In the waves of AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XT, Nvidia was expected to counter with a Geforce RTX 3080 Ti, but the unveiling at CES 2021 was apparently withdrawn at the last minute. Most indications are that the decision was made due to a lack of graphics circuits, data that got water on its mill when it became known that Nvidia marked the intended RTX 3080 Ti circuits to be used for RTX 3090.
Since the beginning of the year, the rides around the Geforce RTX 3080 Ti have been many. New launch windows have been interspersed with revised specifications. Despite many question marks, it is clear that the RTX 3080 Ti exists in some form and that Nvidia intends to release such a graphics card. Now comes a new offer from Chinese IT Home – mid-May. The information is said to derive from Nvidia’s internal communication with employees.
Nvidia Geforce RTX 3000 “Ampere”:
RTX 3090 | RTX 3080 Ti | RTX 3080 | RTX 3070 | RTX 3060 Ti | RTX 3060 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Technical | 8 nm Samsung | 8 nm Samsung | 8 nm Samsung | 8 nm Samsung | 8 nm Samsung | 8 nm Samsung |
Circuit | GA102 | GA102 | GA102 | GA104 | GA104 | GA106 |
Circuit surface | 628 mm² | 628 mm² | 628 mm² | 392 mm² | 392 mm² | 276 mm² |
Transistors | 28.3 billion | 28.3 billion | 28.3 billion | 17.4 billion | 17.4 billion | 12 billion |
Architecture | Ampere | Ampere | Ampere | Ampere | Ampere | Ampere |
CUDA cores | 10 496 st. | 10 240 st. | 8 704 st. | 5 888 st. | 4 864 st. | 3 584 st. |
RT cores | 82 st. | 80 st. | 68 st. | 46 st. | 38 st. | 28 st. |
Tensor cores | 328 st. | 320 st. | 272 st. | 184 st. | 152 st. | 112 st. |
Texture units | 328 st. | 320 st. | 272 st. | 184 st. | 152 st. | 112 st. |
Raster units | 112 st. | 112 st. | 96 st. | 96 st. | 96 st. | 64 st. |
Clock frequency | 1 395 MHz | ? | 1 440 MHz | 1 500 MHz | 1 410 MHz | 1 320 MHz |
GPU Boost | 1 695 MHz | ? | 1 710 MHz | 1 725 MHz | 1 665 MHz | 1 777 MHz |
Computational power | 35 581 GFLOPS | ? | 29 768 GFLOPS | 20 313 GFLOPS | 16 197 GFLOPS | 12 738 GFLOPS |
Memory amount | 24 GB GDDR6X | 12 GB GDDR6X | 10 GB GDDR6X | 8 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 12 GB GDDR6 |
Memory frequency | 19 500 MHz | 19 000 MHz(?) | 19 000 MHz | 14 000 MHz | 14 000 MHz | 15 000 MHz |
Memory bus | 384-bit | 384-bit | 320-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit |
Memory bandwidth | 936 GB/s | 912 GB/s(?) | 760 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 360 GB/s |
SLI connection | NVLink 3.0 x4 | ? | – | – | – | |
TBP | 350 W | ? | 320 W | 220 W | 200 W | 170 W |
Launch price | 1 499 USD | 999 USD(?) | 699 USD | 499 USD | 399 USD | 329 USD |
On the specification front, the Geforce RTX 3080 Ti has changed at least once. Then the number of CUDA cores decreased from 10,496 to 10,240 pieces, while the memory bus took a step up from 320 to 384 pieces. The latter means that the theoretically possible bandwidth takes up a modest step by 20 percent, from 760 GB / s with a GDDR6X memory at 19,000 MHz to 912 GB / s.
At the same time as the graphics card with a wider memory bus gets higher bandwidth, the possible configurations for the GDDR6X memory change. All previous reports pointed to 20 GB with a bus of 320 bits, but with the wider 384-bit solution, 12 GB or 24 GB applies. Here, Nvidia should have chosen 12 GB to more clearly segment the Geforce RTX 3080 Ti from the top model RTX 3090.
As the Geforce RTX 3080 Ti is believed to be a counterpoint to the Radeon RX 6900 XT, the recommended price is expected to land at 999 USD. With the results from recent months, it remains to be seen whether the graphics card even sees the light of day, but with the lack of circuitry in mind, Nvidia probably feels no urgency in countering a graphics card that cannot be bought.