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News hardware & software 10 August 2020, 15:48

author: Bart Woldanski

GeForce RTX 3080 and 3070 - Plans for Editions With Doubled VRAM

New unofficial information has been published that Nvidia intends to release additional variants of the GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 with double the memory. Before that, the top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with up to 24GB of VRAM is scheduled to be released.

Nvidia could be preparing more GeForce RTX 3000 cards this year than originally planned.

Just yesterday we informed about the likely date of the official announcement of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000, but these are not the only rumors making runds on the web in recent days. According to the German website Igor's Lab, which follows unofficial reports from Wccftech, the company is planning to release more Ampere-based chipsets this year than could have been originally expected. A list of Nvidia Ampere GPU with partial specs has been released, but as their names have not yet been confirmed, they have been marked with PCB numbers.

In September we would receive three GPU models: GeForce RTX 3080 with 10 GB VRAM (labeled PG132-30), GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with 24 GB VRAM (PG132-10) and GeForce RTX 3070 with 8 GB VRAM (PG142-10). The first one is expected to be available in the middle of next month, while the latter two will be sold from the second half of September. In the first half of October, the GeForce RTX 3080 SUPER (PG132-20) with double the memory (20 GB) will be available. This is not the end of the story, because Nvidia is reportedly hiding the successors of GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER with 8 GB VRAM (PG190-10) and GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER with 16 GB VRAM (PG142-0). Unfortunately, these chipsets do not have a release date set yet. Earlier it was suggested that the GeForce RTX 3060 may debut in November 2020. So this year we are preparing a real flood of Nvidia cards, if this information is confirmed. The full list is included in the table below, with the names of GeForce RTX 3000 models being placeholders.

PCB ID

GPU

VRAM

Memory bus

Launch date

PG132-10

RTX 3080 Ti

24 GB

384-bit

Second half of September

PG132-20

RTX 3080 SUPER

20 GB

320-bit

First half of October

PG132-30

RTX 3080

10 GB

320-bit

mid-September

PG142-0

RTX 3070 SUPER

16 GB

no data

lack of data

PG142-10

RTX 3070

8 GB

256-bit

Second half of September

PG190-10

RTX 3060

8 GB

256-bit

lack of data

Additional GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 variants, with twice the VRAM, would be the (premature) answer to competing AMD chipsets based on the Navi 21 core, which can offer up to 16GB of memory. The new Radeons called Big Navi, which are to be based on RDNA 2 architecture, should appear at the end of this year, so the information obtained by the editors of Igor's Lab seems quite surprising. After all, Nvidia could introduce stronger cards only after AMD's move.

Nvidia is going to put out the strongest cards almost immediately.

The official announcement of GeForce RTX 3000 GPU will take place, according to Gamers Nexus, on September 9, and the first model (probably GeForce RTX 3080) will be released on September 17, this year. We will soon find out whether the subsequent chipsets will make their debut as suggested in the table above. Whether this information is officially confirmed or not, it looks like a hot fall on the GPU market.