New Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti launch date rumor sounds too good to be true
RTX 3080 Ti could go on sale May 26, but we’re not so sure
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Nvidia RTX 3080 Tirumors are coming in fast now, and the latest from the grapevine is that this purported graphics card is set to launch on May 26 – with theRTX 3070 Tito follow hot on its heels.
We wouldn’t get carried away, though, as we’ve heard purported launch timeframes for the 3080 Ti before – we’ll come back to that, but first off, let’s chew over the fresh rumor itself.
The word from Hong Kong-based tech siteHKEPC, as spotted by renown hardware leaker @momomo_us on Twitter, is that the 3080 Ti will arrive on May 26 according to Taiwanese graphics card makers. The RTX 3070 Ti will then follow very swiftly in early June (huge piles of salt all-round, naturally).
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 確認 26/5 上市 GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 緊接 6 月初發售 - HKEPChttps://t.co/uVRKPf3wMW3080 Ti : 26 May3070 Ti : early JuneApril 23, 2021
However, previous rumors have pointed to the3080 Ti launching in May, so this does match up with what we’ve heard from the rumor mill already.
The specs mentioned in this new rumor also marry with what we’ve heard about the RTX 3080 Ti in the past, namely that it will have 10,240 CUDA cores, 12GB of GDDR6X video memory and a 384-bit memory bus.
As for the spec of the RTX 3070 Ti, that’ll apparently run with 6,144 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR6X VRAM (though itcould also offer a 16GB variant as well).
Mining deterrent
HKEPC also reports thatNvidiawill purportedly implement a mining performance limiter with the 3080 Ti –something we’ve heard elsewhere– to reduce the hashrate of the GPU by 50% when crypto-mining activity is detected, a useful countermeasure to stop stock being bought up by miners. In theory, anyway, providing that miners don’t find a way to circumvent that protection (which isexactly what happened with the RTX 3060when this anti-mining tech was first introduced, if you recall).
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Nothing is mentioned about the price of the RTX 3080 Ti here, butrecent speculation points to it being distinctly weighty(it could run to ¥7,999 in China, which is around $1,099 / £800 / AU$1,420).
All of the 3080 Ti rumors seem to be lining up, then, but we’d be foolish to get too carried away as we mentioned at the outset. After all, remember way back in November 2020 when the RTX 3080 Ti wasrumored to be appearing with 20GB VRAM. (And that could indeed have been Nvidia’s plan early on – but plans change).
Furthermore, does it really make sense to bring another high-endAmpere graphics cardto the table when the RTX 3090 and 3080 already dominate compared toAMD’s rival top-end GPUs (particularly given the likes of ray tracing and DLSS)? Wouldn’t it seem a more likely call to tackle the budget end of the market first with therumored RTX 3050 models?
This is something we’ve been mulling over at TechRadar towers today, and coming soon, look out for a more in-depth piece on where Nvidia is likely to go next with its RTX 3000 GPUs. As ever, only time will really tell, but the rumor mill certainly seems convinced enough that the 3080 Ti is coming very soon.
Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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