I thought the 3090 was targetted at 8K gaming. Maybe the big VRAM is related to SLI support. My understanding is that only
one GPU's VRAM is used in SLI.
It's also interesting that the 3080 is marketed as the flagship suggesting the 3090 is experimental or special.
Yes, only one vram is used while on SLI and the 3090 is the only gpu that can do SLI, reason they said 8k gaming at 60 fps but majority of these cards are for deep learning, reason they left the 3080 for dead, people would rather buy the 3080 16gb plus for deep learning, so basically what the did here is, want deep learning? 3090 is the only card to do it, want 8k gaming? 3090 is the only gpu to do cause sli support, and lets price the 3090, 2 x the 3080. I believe the 3090 is not even 50% faster than the 3080, more like 25% more performance and that is going overboard with it.
Looking back the last x90 we had was the GeForce GTX 690, price $1000 in 2012.