The RTX 3080/3090 launch was in such high demand that Nvidia ended up apologising. And if you were one of those users who badly wanted a beefy GPU upgrade but couldn’t get one, then you might enjoy knowing what’s just around the corner.
Videocardz are reporting this week that two more SKUs of their 3000 Ampere series GPUs will be launched internationally before the end of the year. There was talk that an RTX 3070 Ti might be on the cards, thanks to a mystery PG142 SKU that appeared in a GALAX product briefing which, naturally, leaked online:
The product slide also included note of an RTX 3080 20GB model, something to wedge the gap between the RTX 3080 and 3090 — a hole that a Ti-branded GPU would ordinarily fill.
However, it seems like the Ti branded models have been put on ice for a bit. Videocardz‘ sources say that higher VRAM versions of the 3080 and 3070 will get unveiled before Christmas, specifically a 16GB model of the RTX 3070 (which doesn’t launch in Australia until later this month) and the 20GB RTX 3080.
The interesting part is the RTX 3070 16GB card, which doubles the VRAM on the existing models that are shipping in two weeks. That could be a response to competition from AMD and Big Navi, although it’s probably a bit early to make any calls on how the Radeon RX 6000 series does compared to Ampere.
AMD released a short slide of their new GPU’s performance in Gears of War 5, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Borderlands 3 at 4K, and while they were all above 60fps, there were strong caveats to consider. PC Gamer noted that the RTX 3080 and 3090 had solid leads over the results AMD posted — particularly in Gears of War 5. We’re yet to see games that traditionally favour Nvidia hardware, like Ubisoft titles.
There’s also the upcoming 5000 series Ryzen CPUs to consider, which is going to force everyone to redo all of their benchmarks. AMD’s first-party performance slide didn’t mention Gears, COD or Borderlands 3, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens when that’s all combined (and when it’s benchmarked against the Ampere cards, as AMD’s tests were all done using RTX 2080 Ti’s).
Either way, November and December are going to be big. Games like Cyberpunk 2077, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the new Call of Duty were already going to be big, not to mention the next-gen consoles and everything those entailed.
It’s going to be a busy couple of months, people.
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