The launch of NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card is upon us. The number of rumors circulating the web is getting greater and we have just received die pictures of the GA102 silicon and the specification of the specific SKU. Sources over at VideoCardz have provided the website with the first die picture of GA102-225 silicon, which powers the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card. Pictured below, it doesn't appear much different compared to the GA102-300 SKU found inside the RTX 3090 card, with the only obvious differentiator being the SKU ID. However, the difference only appears under the hood, with the GA102-225 SKU having 10240 CUDA cores instead of 10752 CUDA cores found inside GA102-300 of RTX 3090.

Paired with 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, the memory will have run around 19 Gbps speeds. That will result in a bandwidth of 912 GB/s. If you are wondering about the performance of the card, it should remain within a few percent of its bigger brother RTX 3090. We have the first leak showing Ethereum mining performance and the GA102-225 silicon achieved a mining hash rate of 118.9 Mh/s with some tuning. The memory was overclocked to 21.5 Gbps, while the GPU TDP was limited to 278 Watts. The leak shows that the card has managed to achieve a 1365 MHz base and 1665 MHz boost frequency. While we don't have the exact launch date, the supposed MSRP will be anywhere from $999 to $1099, assuming you can get it at all at any price.

In what is more proof that a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti launch is around the corner, cartons marked "GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Ventus 3X 12G OC" were spotted on their way to distribution centers in the US, according to a photo leak by "Lok LOK" on Facebook, who reveals several pictures of such cartons with their shipping labels intact. The lot also included several other graphics cards, including the GT 710 and RX 580.

The Ventus 3X OC represents MSI's value-ended custom-design graphics cards based on a given GPU, while the top-end is covered by the Gaming and SUPRIM series. This leak reinforces the theory that the RTX 3080 Ti will max out the 384-bit GDDR6X interface of the GA102 silicon, arming it with 12 GB of memory—2 GB more than the RTX 3080, but half that of the RTX 3090. This SKU is expected to be NVIDIA's response to the Radeon RX 6900 XT. AMD, meanwhile, is getting its partners to release higher clocked versions of the RX 6900 XT based on the new "XTXH" variant of the Navi 21 silicon.

Hot in the heels of the rumor mill pegging the release of NVIDIA's next halo product positioned below the all-powerful RTX 3090, the RTX 3080 Ti, for May, Gigabyte has just registered 12 cards with the EEC (Eurasian Economic Commission). Gigabyte had already registered five such SKUs way back in December, before multiple product revisions from NVIDIA settled in what could be the cards' final form. The 12 cards that have now been submitted include 12 GB memory, and models span the entirety of Gigabyte's product stack, from the top-of-the-line AORUS Waterblock RGB, and including a single-fan, blower-type TURBO model. The listed specs confirm the 12 GB GDDR6X memory over a 384-bit memory bus.

Uniko's Hardware, a usual spot for leaks and information on upcoming hardware, has put forward that NVIDIA could be looking to introduce two versions of its upcoming RTX 3070 Ti graphics card. The difference would be dual-sided GDDR6X memory or not, which would make available memory capacities for this card in the league of either 8 GB (the same as the RTX 3070) or 16 GB running at 19 Gbps.

The intention with the RTX 3070 Ti is to bring the fight back to AMD, who released a pretty good offering to the market in the form of the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT graphics cards - both featuring 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. NVIDIA is looking to improve its market position compared to AMD by offering both the RTX 3070 and RTX 3070 Ti on the market. It could also be a time for NVIDIA to release another cryptomining-crippled graphics card - and this time to try and do it right by not releasing a driver that unlocks that particular effort. The card is rumored for launch come May, though we've already seen an unprecedented number of delays for NVIDIA's new SKUs - a sign that there is indeed a problem in the upstream semiconductor offering field.

An add-in card partner source shared with VideoCardz some juicy details about a pair of upcoming high-end GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics cards. Called the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, the two are aimed to restore NVIDIA's competitiveness against the likes of AMD's recent Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs. It looks like NVIDIA doesn't want to play the memory size game just yet, despite giving the RTX 3060 12 GB of it.

The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti appears to be maxing out the GA104 silicon and carries the ASIC code "GA104-400-A#." The current RTX 3070 enables all but one of the TPCs on the GA104, working out to 5,888 CUDA cores. The new RTX 3070 Ti probably maxes out the GA104 to its CUDA core count of 6,144. The more substantial upgrade, however, is memory. The card ditches 14 Gbps GDDR6 for fast GDDR6X memory of an unknown speed—probably higher than 16 Gbps. The memory size remains 8 GB, across 256-bit.

A well-known leaker from NVIDIA cards past, Kopite7Kimi, has launched a rumor wherein the previously "indefinitely postponed" RTX 3080 Ti graphics card might see the light of day as early as April. Designed as an NVIDIA response to the price/performance offering from AMD's RX 6900 XT graphics card, the RTX 3080 Ti with an overkill 20 GB GDDR6X was rumored to have been in the works following the AMD launch. However, inventory difficulties related not only to wafer production from Samsung, but also GDDR6X supply from Micron and delays in the logistics channels meant that NVIDIA chose to shelve this graphics card release.

The new, reinterpreted RTX 3080 Ti graphics card is rumored to axe the 20 GB of GDDR6X memory in favor of a more tenable 12 GB - which some might argue is but a slight, but sufficient improvement from the RTX 3080's 10 GB. That memory amount, however, means that the card will have to carry a different, wider, 384-bit memory bus, which should mean improved memory performance, but also increased board costs. The RTX 3080 Ti is now rumored as carrying 80 enabled Streaming Multiprocessors (12 more than the RTX 3080's 68, and 2 less than the fully-enabled chip present in the RTX 3090.

The prices of graphics cards have been perhaps the most controversial topic among PC enthusiasts lately. High demand and low supply of the latest generation GPUs have lead to the massive price increase over MSRP. Graphics card makers, AMD and NVIDIA, have already announced that this situation is not going to get better until March ends. However, there seems to be another possible issue appearing slowly on the horizon. According to the Chinese website MyDrivers, the prices of graphics cards are expected to increase thanks to the increasing prices of memory used in them, presumably including both the slower GDDR6 and the faster GDDR6X memory.

The source claims that the new memory price increase is going to take place after February 12th, when Chinese New Year ends. As both the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series Ampere generation and AMD Radeon 6000 series generation use GDDR6X and GDDR6 respectively, that means that the increased prices of these memory types could increase the MSRP, which is already above its original intent.

ASUS on its support website has inadvertently confirmed some of the rumors and speculations of recent months - ever since the official release of AMD's RX 6000-series, really. Not to be outdone by AMD, NVIDIA apparently sees the need to fill the gap between its RTX 3080 10 GB graphics card at a virtual $699 and its top-of-the-line RTX 3090 graphics card at #$1,499 - better to compete with the RX 6900 at (an also virtual) $999. Thus ASUS listed a ROG-STRIX-RTX3080TI-O20G-GAMING and a ROG-STRIX-RTX3080TI-20G-GAMING, alongside some... interesting ROG-STRIX-RTX3060-O12G-GAMING and ROG-STRIX-RTX3060-12G-GAMING.

Thus it is seemingly confirmed that NVIDIA dropped official plans to offer the RTX 3080 in 20 GB GDDR6X flavor, and is instead packing its RTX 3080 Ti with that amount of graphics memory - that should serve to make the model even more attractive to users who were still trying to get an RTX 3080 series, as the drama surrounding that cards' 10 GB of VRAM is well-known across the tech industry and consumers. However, the RTX 3060 being listed in a 12 GB GDDR6 version (with a certain 6 GB version being on its way as well) really is puzzling; that graphics card, which is expected to pack only 3840 CUDA cores in its GA106 chip, will run out of shading and RT power long before that VRAM pool is exhausted. NVIDIA's chip structure is becoming ever more confusing in this 30-series, at least. The announcement for the new graphics cards is expected to take place come January 12th.

In the past, we heard rumors about NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card. Being scheduled for January release, we were just a few weeks away from it. The new graphics card is designed to fill the gap between the RTX 3080 and higher-end RTX 3090, by offering the same GA102 die with the only difference being that the 3080 Ti is GA102-250 instead of GA102-300 die found RTX 3090. It allegedly has the same CUDA core count of 10496 cores, same 82 RT cores, 328 Tensor Cores, 328 Texture Units, and 112 ROPs. However, the RTX 3080 Ti is supposed to bring the GDDR6X memory capacity down to 20 GBs, instead of the 24 GB found on RTX 3090.

However, all of that is going to wait a little bit longer. Thanks to the information obtained by Igor Wallosek from Igor's Lab, we have data that NVIDIA's upcoming high-end GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card is going to be postponed to February for release. Previous rumors suggested that we are going to get the card in January with the price tag of $999. That, however, has changed and NVIDIA allegedly postponed the launch to February. It is not yet clear what the cause behind it is, however, we speculate that the company can not meet the high demand that the new wave of GPUs is producing.

A new HP OEM GeForce driver points to the two distinct approaches NVIDIA is possibly taking to develop its new high-end GeForce RTX 30-series SKU positioned between the $699 RTX 3080 and the $1,499 RTX 3090; particularly in the wake of the $999 AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT launch. The OEM driver's GPU support list references a number of unreleased graphics cards based on the "GA102" silicon, including engineering samples of 11 GB and 12 GB variants of the RTX 3080; and an RTX 3080 Ti.

The 11 GB and 12 GB variants of the RTX 3080 (which are unreleased engineering samples at this point) could possibly be SKUs carved out with the same core-configuration as the RTX 3080, but with slightly wider memory interfaces, with the 11 GB variant using a 352-bit interface, and the 12 GB variant maxing out the full 384-bit interface of the "GA104," albeit with 8 Gbit memory chips, unlike the RTX 3090, which uses twenty four 8 Gbit chips (2 per 32-bit path), to achieve 24 GB. The RTX 3080 Ti appears to be a whole different beast. Although the HP document doesn't mention its core-configuration or memory size, older reports have pointed at the possibility of this SKU featuring 9,984 CUDA cores, and the full 384-bit wide memory bus (possibly with 12 GB of memory). Even older reports point to the likelihood of the RTX 3080 Ti retaining the 320-bit memory bus of the RTX 3080, but doubling the memory amount to 20 GB.

The current widespread shortages on anything gaming-related (be it gaming consoles or the latest GPUs from both NVIDIA and AMD) are a well-known quantity by now. However, it now seems that NVIDIA's shortages aren't just the result of "outstanding, unprecedented demand", aided by scalping practices, but also from wafer and component shortages. NVIDIA's CFO Colette Kress at Credit Suisse 24th Annual Technology Conference expanded on these issues, saying that "We do have supply constraints and our supply constraints do expand past what we are seeing in terms of wafers and silicon, but yes some constraints are in substrates and components. We continue to work during the quarter on our supply and we believe though that demand will probably exceed supply in Q4 for overall gaming."

There was no further information on exactly which components are experiencing shortages. An educated guess might pin some of these issues on the exotic GDDR6X memory subsystem on high-tier Ampere graphics cards, but there could be other factors at play here. If NVIDIA did underestimate demand for its Ampere graphics cards, though, that will make it that much harder for the company to ramp up orders (and hence production) with Samsung - semiconductor manufacturing works with several months of lead time between orders and their actual fulfillment.

ASUS looks to one-up GIGABYTE by pairing a 350-Watt GeForce RTX 3090 with a classic lateral blower cooling solution, by introducing its new RTX 3090 Turbo OC graphics card (model: TURBO-RTX3090-24G). ASUS claims that the card is designed for "environments with restricted airflow." The card is strictly 2 slots thick, and just about qualifies for "full height" (measures 26.8 cm in length and 11.3 cm in height). It uses two 8-pin PCIe power inputs, which are located at the tail end of the card, instead of the top. These connectors are right next to mounts for extenders for workstation cases.

The ASUS RTX 3090 Turbo OC uses an 80 mm lateral blower with a double ball-bearing; which guides air through a copper-channel heatsink that uses a vapor-chamber plate to pull heat from the GPU and memory. An aluminium secondary base-plate pulls heat from the various VRM components and conveys it to the vapor-chamber plate. The card also offers a mild software-activated OC mode, which dials up the GPU Boost frequency to 1725 MHz (up from 1695 MHz reference). The memory is untouched at 19.5 Gbps (GDDR6X-effective). Display outputs include one HDMI 2.1, and three DisplayPort 1.4a. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Colorful today released the iGame GeForce RTX 3090 Neptune OC-V, its flagship RTX 3090 graphics card which comes with a factory-fitted all-in-one liquid closed-loop cooler (CLC). This card differs slightly from the Neptune OC the company debuted in September with the addition of an RGB controller and illuminated fans. The card features a premium 26-phase (14+8+4) VRM solution that draws power from three 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and comes with factory-overclocked speeds of 1755 MHz boost (vs. 1695 MHz reference), and an untouched 19.5 Gbps GDDR6X memory. It appears like the CLC cools not just the RTX 3090 GPU, but also the other hot components on the card, such as the memory chips and VRM.

A 240 mm x 120 mm radiator with a pair of ARGB LED illuminated fans handles all of the card's cooling. On the card itself, there is a circular ornament that resembles a fan, but is actually the crown of the pump-block. It's possible that a base-plate pushes heat from the ancillaries onto the CLC's cold-plate. The card measures 29.1 cm in length, 15.1 cm in height (you have to factor in the fittings), and is strictly 2 slots thick. The radiator's dimensions are typical of a 240 mm unit. Display outputs include three DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI 2.1. The card features dual-BIOS with a push-type selector switch at the rear I/O bracket. The company didn't reveal pricing, but we estimate it to be close to the $2,000-mark MSRP.

According to the unknown manufacturer (AIB) based in Taiwan, NVIDIA is preparing to launch the new GeForce RTX 3000 series "Ampere" graphics card. As reported by the HKEPC website, the Santa Clara-based company is preparing to fill the gap between its top-end GeForce RTX 3090 and a bit slower RTX 3080 graphics card. The new product will be called GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. If you are wondering what the specification of the new graphics card will look like, you are in luck because the source has a few pieces of information. The new product will be based on GA102-250-KD-A1 GPU core, with a PG133-SKU15 PCB design scheme. The GPU will contain the same 10496 CUDA core configuration as the RTX 3090.

The only difference to the RTX 3090 will be a reduced GDDR6X amount of 20 GB. Along with the 20 GB of GDDR6X memory, the RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards will feature a 320-bit bus. The TGP of the card is limited to 320 Watts. The sources are reporting that the card will be launched sometime in January of 2021, and it will come at $999. This puts the price category of the RTX 3080 Ti in the same range as AMD's recently launched Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card, so it will be interesting to see how these two products are competing.

A leak from renowned (and usually on-point) leaker Kopite7kimi claims that NVIDIA has finally settled on new graphics cards to combat AMD's RX 6800 threat after all. After the company has been reported (and never confirmed) to be working on double-memory configurations for their RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 graphics cards (with 16 GB GDDR6 and 20 GB GDDR6X, respectively), the company is now reported to have settled for a 20 GB RTX 3080 Ti to face a (apparently; pending independent reviews) resurgent AMD.

The RTX 3080 Ti specs paint a card with the same CUDA core count as the RTX 3090, with 10496 FP32 cores over the same 320-bit memory bus as the RTX 3080. Kopite includes board and SKU numbers (PG133 SKU 15) along a new GPU codename: GA102-250. The performance differentiator against the RTX 3090 stands to be the memory amount, bus, and eventually core clockspeed; memory speed and board TGP are reported to mirror those of the RTX 3080, so some reduced clocks compared to that graphics card are expected. That amount of CUDA cores means NVIDIA is essentially divvying-up the same GA-102 die between its RTX 3090 (good luck finding one in stock) and the reported RTX 3080 Ti (so good luck finding one of those in stock as well, should the time come). It is unclear how pricing would work out for this SKU, but pricing comparable to that of the RX 6900 XT is the more sensible speculation. Take this report with the usual amount of NaCl.

ASUS today announced ASUS EKWB GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards that are the product of a strategic collaboration between ASUS and EK and emphasize robust design, DIY convenience and high performance. Consisting of ASUS EKWB GeForce RTX 3070, 3080 and 3090 graphics cards, the series delivers an out-of-the-box solution for custom liquid-loop systems.

The precision of ASUS Auto-Extreme technology and stringent validation during manufacturing guarantees reliability, while the low hydraulic restriction split-flow cooling system maximizes thermal dissipation across critical components and demonstrates the very best of EK design. These high-powered solutions are elegantly combined to have a single-slot footprint, which enables compatibility with a wide range of chassis, including small-form-factor builds.

This generation's GPU release is shaping up to be one of the most interesting in late years; for some good reasons, and bad reasons alike. We've heard - keep in mind, not seen - NVIDIA back down from multiple graphics card releases (the double VRAM versions of RTX 3070 and 3080 come to mind); postponing the RTX 3070 until after they have gleaned exactly what AMD will be offering with their RX 6000 series; preparing to launch an RTX 3060 Ti with no announcement whatsoever and before the RTX 3060 is ever launched; and now, apparently, the company is readying a response to AMD's as-of-yet-unannounced RX 6000 series in the form of the RTX 3080 Ti.

Recent performance leaks have placed an unclear AMD GPU (and apparently, not even the fastest Big Navi chip at that) at the same performance level as NVIDIA's RTX 3080, which is a tremendous increase in performance for the red team, coming from years of only being able to effectively compete in the midrange offerings. Now, Kopite7kimi, a known leaker with a proven track record, has claimed that NVIDIA is already prepping a new GA102-based graphics card, sitting in performance between the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090. He lists identifies the GPU as GA102-250-A1, 9984FP32, 384bits GD6X - let's call it the RTX 3080 Ti. If those details are correct, this is yet another product demanding the same 628 mm² GA102 GPU be available for it - in a scenario with inadequate availability of the RTX 3080, 3090, and likely 3070 Ti graphics cards already, should that later one actually materialize. The memory bus on this prospective RTX 3080 Ti is apparently inheriting the same design as the RTX 3090, with a 384-bit solution (compared to the RTX 3080's 320 bit), and likely 12 GB of GDDR6X memory.

GIGABYTE backed up its late September launch of the RTX 3080-based VISION OC graphics card targeted at creators, with one based on the GeForce RTX 3090 (model: GV-N3090VISION OC-24GD), a GPU that offers greater dividends to creators thanks to its 24 GB video memory. GIGABYTE's VISION brand of graphics cards and motherboards are targeted at creators, and the RTX 3090 VISION OC, when paired with NVIDIA's GeForce Studio drivers, provides a formidable solution halfway between the gaming and professional-visualization market segments.

The GIGABYTE RTX 3090 VISION OC comes with the same board design as the RTX 3080 VISION OC, but with the addition of the NVLink interface for explicit multi-GPU. The card comes with a mild factory-OC which sees the GPU boost up to 1755 MHz (vs. 1695 MHz reference), while the memory is left untouched at 19.5 Gbps (GDDR6X-effective), for 940 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Display interfaces include three DisplayPort 1.4a and two HDMI 2.1 connectors. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. It uses a triple-slot, triple-fan cooling solution with the VISION design scheme. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Possibly unsure of the GeForce RTX 3070 tackling AMD's Radeon RX 6000 series parts, NVIDIA is designing a new RTX 30-series SKU positioned between the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080. This is not a 16 GB variant of the RTX 3070, but rather a new SKU based on the 8 nm "GA102" silicon, according to a reliable source with NVIDIA leaks, kopite7kimi. The SKU is based on the GA102 with the ASIC code "GA102-150-KD-A1." The silicon is configured with 7,424 CUDA cores across 58 streaming multiprocessors (29 TPCs), 232 tensor cores, 232 TMUs, 58 RT cores, and an unknown number of ROPs. According to kopite7kimi, the card is configured with a 320-bit wide memory interface, although it's not known if this is conventional GDDR6, like the RTX 3070 has, or faster GDDR6X, like that on the RTX 3080.

NVIDIA recently "cancelled" a future 16 GB variant of the RTX 3070, and 20 GB variant of the RTX 3080, which is possibly the company calibrating its response to the Radeon RX 6000 series. We theorize that doubling in memory amounts may not have hit the desired cost-performance targets; and the company probably believes the competitive outlook of the RTX 3080 10 GB is secure. This explains the need for a SKU with performance halfway between that of the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080. As for pricing, with the RTX 3070 positioned at $500 and the RTX 3080 at $700, the new SKU could be priced somewhere in between. AMD's RDNA2-based Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs are expected to feature DirectX 12 Ultimate logo compliance, meaning that there is a level playing ground between AMD and NVIDIA in the performance segment.

Fresh reports floating in the rumor mill's circulatory system claim that NVIDIA backtracked on its plans to launch higher VRAM capacity versions of their RTX 3080 and the (in the meantime, delayed) RTX 3070. These cards launched with 10 GB VRAM for the RTX 3080 and 8 GB VRAM for the RTX 3070, with reports circulating as early as their announcement that there would be double-capacity versions hitting the market just a few months later - specifically, in December of this year. Videocardz, however, claims that these long-rumored 20 GB and 16 GB SKUs have now been canceled by NVIDIA, who sent this news to its AIB partners - and the usage of canceled, not postponed, is perfunctory.

For cards theoretically shipping come December, this is indeed a small advance notice, but it might be enough for AIB partners to feed all their GA102-200 (RTX 3080) and GA104-400 (RTX 3070) silicon towards the already - if not readily - available models. This report, Videocardz claims, has been confirmed by two of their sources, and comes at the exact same day specifications for AMD's RX 6000 series leaked. It's likely NVIDIA already had knowledge of its competition's designs and performance targets, however, so this could be seen as nothing more than a coincidence. One of the publications' sources claims GDDR6X yields might be the cause for the cancellation, but this doesn't help explain why the alleged RTX 3070 16 GB card (with its GDDR6 chips) was also canceled. Remember: these are rumors on cards that were never announced by NVIDIA themselves, so take these with the appropriate salt-mine level of skepticism.

Alphacool presents the Eisblock ES Acetal GPX-N RTX 3080/3090 GPU watercooling block The block is specially developed for the server sector. Nevertheless, it also fits into normal desktop computers or small form factor cases. Of course, it is also available to our end customers. A special feature of this block is the terminal with the G1/4" ports is located at the rear end of the cooler. This arrangement saves space and makes it much easier to lay and connect the tubing, especially in server cases.

Alphacool naturally only uses copper in its water coolers. In the Eisblock ES Acetal GPX-N RTX 3080/3090 the copper is nickel-plated. Compared to the previous models, Alphacool has improved the type of nickel plating again, which significantly increased the acid resistance.

Let's skip ahead of any "Can it run Crysis" introductions for this news piece, and instead state it as it is: Crysis 3 can absolutely run when installed directly on a graphics card's memory subsystem. In this case, an RTX 3090 and its gargantuan 24 GB of GDDR6X memory where the playground for such an experiment. Using the "VRAM Drive" application, distributed in an open-source manner via the GitHub platform, one can allocate part of their GPU's VRAM and use it as if it was just another system drive. After doing so, user Strife212 (as per her Twitter handle) then went on to install Crysis 3 on 15 GB of the allocated VRAM. The rest of the card's 9 GB were then available to actually load in graphical assets for the game, and VRAM consumption (of both the installed game and its running assets) barely crossed the 20 GB total VRAM utilization.

As you might expect, graphics memory is one of the fastest memory subsystems on your PC, being even faster (in pure performance terms) than system RAM. Loading up of game levels and asset streaming from VRAM "disk-sequestered" pools to free VRAM pools was obviously much faster than usual, even more than the speeds achieved by today's NVMe drives. Crysis 3 in this configuration was shown to run by as many as 75 FPS in 4K resolution, with the High preset settings. A proof of concept more than anything - but users with a relatively powerful (or memory-capable) graphics card can perhaps look at this exotic solution as a compromise of sorts, should they not have any fast storage options, and provided the game install size is relatively small.

[Update, September 29, 2020: We now have a good first look at the card courtesy the man himself. It confirms what we already knew, with a 360 mm AIO cooler and a flip-up OLED screen paired to the flagship offering from EVGA this generation.]

It's only been moments after the RTX 3090's release, but professional overclockers are already unleashing the power available on NVIDIA's GA-102 chip by resorting to exotic cooling techniques. Renowned overclocker Vince "K|NGP|N" Lucido, who works in close proximity with NVIDIA AIB EVGA, tamed the RTX 3090's temperature by resorting to liquid nitrogen. This, alongside tweaks to Vcore (1069 mV) allowed the card to reach a startling 2.58 GHz core clock (a staggering 52.2% increase over NVIDIA's base clock), and 10.750 MHz (21.5 Gbps) memory clocks on the GDDR6X subsystem, which in itself is a 10.3% increase over reference clocks.

The 16.673 3D Mark Port Royal score was achieved with a fully custom design made by EVGA with Vince Lucidos' input. This über 3090 ultimately delivered a performance increase of around 30% more than the stock RTX 3090 would be able to, which isn't a bad equilibrium between the core and memory clock increases. Some might say this is the performance delta one would expect between the 3090 and the 3080 (an overall 40% performance increase, considering the 3090 is already an average of 10% faster than the 3080 at stock clocks).

NVIDIA themselves have shared performance slides for their imminent RTX 3090 graphics card, the new halo product that's been marketed as the new Titan. Previous-gen Titans have achieved extremely meager performance uplifts compared to NVIDIA's top-of-the-line cards (see RTX 2080 Ti vs RTX Titan, an average of 8% performance difference in favor of the Titan. According to the company, users should expect a slightly higher performance uplift this time around, though the 10-15% higher performance in 4K still seems meager - in pure price/performance terms - for the average consumer.

The average consumer who isn't the main focus for this graphics card and its gargantuan 24 GB of GDDR6X memory, anyway - this is more aimed at the semi-professional or professional crowds working with specialized software, whether it be in rendering or AI-based workloads. The RTX 3090 is thus not so much a product for the discerning computer enthusiast, but more of a halo product for gamers, and a crucial product for professionals and academics.

An alleged event by GALAX targeted at distributors in China revealed up to three upcoming SKUs in NVIDIA's RTX 30-series. This comes as yet another confirmation from a major NVIDIA AIC partner about the 20 GB variant of the GeForce RTX 3080. The RTX 3080 originally launched with 10 GB memory earlier this month, and it is widely expected that NVIDIA fills the price-performance gap between this $700 SKU and its $1,500 sibling. The RTX 3080 uses twenty 8 Gbit GDDR6X memory chips (two chips per 32-bit data-path), much like how the RTX 3090 achieves its 24 GB memory amount.

Elsewhere we see GALAX mention the RTX 3060, a performance-segment SKU positioned under the RTX 3070. You'll notice that the product-stack graph by GALAX suggests performance comparisons to previous-generation SKUs. The RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 are faster than everything from the previous generation, while the RTX 3070, which is coming next month, is shown trading blows with both the RTX 2080 Ti and the RTX 2080 Super. In this same graph, the RTX 3060 is shown matching up to the RTX 2080 (non-Super), a card NVIDIA originally launched at $700.