More RTX GPUs you might not be able to own
While many of us were sleeping, Nvidia hosted a live stream last night and finally announced that the often rumored RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3080 Ti GPUs were, in fact, genuine. Both cards have been given a June 3rd, 2021 release date, priced at $599 for the RTX 3070 Ti and $1199.99 for the RTX 3080 Ti. Several manufacturers, including PNY, EVGA, and MSI, have already announced they will also produce both cards.
So let’s talk about these new cards. First up is the RTX 3080 Ti, which looks extremely close to the already released RTX 3090 GPU. While the original RTX 3080 had 10GB of VRAM and was considered a glaring flaw with the card, the RTX 3080 Ti is packing 12GB. There are a few other changes, such as the bump in Tensor Cores, RT Cores, and others. Again, the card looks like an RTX 3090 with half the memory and 3/4 the cost.
As for the RTX 3070 Ti, this card has also seen several changes that include 96 RT Cores, 192 Tensor Cores, and 6,144 Cude Cores. The RTX 3070 Ti did not see a memory increase and features 8GB of VRAM, just like the RTX 3070. On paper, it looks very similar; however, Nvidia is claiming that the card is 1.5x faster.
| Video Card | RTX 3070 TI | RTX 3070 | RTX 3080 Ti | RTX 3080 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | GA104 | GA104 | GA102 | GA102 |
| GPU Cores | 6,144 | 5,888 | 10,240 | 8,704 |
| Tensor Cores | 192 | 184 | 320 | 272 |
| RT Cores | 96 | 46 | 80 | 68 |
| Base Clock (MHz) | 1,575 | 1,500 | 1,440 | 1,440 |
| Boost Clock (MHz) | 1,770 | 1,725 | 1,665 | 1,710 |
| VRAM (GB) | 8 | 8 | 12 | 10 |
| VRAM Speed (Gbps) | 19 | 16 | 19 | 19 |
| Bandwidth (GBps) | 608 | 512 | 912 | 760 |
| TFLOPS FP32 (Boost) | 21.75 | 20.3 | 34.1 | 29.8 |
| TFLOPS FP16 (Tensor) | 87 (174) | 81 (163) | 136 (273) | 119 (238) |
| TDP (watts) | 290 | 220 | 350 | 320 |
| Launch Price | $599 | $499 | $1,199 | $699 |
| Launch Date | June 2021 | Oct 2020 | June 2021 | Sep 2020 |
Needless to say that both cards look to be a worthwhile addition to the RTX lineup. Sadly, given the nature of the current GPU market, it may be quite sometime before anyone gets a chance to own one of these. We’ve already seen how hard it is to get a hold of the existing RTX cards, much less any video cards. I suspect once June 3rd, 2021, gets here, these cards will also be impossible to find.
The only saving grace here is that Nvidia has also mentioned that the same cryptocurrency nerf that they’ve implemented for the LHR GPUs (Lite Hash Rate) should make these less tempting for cryptomining. That is until someone finds a way around it and you know someone’s working on that right now.
But at least the rumors are over, and Nvidia finally announced these cards are real.
