As reported, Nvidia's upcoming GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics cards will ship with a next-generation 12+4-pin PCIe 5.0 power connector also known as 12VHPWR. But future owners of the new flagship graphics card should note that these products, according to VideoCardz, will ship with a special 3x8-pin to 12VHPWR power adapter.
Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti allegedly uses a fully-fledged GA102 GPU with 10,752 CUDA cores (up from 10,496 on the RTX 3090) that is mated with 24GB of Micron's GDDR6X memory running at 21Gbps, using a 384-bit interface. With specs like these, the RTX 3090 Ti promises to top our list of the best graphics cards for gaming in the first half of 2022, but performance will come at the cost of extreme power consumption. A full-fat GA102 graphics processor working at high clocks and equipped with loads of GDDR6X memory is naturally power hungry, and we expect an even higher TDP than the 350W on the RTX 3090.
One 12VHPWR connector can deliver from 150W to 600W of power, technically more than the triple 8-pin connectors would supply at the top of that range. Either way, it's not surprising that Nvidia tapped it for its new flagship. To maintain compatibility with existing systems and power supplies, Nvidia and its partners will bundle a special 3x8-pin to 12VHPWR adapter with every GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card, reports VideoCardz, citing sources among graphics cards manufacturers.
Each eight-pin PCIe power connector can deliver up to 150W of power, so three of them feeding into a 12VHPWR connector should be enough to feed the beast. Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti will also be able to suck up to 75W from its PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, though typically the company's high-end offerings typically don't consume much power from the slot. We expect the new top-of-the-range product to follow suit, which means total TDP (actually TBP, or Total Board Power, if we're being specific) will likely land close to 450W.
It's worth noting that graphics cards with three eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors are not uncommon. Numerous factory-overclocked graphics cards designed for enthusiasts who sometimes overclock them even further come with three eight-pin power plugs. To that end, we are curious whether Nvidia's partners will release GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics cards with four eight-pin power connectors to give some additional room for overclocking, or if they'll stick with 12VHPWR — maybe with four 8-pin inputs.
Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is projected to hit the market next week, on March 29. Early price rumors convert to well over $3,000 USD, but the official MSRP will hopefully be lower than that.
