Now that AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT is out, things are getting heated up in the high-end graphics card space. Nvidia may be rushing to release the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti to counterattack the Radeon RX 6900 XT. A new PCI ID has emerged via pci-ids.ucw.cz of an HP OEM 452.56 graphics driver that lends credence to the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti's rumored launch next month. As this is a rumor, a degree of healthy scepticism and a large pinch of salt are required.
The current consensus is that the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti could potentially be a lesser version of the flagship GeForce RTX 3090 part. The most important specifications, such as the 10,496 CUDA cores, 328 Tensor cores and 82 RT cores are rumored to remain intact with the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. The only differentiation between the GeForce RTX 3090 and the RTX 3080 Ti comes down to the latter arriving with less memory but an identical TDP to the GeForce RTX 3080.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Specifications
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Header Cell - Column 0
GeForce RTX 3090
Radeon RX 6900 XT
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti*
GeForce RTX 3080
GeForce RTX 3070
Architecture (GPU)
Ampere (GA102)
RDNA 2 (Navi 21)
Ampere (GA102)
Ampere (GA102)
Ampere (GA104)
CUDA Cores / SP
10,496
5,120
10,496
8,704
5,888
RT Cores
82
80
82
68
46
Tensor Cores
328
N/A
328
272
184
Texture Units
328
320
328
272
184
Base Clock Rate
1,400 MHz
1,825 MHz
?
1,440 MHz
1,500 MHz
Boost Clock Rate
1,700 MHz
2,250 MHz
?
1,710 MHz
1,730 MHz
Memory Capacity
24GB GDDR6X
16GB GDDR6
20GB GDDR6X
10GB GDDR6X
8GB GDDR6
Memory Speed
19.5 Gbps
16 Gbps
19.5 Gbps
19 Gbps
14 Gbps
Memory Bus
384-bit
256-bit
320-bit
320-bit
256-bit
Memory Bandwidth
936 GBps
512 GBps
780 GBps
760 GBps
448 GBps
ROPs
112
128
112
96
96
L2 Cache
6MB
4MB
5MB
5MB
4MB
L3 Cache
N/A
128MB
N/A
N/A
N/A
TDP
350W
300W
320W
320W
220W
Transistor Count
28.3 billion
26.8 billion
28.3 billion
28.3 billion
17.4 billion
Die Size
628 mm²
536 mm²
628 mm²
628 mm²
392 mm²
MSRP
$1,499
$999
$999
$699
$499
*Specifications are unconfirmed.
On the memory front, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti seemingly features 20GB of GDDR6X memory that runs at 19.5 Gbps across a 320-bit memory interface. That means that graphics card could offer a maximum memory bandwidth up to 780 GBps, just 2.6% more than the GeForce RTX 3080. The GeForce RTX 3090 still delivers up to 20% higher bandwidth though.
If you look at it closely, the performance difference between the GeForce RTX 3090 and the RTX 3080 Ti should be minimum in workloads where the amount of memory and memory bandwidth aren't important factors. The price tag, however, is as different as chalk and cheese.
The Radeon RX 6900 XT sports a $999 price tag, and it's still a big price to pay for a graphics card. However, the Navi-powered graphics card looks attractive beside the GeForce RTX 3090, which sells for $1,499. If the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti were to debut at $999, it would definitely give the Radeon RX 6900 XT a run for its money.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
Will they include the NVlink connector or will they reserve that as a 3090 exclusive? That's the real question. 40GB would make for a great pair of GPUs.
