Inadvertently, Gigabyte may just have confirmed the existence of not only a 20 GB RTX 3080 Ti but also a 12 GB RTX 3060 card. That may not sound like a big deal at face value, but if you ask me, it's something that's certainly worth getting excited about.
The information comes from a new EEC listing -- one that covers a plethora of cards. Details are scarce at this time, but the following product names tell enough of a story:
Gigabyte's RTX 3080 Ti 20GB Models:
- GV-N308TAORUSX W-20GD
- GV-N308TAORUSX WB-20GD
- GV-N308TAORUS X-20GD
- GV-N308TAORUS M-20GD
- GV-N308TGAMING OC-20GD
- GV-N308TVISION OC-20GD
- GV-N308TEAGLE OC-20GD
- GV-N308TTURBO-20GD
- GV-N308TAORUS-20GD
- GV-N308TGAMING-20GD
- GV-N308TEAGLE-20GD
- GV-N308TVISION-20GD
- GV-N308TTURBO OC-20GD
Gigabyte's RTX 3060 12 GB Models:
- GV-N3060GAMING OC-12GD
- GV-N3060EAGLE OC-12GD
- GV-N3060EAGLE-12GD
- GV-N3060VISION OC-12GD
- GV-N3060VISION-12GD
- GV-N3060GAMING-12GD
The EEC listing also covers a few 'regular' RTX 3080 models and AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT units, but those aren't what's interesting today, of course.
By now, this isn't the first time we've heard of these cards. The public has been asking for them for a long time now, and there have been rumors aplenty. Asus also accidentally listed similar models a few days ago, so reasons to doubt this listing are starting to dwindle.
But what makes these high-capacity cards interesting is their likelihood to stand up to the test of time. It's no industry secret that Nvidia's cards often lead the charge when it comes to running today's titles, but many also believe that AMD GPUs tend to 'age like a fine wine' much better. The reason for that is that AMD happily chucks more memory aboard its graphics card designs than Nvidia does, which helps with future games that require larger buffers.
So if you're like me, and you keep your graphics cards for a long, long time, then it might be worth the patience to sit on your pennies a little longer for these cards to come out.
Earlier rumors indicated that the RTX 3080 Ti might just pack the same 10,496 CUDA core count as the RTX 3090. However, no information is available yet about the GPU configuration of the alleged RTX 3060 -- though the word on the street is that it will come in 6 GB and 12 GB variants.
With these EEC listings up, chances are we'll be seeing the aforementioned cards announced soon. Of course, for official information, you'll have to sit tight a little longer until Nvidia's announcement comes around.
