Today marks a new chapter for Nvidia's GeForce graphics with the announcement of the GeForce RTX 3000 series

At 9am PT, 12pm ET, and 5pm BST, Nvidia hosted a GeForce special event to showcase three new high-end GeForce graphics cards, the GeForce RTX 3090, GeForce RTX 3080, and GeForce RTX 3070 These new GPUs, built on the Ampere architecture, offer up to twice the performance of the GeForce RTX 2000 series, as well as improved ray tracing capabilities Both the PS5 and Xbox Series X have ray tracing support, so expect to see this clever light-rendering technology in more games as 2020 approaches

We're excited about the Nvidia GeForce special event and what an exciting time it is for PC gamers

All Eastern Standard Time - updated for updates

12:40 pm: Jensen summarizes In short, the Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards will deliver an "unprecedented boost," although Huang paints a picture of us having a "holodeck" at home, which we don't quite believe, The RTX 3000 series looks to be a serious upgrade for PC gamers looking for the best graphics this fall

12:37 pm: Jensen announced the RTX 3090 Its performance is enormous: it has a massive 24GB of GDDR6X It is essentially the new RTX Titan, 50% faster And it can run games at 60fps at 8K, as well as a price of $1,499

12:34 pm: Here's the RTX 3070 starting at $499, more powerful than the RTX 2080 Ti despite using 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM instead of GDDR6X It is also 60% faster than the original RTX 2070 and apparently hits the sweet spot for games between 4K and 1440p resolutions

12:31: And it's twice as powerful as the GeForce RTX 2080, capable of running games at 4K and 60 frames per second with RTX on Prices start at $699 and will be available on September 17

12:29 pm: And here's the first next-generation GeForce graphics card, the GeForce RTX 3080 with Ampere GPU architecture, featuring GDDR6X memory, 19 Gbps memory buffer, and a rather powerful It is a very powerful graphics card with GDDR6X memory and 19Gbps memory buffer It has a heatsink and a large fan, and looks quite neat

12:26 pm: Jensen is now talking about the new RTX IO It's awfully technical, but basically translates to how to load large games very fast from a PCIe 40 SSD with ray tracing enabled

12:22: "Marbles in the Night" Raytracing demo is ready The lighting is basically realistic and looks very shiny But expect super realistic animated movies and special effects

12:20 pm: The Ampere GPU architecture offers a significant improvement in ray tracing performance, thanks to more Tensor cores and a bigger performance jump than Turing GPUs It is also more efficient

12:17 pm: Also coming is Nvidia Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 20, which will improve how AI technology can be used to achieve high resolution gaming without degrading performance RTX will see a 2x performance increase, which is quite impressive

12:13 pm: Jensen is currently discussing the technical aspects of AI technology with ray tracing and deep learning, and GeForce GPUs are in play

12:12: pm: Nvidia Omniverse Machinima is an RTX-powered app for creating video game movies and scanning real-world motion using a webcam RTX technology renders more cinematic images A beta version will be released in October

12:09 pm: 360Hz G-Sync displays are coming this fall from Alienware, Acer, Asus, and others And the Nvidia Broadcast app is coming in September to enhance streaming capabilities, such as filtering out annoying background noise and blurring the background of streamer feeds

12:05 pm: Good news, Fortnite fans, if you have an RTX graphics card

12:04 pm: Huang says Nvidia's graphics technology is being used to model the spread of COVID-19, helping us understand our world Of course, streaming and eSports are also mentioned: and Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang comes out of the kitchen

12:01 pm: And we're off: Nvidia gives us a snapshot of past games: OVerwatch, Skyrim, Call of DUty

11:48 am: Nvidia's GeForce UK Twitter account is, Many tweets about the past 21 years in game graphics, highlighting standout games like Red Dead Redemption 2 as a graphic marvel Hopefully the GeForce event will include a graphics history lesson

11:11 am: Even though the GeForce RTX 3000 series is supposed to launch today, that hasn't stopped specs for the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 from leaking, courtesy of graphics card maker Gainward

11:06 am: The live stream of the Nvidia GeForce special event is getting ready to begin at noon Eastern time To view the live stream, please see How to Watch the Nvidia GeForce Special Event Live