That Ampere's launch is edging closer is sort of a lapalissian truth; as time advances, a new consumer gaming graphics card from NVIDIA becomes ever more likely. However, we are now witnessing what amount to be the final steps in NVIDIA's preparation for launch of their next-generation RTX 3000 series. NVIDIA has submitted with the Korean National Radio Research Agency (RAA) their PG133A board design for certification, which is being pegged as the one that's been in numerous leaks already, with that fancy PCB and cooling solution.

Such certification is one of the last steps before a product comes to market, and timing seems to be inline with the #ultimatecountdown teaser that NVIDIA has been spearheading, the results of which should be clear by August 31st. It remains to be seen if the Founders' Edition will feature the leaked cooler across all products, of if NVIDIA will be staggering its design (maybe re-purposing that of last year's RTX 2000 series) for lower-tier SKUs in order to shave costs.

NVIDIA today shared the first real teaser in what seems to be the start of the Ampere marketing push. A post via Twitter shared an image showing an explosion of cosmic proportions, with a "#theultimatecountdown" tag alongside the "21 days. 21 years" tagline. This is a likely throwback to August 31st 1999, when NVIDIA launched its first GeForce branded graphics card - the GeForce 256 - setting it on its journey to become today's most successful dedicated graphics card maker.

Following the teasers' logic, we should expect some very interesting announcements from NVIDIA come August 31st, 2020 - and with Ampere around the corner, it's highly unlikely we'll be hearing about anything other than that.