New Filing Hints at a Memory Upgrade for RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 Ti

A new Gigabyte submission (via momomo_us) to the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) indicates that Nvidia will be endowing the GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti with more memory. The usual word of caution applies since not everything submitted to the EEC makes it to the market, but we've seen many rumors of higher VRAM editions already, and it makes plenty of sense.

The GeForce RTX 2060 12GB, which was rumored for some time, officially debuted today. Gigabyte's latest filing hints at imminent memory upgrades for two of the best graphics cards on the market. While the GeForce RTX 2060 12GB seems to target cryptocurrency miners, the revamped GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti should be for gamers, assuming that miners don't get their hands on the fabled graphics card first.

The GeForce RTX 3080's 10GB of GDDR6X has often been the subject of discussion among enthusiasts and hardcore gamers. For a graphics card that retails for $699 and is aimed at 4K gaming, 10GB of onboard memory doesn't seem like a bargain these days. AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT, which competes with the GeForce RTX 3080, has a lower MSRP ($649) and more memory (16GB). Having more memory is a plus since it allows you to step up to higher resolutions or access high-resolution textures.

Assuming Gigabyte isn't pulling our leg with this filing, the renovated GeForce RTX 3080 may get the bump to 12GB of VRAM. It's not a huge uplift, but it's an upgrade nevertheless. There's still a question of whether that's GDDR6 or GDDR6X memory, however. With a wider 384-bit interface, 16Gbps GDDR6 would provide 768GBps of bandwidth, just a touch more than the current 320-bit interface with 19Gbps GDDR6X yields, and the card would have 20% more capacity.

With the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, Nvidia opted for GDDR6X memory at 19 Gbps, which is a substantial upgrade over the GeForce RTX 3070's GDDR6 chips at 14 Gbps. While this helped boost the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti's overal memory bandwidth, Nvidia stayed with the 8GB capacity, which has been a concern for long-term usage. Many modern titles already push the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti's prowess at the higher resolutions, especially if you enable ray tracing.

Again, the Gigabyte submission indicates that a new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti will sport up to twice as much memory as the original. Here we would assume the card will stick with GDDR6X, but Nvidia is often willing to tweak specifications to get the needed supply of parts, so that may or may not hold true. Double the memory with slightly less bandwidth might still end up being a net win in some minds.

In other news, there was also mention of the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT, the rumored upcoming Navi 24-based graphics card that could debut in January 2022. The chipmaker hasn't used the Navi 24 die in any product yet so the Radeon RX 6500 XT would be the first RDNA 2 graphics card to do so. It's reportedly an entry-level graphics card, so the specifications won't set any performance records. We're looking at maybe 1,024 stream processors and 4GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit interface. Gigabyte's part numbers confirm the latter.

Similar to what the GeForce RTX 2060 12GB represents, the GeForce RTX 3080 12GB and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16GB will be premium versions of the GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, respectively. We expect higher pricing as well, though with current GPU prices already paying no heed to MSRPs, how high they'll go remains to be seen.