscaling techniques to boost the frame-rate performance of any supported game with minimal compromises to the graphics quality.

Nvidia Ampere’s time in the spotlight is coming to an end, with reports indicating that Nvidia Lovelace will replace it before the end of the year. The Nvidia Lovelace microarchitecture will supposedly power theNvidia RTX 4000series of graphics cards and is rumoured to be built upon TSMC’s 5nm process node.

List of Nvidia Ampere graphics cards

We’ve made a list of all of the consumer Nvidia GeForce desktop graphics cards that use the Ampere microarchitecture. Check them out below:

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Formerly the Staff Writer at Stuff Magazine, Ryan’s been writing about tech since he graduated from Cardiff University. At Trusted Reviews he is focused on everything computer-related, giving him a va…

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Why trust our journalism?

Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.