Nvidia is rumored to be expanding its RTX 3000 series lineup as early as April with the addition of two new premium graphics cards. The company is believed to be launching a high-end RTX 3080 Ti card in April, while an upper-midrange RTX 3070 Ti could debut in May. Unfortunately for gamers, these cards will debut in the midst of a global semiconductor shortage, and supplies of these cards, like others before them in the RTX 3000 range, will likely be very limited.
The RTX 3080 Ti will likely slot in between Nvidia’s current flagship RTX 3080 model and the ultra-premium RTX 3090. While previous leaks suggested that the RTX 3080 Ti would be based on the GA102-250 GPU design, Videocardz is now reporting that this unreleased card will be built on the GA102-225 GPU. It’s unclear what changes Nvidia made in moving from the 250 to 225 design, but the card should get a modest boost in video memory to 12GB of GDDR6X of VRAM.
For reference, the RTX 3080 comes with just 10GB of VRAM, while the the RTX 3090 ships with 24GB of GDDR6X memory. Aside from the ultra-premium RTX 3090, the only other card in Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series lineup to feature more than 10GB of VRAM is the RTX 3060, though that card features the slower GDDR6 memory standard compared to the the faster GDDR6X that’s expected on the RTX 3080 Ti. The RTX 3060 ships with 12GB of RAM, an amount that rival AMD claimed will be needed for more modern game titles.
The RTX 3080 Ti is also believed to be shipping with 10,240 CUDA cores, up from the 8,704 CUDA cores found on the RTX 3080 non-Ti version that’s available today.
Nvidia is also expected to launch the RTX 3070 Ti in May following April’s speculated launch of the RTX 3080 Ti. This graphics card is believed to be based on the GA104-400 GPU design that features 6,144 CUDA cores. For reference, the RTX 3070 non-Ti that’s available today features 5,888 CUDA cores. At 6,144 CUDA cores, the RTX 3070 Ti will match the core count on the RTX 3080 mobile GPU on Nvidia’s gaming laptops.
Interestingly, though, the RTX 3070 Ti is said to feature 8GB of GDDR6X memory. This seems to suggest that Nvidia may be moving to the G6X memory standard on Ti-branded cards. If accurate, this would mean that the RTX 3070 Ti would have less VRAM compared to the RTX 3070, but the video memory would be deployed on a faster standard.
To help maintain supplies of its GPUs for gamers, Nvidia could also try to limit the appeal of these unannounced cards to cryptocurrency miners by limiting its mining capabilities through software, a strategy that the company attempted with the launch of the RTX 3060. However, given that the company had accidentally released a driver that reversed this limitation, it’s unclear how successful the strategy will be. Gamers eager to get their hands on these new cards should try to pre-order early, as we anticipate — if history is an indicator — that supplies will be extremely limited.