Nvidia could go all-out to make the GeForce RTX 3080 an AMD Big Navi killer

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 may not just come with a striking new fan design (rumor has it), but further speculation is floating around that it might use the GA102-200 GPU, and come with truly eye-opening performance levels – not to mention there may just be an RTX 3090 graphics card backing it up (although that seems a slim possibility to us, but still).

At any rate, we should make it clear upfront that all this is moderately sketchy info from the rumor mill, but that said, the source on Twitter is a hardware leaker with a solid enough track record.

Of course, in the tweet, the leaker makes it clear enough that this is educated guesswork based on purported specs, and even if these hardware specifications are on the money, ultimately it’s not clear exactly what these next-gen Ampere products will be called.

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Kopite7kimi is hopeful that the RTX 3080 might come built around the GA102-200 GPU with 4,352 CUDA cores and 10GB of video RAM. Now remember, as we’ve heard many times before, that the GA102 is the GPU intended for the RTX 3080 Ti top-end graphics card (and new Titan spin), as well as, as this leaker theorizes, a potential RTX 3090 (another possibility being talked about is an RTX 3080 Super right off the bat).

So, the names are not certain, but the prospect is an RTX 3080 which is built on the same GPU as its mega-powerful Ti model, although it would obviously be cut down (considerably) in some way to make sense from a price/performance perspective.

Of course, this supposed RTX 3080 could still offer huge performance gains compared to the existing 2080 graphics card, and if some of the rumored clock speeds mentioned regarding the GA102 turn out to be in the right ballpark, we’re looking at quite a leap forward here.

As ‘Moore’s Law is Dead’ discusses in a new YouTube video, the GPU could be something like 60% to 90% faster than its predecessor TU102 (albeit in best-case-scenario games which favor Ampere graphics cards).

Launch plans

He further speculates that the situation may just be that Nvidia will only have the GA102 ready to go for the autumn, and want the RTX 3080 out to coincide with AMD’s launch of its Big Navi GPU, to ensure that the company doesn’t look like it’s falling behind its rival in the graphics card race.

Because the rumor mill is getting pretty excited about the power of Big Navi, too, as you’ve doubtless seen in recent times. There’s talk of a big GPU face-off come September with Nvidia and AMD both unleashing their new products then, but all this – and indeed all of the above – remains speculation.

What does make sense, however, is that if we are looking at a potential Nvidia launch in just a few months’ time, it’s not surprising that the leaks are starting to come thicker and faster, including that glimpse of the alleged new design for the RTX 3080.

YouTuber ‘Moore’s Law is Dead’ also mentions the purported new cooler design, and notes that his inside sources believe that the leaked images could be genuine – although they can’t confirm either way, they have commented that if the pictures are fabricated, they’re very good fakes.

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Via Wccftech, Tweaktown