For a company that’s normally pretty tight with info, Nvidia’s RTX launch has leaked more than some pirate ships and bamboo canoes.
Either way, it’s good news ahead of the official launch on Tuesday. Videocardz has gotten their hands on two photos of add-in board partner cards — that’s the GPUs you’d buy from a third-party brand like Gigabyte, Zotac, etc. — for the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090.
The juicy part? Gainward’s RTX 3090 will have 24GB of VRAM, and will supposedly only need 350W of power. That’s definitely more than what the current generation of GPUs require, but it should ease any concerns people might have had about needing to replace their entire power supply.
Gainward’s going with a triple fan design and, as indicated by previous rumours, the RTX 3090 model will occupy three slots. No really, it’s a thicc card:
Not one for mini-ITX or smaller cases, then.
The RTX 3080 is similarly large and beefy — look at that heatsink — but with 4352 CUDA cores instead of 5248 CUDA cores.
For comparison, here’s what we’re looking at:
Gainward RTX 3090, 3080 Specs:
- Base/boost clocks: 1725MHz/1740MHz (base clocks unknown)
- VRAM: 24GB/10GB GDDR6X
- CUDA Cores: 5248/4352
- TDP: 350W/320W
- Price: TBA
And for the RTX 2080 Ti and 2080, the predecessors to what we’re expecting to see tomorrow morning, here were the specs for the Founders Edition cards. AIB models were available after launch, and differed in various ways, but this should give you a quick idea.
RTX 2080 Ti/2080 Specs:
- Base/boost clocks: 1350MHz/1515MHz, 1635MHz/1800MHz
- VRAM: 11GB/8GB GDDR6
- CUDA Cores: 4352/2944
- TDP: 260W/225W
- Price: $1899/$1299 (RRP at launch)
Update 12.30pm AEST: More specs have been posted online on Twitter, feat. more RTX 3090 and 3080 models:
— 포시포시 (@harukaze5719) August 31, 2020
It’s important to note that we don’t know if Gainward’s GPUs, which are due out next week after the official launch, will be sold in Australia. Reference designs are also likely to differ from the cards Nvidia will sell directly, which are likely to include vapour chamber cooling and on the higher-end cards, a custom 12-pin connector. So keep all of that in mind.
That said, the biggest difference here is obviously the power requirements. That’s partially a byproduct of GDDR6X being more power hungry than its predecessors, but also Nvidia pushing the power envelope further for more performance — and figuring that most PC users would be more than happy with the trade-off.
An interesting inclusion, one that’s supposedly only on the RTX 3090 model, is a new NVLink SLI bridge. Dual graphics cards hasn’t really been relevant for gaming for years, thanks to a lack of developer support and a lack of interest from the GPU makers themselves. The RTX 3080 won’t have this new bridge, but then again, one of these cards is large enough for most PC cases as is.
Both cards will be built on 7nm technology, the same as what AMD’s using for their Big Navi GPUs due out very soon. Like, c’mon AMD, retail stores are already putting up their Christmas trees. Either way, the official reveal of the new RTX 3090, RTX 3080 and possibly the RTX 3070, isn’t until early Wednesday morning.
It’s going to be a fun week for PC gamers.
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