Wednesday, November 4th 2020
NVIDIA Reportedly Working on GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Graphics Card with 20 GB GDDR6X VRAM
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.
Sources:
Kopite7kimi @ Twitter, via Videocardz
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.
140 Comments on NVIDIA Reportedly Working on GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Graphics Card with 20 GB GDDR6X VRAM
After all the rumors, this 20GB 3080Ti does kind of make sense though. From specs it has the sole purpose of matching RX 6900XT (that undercuts 3090 primarily with price).
But the thing is most of these leaks are more often than not intentional, meant to drive interest in upcoming products.
I guess this means:
The result was pretty weak availability until much later when the card's performance was hardly competitive. Sure, that was touted as a demand / production problem, too.
Smoke > Fire.The 20GB card made sense to begin with, but only because the 3080 is somehow based on 10GB. The VRAM capacity still makes no sense in the larger picture. 12 or 16 would have been much more suitable. Realistically, their 20GB release would completely cannibalize their halo 3090, even before they managed to sell them proper, and also makes the 3080 less competitive in a way.
Watch this gen's VRAM requirements unfold... already its looking like that 3070 might not even be in an optimal place either. This also fits right in with Nvidia pre-empting those console announcements and overpromising on availability. They know they're screwed.
10GB...12GB via 384 bit vs 20GB via 320(?) bit vs 24GB via 384 bit?Guess:
RTX 3080 10GB -$100-150 from $699 to $599-549 to compete with RX 6700 XT?
RTX 3080 12GB for compete with RX 6800(without "XT")
RTX 3080 ti 20GB for compete with RX 6800 XT; RX 6900 XT and with RTX 3090 too :D for good compete with RX 6800 XT, RTX 3080 ti 20 GB must got price equal to MSRP of RTX 3080 10GB in release date ($699) or something close $749-799(?)
Panic defense?
nvida has troubles to provide quantities from their new lineup.
ppl on the internet consider canceling preorders and switching to "big navi"
so amd puts oil in the fire by asking partner to announce 12gb vram requirement (which obsoletes 2/3 of current nvidia lineup and 100% of last gen) for their upcoming game.
minutes later leaker leaks news for 3080ti with 20gb vram (because you know 20>16).
i'll put a pint on bet that we'll see more ti/super leaks soon.
and another pint that godfall with 4k ultra settings will play @60 fps just fine on 8gb card if gpu itself has enough hp to do 4k@60
Does that all TRULY mean there is enough VRAM though? That is debatable. The real comparison is side by side and careful analysis of frametimes. Gonna be interesting.
GA102 has a 384bit memory bus that Nvidia can play with. For some reason they did not want to do a full-width card as x80, product segmentation is definitely a big reason but I would suspect not the only one (also power or yields perhaps) especially with the rumored 3080Ti still having 320-bit bus. 16gb would mean going down to 256-bit memory bus and they seem to want to avoid going there probably because of sizable hit to bandwidth. Basically, lots of considerations.There were no real bugs to be fixed. that whole 3.5+0.5GB was a design problem in hardware. From what I could see at the time what Nvidia eventually did as a workaround was forcing the basic usage like Windows' Aero stuff and other non-gaming stuff (that did not care about speed that much) to that last 0.5GB and using that for 3D load only when absolutely necessary. It did help that there were only a couple games in first couple years of GTX970's life span that actually had memory consumption in that 3.5-4GB range effectively making the impact surface surprisingly small.