NVIDIA Reportedly Cancels Launch of RTX 3080 20 GB, RTX 3070 16 GB

[Raevenlord]

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.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Tomgang]

Oh this is a bummer, if true. I am waiting patiently for 3080 20 gb.

As big Navi has 16 gb vram. This could cost nvidia some sales. Specially if big Navi is a real threat to rtx 3080 performance wise. People might reconsider amd over nvidia given more vram.

 

[Steevo]

They done backtraced it?

 

[WhyBecauseReasons]

So 3090 or bust for the 20GBs then. I'm guessing sales for those will tick up...if the cards were ever available.

 

[efikkan]

Perhaps they are canceled, or perhaps they were never confirmed to begin with?

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Honestly both the rumour mill and the industry is mental atm both in good and bad ways.

 

[Raevenlord]

Perhaps they are canceled, or perhaps they were never confirmed to begin with?

Indeed. It all started as rumors, it all may end as a rumor as well. Many reasons could be pointed and speculated regarding this, but speculating on products that were never fully announced is nothing more than mental gymnastics.

 

[King Mustard]

Oh this is a bummer, if true. I am waiting patiently for 3080 20 gb.

As big Navi has 16 gb vram. This could cost nvidia some sales. Specially if big Navi is a real threat to rtx 3080 performance wise. People might reconsider amd over nvidia given more vram.

I doubt NVIDIA are under threat. RTX, DLSS etc.

 

[dragontamer5788]

8GB is plenty for video games, but compute applications really want more VRAM. 8GBs / (5120 shaders * Occupany4) == 400kBs per compute thread.

Going from 400kB to 800kB is a big jump in per-thread memory resources.

 

[Chomiq]

Judging by the stock issues Nvidia has canceled 30 series launch.

 

[medi01]

I doubt NVIDIA are under threat. RTX, DLSS etc.

FUD, low IQ of a typical customer as well.
They'll do fine.

 

[repman244]

8GB is plenty for video games, but compute applications really want more VRAM. 8GBs / (5120 shaders * Occupany4) == 400kBs per compute thread.

Going from 400kB to 800kB is a big jump in per-thread memory resources.

For compute you have Quadros or whatever they will call them now with way more VRAM than gaming cards.

Anyway, IMO 20GB is overkill. By the time games saturate that the GPU will be too slow anyway.
Kind of reminds me of the HD5870 2GB edition, which never really saw the benefit of double VRAM due to the GPU becoming useless for those games that could use more VRAM.

 

[TTPPUU]

It means they are certain RDNA 2 isnt a threat

 

[Cheeseball]

8GB is plenty for video games, but compute applications really want more VRAM. 8GBs / (5120 shaders * Occupany4) == 400kBs per compute thread.

Going from 400kB to 800kB is a big jump in per-thread memory resources.

This is true, but the RTX 3080 is primarily aimed at the enthusiast/gaming crowd. And it doesn't look like it has any performance hit at 2160p with just 10 GB of RAM, so adding another 10 GB probably wouldn't push the performance much higher, except the price.

I was considering going through EVGA's Step-Up program if ever they did release the 20 GB version, but realized it wouldn't help since I'm only running 3440x1440, which is only 25% more stressful than standard 2560x1440.

 

[B-Real]

I doubt NVIDIA are under threat. RTX, DLSS etc.

Can you list the games that support RTX and DLSS 2.0?

8GB is plenty for video games, but compute applications really want more VRAM. 8GBs / (5120 shaders * Occupany4) == 400kBs per compute thread.

Going from 400kB to 800kB is a big jump in per-thread memory resources.

For 4K gaming, 8GB is not enough for the future. For example, you can't enable every option in Doom Eternal without having a significant performance drop. And it's a game already in the market for half a year now.

 

[TTPPUU]

For 4K gaming, 8GB is not enough for the future. For example, you can't enable every option in Doom Eternal without having a significant performance drop. And it's a game already in the market for half a year now.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review - Must-Have for 4K Gamers

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3080 "Ampere" Founders Edition is a truly impressive graphics card. It not only looks fantastic, performance is also better than even the RTX 2080 Ti. In our RTX 3080 Founders Edition review, we're also taking a close look at the new cooler, which runs quietly without...

www.techpowerup.com

also its 10GB, not 8GB, for RTX 3080

and they havent even started using RTX I/O yet

 

[windwhirl]

For compute you have Quadros or whatever they will call them now with way more VRAM than gaming cards.

Anyway, IMO 20GB is overkill. By the time games saturate that the GPU will be too slow anyway.
Kind of reminds me of the HD5870 2GB edition, which never really saw the benefit of double VRAM due to the GPU becoming useless for those games that could use more VRAM.

And then there is the bandwidth issue. IIRC, some AIBs doubled only the VRAM size and not its speed, which made those cards actually lose performance...

 

[jabbadap]

There probably aren't enough gddr6x vrams or 16gb density chips aren't coming any time soon. And no there won't be 16GB rtx3070 as long as 3080 has only 10GB vram.

 

[n-ster]

Anyone know if the extra VRAM would have affected RTX-IO?

 

[Camm]

I sincerely doubt this is in response to any sort of market posturing or such, the reality is the extra vram really didn't make much sense except for high edge case scenarios at 4k on the 3080, and a bit silly with the 3070 as well. Furthermore, if the 6900\6800 is actually faster than the 3080, having a more expensive SKU with more RAM doesn't really change anything if you are slower anyway, it just makes it harder to make price cuts....

 

[Makaveli]

I sincerely doubt this is in response to any sort of market posturing or such, the reality is the extra vram really didn't make much sense except for high edge case scenarios at 4k on the 3080, and a bit silly with the 3070 as well. Furthermore, if the 6900\6800 is actually faster than the 3080, having a more expensive SKU with more RAM doesn't really change anything if you are slower anyway, it just makes it harder to make price cuts....

The most logical post in here so far!

 

[londiste]

For example, you can't enable every option in Doom Eternal without having a significant performance drop. And it's a game already in the market for half a year now.

And that particular setting does nothing in terms of image quality...

 

[Zach_01]

It means they are certain RDNA 2 isnt a threat

It means they admiting their loss in this round.
They know that +10GB wont give them any more gains and that there is no point of producing a card with higher MSRP that 700$ that underperforms or is on par with RDNA2 flagship with much lower price. They will go for TSMC next year, thats their only chance.

 

[londiste]

It means they admiting their loss in this round.

Maybe Nvidia is now sure what AMD is coming out with and it turned out to be less of a threat than expected?

 

[Zach_01]

Maybe Nvidia is now sure what AMD is coming out with and it turned out to be less of a threat than expected?

It is a possibility, but given the words and leaks around... its a very slim one.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I know...
"...but we have heard again, the past years, the rumors and the hype about AMD GPUs and it turned out to be bubbles..." blahh blahh...

I agree. And 4 years ago AMD's best desktop CPU was the FX line and that was best in nothing (I had one for 5 years), and today claims to have the best CPUs for all workloads...
And?