NVIDIA Allegedly Delays RTX 3080 And 3070 Ti Refreshes But A New Flagship May Still Loom
A bevy of product announcements are expected at the Consumer Electronics Show next month, and up until now, it was rumored NVIDIA may use the event to introduce refreshed GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics cards. However, there is chatter that NVIDIA may have decided to postpone those cards.
In case you haven't been following the leaks and rumors scene, word on the web is that NVIDIA is readying upgraded models of existing cards with more memory slapped onto them. We already saw this tactic with the re-introduced GeForce RTX 2060, though in addition to wielding twice as much memory as the original (12GB versus 6GB of GDDR6), NVIDiA also beefed up the CUDA count and tweaked the clock speeds.
NVIDIA is known for throwing curve balls at the final minute, but if the leaked information up to this point is accurate, the refreshed RTX 3080 and 3070 Ti are getting memory bumps as well. More precisely, NVIDIA supposedly intends to launch a GeForce RTX 3080 with 12GB of GDDR6X memory (up from 10GB currently) and a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti with 16GB of GDDR6X (up from 8GB currently).
It's not clear if either upgraded card will also see an increase in the number of CUDA cores or feature any other changes, whether they be related to clock speeds or anything else. But whatever changes are in store, they may have to wait.
Igor Wallossek from Igor's Lab said he heard from multiple manufacturing sources that NVIDIA dropped its plans to announce the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16GB SKU on December 17, as was supposedly the initial plan, followed by a retail launch on January 11. This is said to be a response to Intel's upcoming Arc Alchemist card, but the lingering component shortage has apparently delayed its release. There's probably some strategic marketing at play too, which NVIDIA's hardware partners may or may not be privy to.
As to the GeForce RTX 3080 12GB, that is supposedly postponed as well, perhaps even indefinitely. Wallossek was not able to extract a whole lot of info about that particular card.
NVIDIA may still have another card up its sleeve for a CES announcement, though. The same sources apparently indicated that a new flagship, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, is a go. Past rumors suggest the 3090 Ti will sport 10,752 CUDA cores, up from 10,496 in the regular GeForce RTX 3090, and could be a power-hungry beast with a 450W TDP.
If past rumors are correct, the card will land on store shelves on January 27, 2022. Though like every other GPU, expect it to be in short supply.
