Chinese news outlet IT Home (opens in new tab) (via HXL (opens in new tab)) has posted a photograph of the rumored GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, more specifically a custom Asus GeForce RTX 3090 Ti TUF Gaming model. The new Ampere flagship will likely take a place at the top of the list of best graphics cards, at least in terms of performance. It will also likely end up with and even higher GPU price than the existing RTX 3090 (which already sells for over 50% more than its original MSRP).
Rumors have been circulating that Nvidia may launch the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti during CES 2022. As you'd expect from the name, the graphics card will take the throne away from the GeForce RTX 3090 and become the head honcho of Nvidia's Ampere army. The latest leaked photograph lends credence to the rumors of its imminent launch. Respected hardware sleuth kopite7kimi shared the potential specifications for the GeForce RTX 3090 Super back in September, but he wasn't sure on the model name at the time. It appears that Nvidia has opted for the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti moniker, meaning every RTX 30-series GPU now has a "Ti" variant.
Logically, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti would leverage the GA102 silicon, which is Nvidia's largest consumer Ampere die (i.e., not counting the data center GA100, which lacks ray tracing hardware among other things). The GeForce RTX 3090's silicon has 82 enabled streaming multiprocessors (SMs) out of the potential 84 from GA102. The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti will in all probability arrive with the fully enabled silicon. This means that it would have 10,752 CUDA cores at is disposal as well as 336 Tensor cores and 84 RT cores.
The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti may be the first graphics card to take advantage of Micron's speedy 21 Gbps GDDR6X memory. The card will likely retain the 24GB configuration and 384-bit memory interface from the GeForce RTX 3090. However, the faster memory will give the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti (21 Gbps) a slight edge over the GeForce RTX 3090 (19.5 Gbps) in regards to memory bandwidth. While the GeForce RTX 3090 is good for 936.2 GBps, the Ti variant will offer up to 1,018 GBps, a nice 9% uplift.
Along with the memory and GPU upgrades, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti will also reportedly have an even higher TDP. While the non-Ti variant is rated for 350W, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti could sport a 450W TDP. That would represent a 29% increase, likely for around 5–10% more performance in real-world use cases. If Nvidia decides to release a Founders Edition (we think it probably will), we can expect to see the 12-pin PCIe power connector on the new Ampere flagship. Of course, there will be ample custom options, such as the Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 Ti from the leaked photograph. Unfortunately, given the current graphics card shortage, we may not see much stock at launch.
While Nvidia is rumored to be preparing to unveil the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti on January 4, the graphics card reportedly won't hit the shelves until January 27, assuming that the rumors are accurate. We're sure that gamers would love for Nvidia to improve its Ampere stock and pricing at the lower ranks rather than launching a new premium unobtainium SKU like the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. There really isn't competition from AMD at the top of the extreme performance segment, so Nvidia doesn't even need the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti right now. Unless perhaps Intel's Arc Alchemist will be much better than expected? (Hey, dreams are free!)
