Ahead of Nvidia’s planned GeForce event on September 1, we’re seeing more leaks detailing the company’s upcoming line of RTX 3000 series graphics cards. Even though Nvidia has announced the event, the company has not given any specific details on what to expect. Industry insiders have long speculated that Nvidia will use the September event to unveil the successor to the current flagship RTX 2080 Ti GPU, and now we’re hearing that up to three new 3000 series cards could make their debut.
Citing unnamed sources, Videocardz revealed that the cards that will be launching include the RTX 3090, RTX 3080, and midrange RTX 3070. As the flagship of the series, it’s been widely speculated that Nvidia’s powerful RTX 3090 will ultimately succeed the current Titan RTX in the 2000 series lineup and utilize the company’s new Ampere architecture rather than the current Turing design.
This powerful flagship is expected to ship with a whopping 24GB of video memory with a memory clock of 19.5 Gbps, as well as 5,248 cores. The design makes use of a 384-bit bus, giving it a maximum bandwidth of 936 GB/s. Though prior leaks suggested that this card will move to a new 12-pin connector, the latest leak indicates that custom boards will make use of dual 8-pin connectors for the 350-watt power requirement. The boost clock speed of this card is said to be 1,695MHz.
Next in the lineup is the RTX 3080, which will reportedly ship with 10GB of GDDR6X memory with a memory clock of 19 Gbps, but sources claim that custom variants of this board from Nvidia partners could come with up to double the memory. At 20GB of memory, the 1,710MHz clocked RTX 3080 will be a powerful contender that’s not too far back in performance from the RTX 3090.
The 3080 will ship with 4,352 CUDA cores, or roughly 1,000 less than what’s available on the more premium 3090, which gives it a bandwidth of 760 GB/s with the 320-bit memory bus. According to Videocardz, custom variants of this graphics card require dual 8-pin connectors.
If both the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 are too powerful — or pricey — for your needs, Nvidia will also reportedly take the wraps off of its midrange RTX 3070 card. It is expected to launch at the end of next month, according to the publication, so those hoping to upgrade from an older GeForce model won’t have much longer to wait. This card ships with 8GB GDDR6 memory with a memory clock of 16 Gbps, and has a maximum bandwidth of 512 GB/s. It also has a lower 220-watt power requirement.
The cards are expected to use a new 7nm node on a new design, according to the publication, which will deliver significant performance improvements — especially with ray tracing enabled — compared to the RTX 2000 series. The performance boost is much needed and comes at a time when PC gaming will face stiff competition from an upcoming generation of more powerful consoles. However, all that performance doesn’t come cheap, and the RTX 3000 series could cost close to $1,500 at launch, according to pricing information leaked earlier.