Well, the rumors were true – Nvidia just showed off the RTX 3080 Ti at its Computex 2021 event (as well as the RTX 3070 Ti).
While we didn't get all the details about Nvidia's next flagship graphics card, we did get a glimpse of it, and it looks very similar to the RTX 3080.
However, the RTX 3080 Ti offers some noticeable upgrades from the RTX 3080, especially when it comes to the memory. As rumors correctly predicted, the RTX 3080 Ti comes with 12GB of GDDR6X memory, more than the 10GB that comes with the RTX 3080.
Nvidia has put the MSRP at $1,199 (around £850, AU$1,550) which is a tad pricey, but hopefully will help deter cryptominers from buying up the available stock so that video editors and gamers who can afford it can get one.
Cut to the chase
- What is it? Nvidia's next high-end graphics card
- When is it out? June 3 2021
- What will it cost? $1,199 (around £850, AU$1,550)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti release date
At the Computex 2021 event, Nvidia revealed that the RTX 3080 Ti isn't only real, but it's coming soon - June 3.
Thankfully, that means we don't have long to wait. What Nvidia didn't mention, however, was the ongoing GPU shortage, which has made it incredibly difficult for people to get hold of existing Nvidia graphics cards.
So, while the RTX 3080 Ti goes on sale on June 3, how easy will it be to actually buy one? We're still worried that stock will sell out almost instantly, leaving many people disappointed. Hopefully Nvidia and retailers have plans in place to put off scalpers and bots, who snap up stock before regular people get a chance to buy.
Nvidia may also have worked hard to get more stock of the RTX 3080 Tis to retailers, which would help. But the global chip shortage means there's only so much it can do.
The other option is to put off cryptocurrency miners from buying the new GPUs by artificially limiting how good the graphics cards are at mining. This hasn't seemed to work in the past, however.
Whatever happens, the RTX 3080 Ti is likely to be in big demand, and that could mean getting hold of one on June 3 will be tricky.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti price
Nvidia also announced the price of the RTX 3080 Ti at its Computex event, and it sadly confirmed our worst fears: this is going to be an expensive GPU.
The Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti will cost $1,199 (around £850, AU$1,550) when it launches on June 3. That's almost twice what the RTX 3080 cost when it launched - $699 (£649, about AU$950) - and it's not too far off the price of the RTX 3090, which should cost $1,499 (£1,399, around AU$2,030), and has twice the amount of VRAM.
However, it's essentially the same price as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, with the Founders Edition card selling for $1,199 (£1,099, AU$1,899). This means you're getting a substantial performance upgrade for the same price.
One thing to note, though, is that due to stock shortages, GPUs these days often sell for well over the recommended retail price. If the RTX 3080 Ti proves hard to get, we could see prices climbing even higher.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti specs and performance
Because Nvidia hasn't come out and revealed the RTX 3080 Ti specs, we really don't know what the card will be able to do. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a whole lot of discourse and rumors about what the supposed graphics card will look like.
The most controversial spec so far has been the amount of VRAM that'll be included. Initially we were expecting the RTX 3080 Ti to come with 20GB of GDDR6X memory, due to the 320-bit memory interface on the RTX 3080. However, recent rumors have pointed to the RTX 3080 Ti having 12GB instead – the same amount as the RTX 3060.
That would point to a 384-bit memory bus, but it does raise the question why Nvidia would limit it to 12GB instead of 24GB. Because when Nvidia launched the GeForce RTX 3060, we were told that the reason the company equipped that graphics card with the 12GB of VRAM instead of the 6GB that would perhaps be more appropriate for a 1080p GPU, Nvidia wanted to provide its users with the most RAM it could for the memory bus.
We're not saying that the rumors about the RTX 3080 Ti having just 12GB of VRAM are wrong – in fact, they're probably right – but it would seem counter to Nvidia's rationale behind the 3060 having so much VRAM.
Given the competing cards from Nvidia all have 16GB of VRAM, launching a flagship-level card with less than that doesn't seem too likely. Keep in mind we're the same folks that thought the RTX 3090 was fake, so we could totally be wrong on this.
Then again, the GPU that was supposedly slated to be behind the RTX 3080 Ti has since appeared in RTX 3090s, so limiting the VRAM to 12GB could be a way to just make the RTX 3080 Ti a more affordable version of the RTX 3090 – with most gamers not needing as much VRAM as Nvidia's monster GPU provides.
But another recent rumor even goes in the face of that, suggesting that the RTX 3080 Ti will have 10,240 CUDA cores, instead of the previous rumored spec of 10,496 cores – the latter of which being the same spec as the RTX 3090.
Even if the RTX 3080 Ti has been cut down to 10,240 CUDA cores, that would be a massive jump over the RTX 3080's 8,704 cores, which would make the RTX 3080 Ti an absolute beast at 1080p.
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