Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU Die and Mining Performance Exposed in New Leak

GA102-225-A1
GA102-225-A1 (Image credit: VideoCardz)

VideoCardz has shared a photograph of what appears to be Nvidia's GA102-225-A1 die, which is reportedly going into the forthcoming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card. To put the icing on the cake, the publication also released a screenshot of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti's mining performance in Ethereum.

Given the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti's position in Nvidia's Ampere product stack, it shouldn't come as a surpise that it would leverage the GA102 silicon, the same one that powers the GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080. However, there's a twist. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti would reportedly employ the GA102-225-A1 die that features Nvidia's Ethereum mining limiter. This falls in line with the ongoing rumor that Nvidia is giving its Ampere silicon an overhaul to cripple mining performance.

As far as specifications go, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is still rumored to feature 80 Streaming Multiprocessors (SM), amounting to 10,240 CUDA cores, 320 Tensor cores and 80 RT cores. Today's leak also exposes the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti's clock speeds, which seems to have a 1,365 MHz base clock and 1,665 MHz boost clock.

On the memory side, the graphics card is expected to run with 12GB of GDDR6X memory at 19 Gbps. If that's the case, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti will likely utilize a 384-bit memory interface and can pump out a memory bandwidth up to 912.4 GBps.

GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Mining Ethereum (Image credit: VideoCardz)

If the mining limiter didn't exist, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti would deliver an Ethereum hash rate up to 118.9 MH/s, and would ultimately be one of the best mining GPUs on the market. For comparison, the GeForce RTX 3080 offers around 95 MH/s, while the GeForce RTX 3090 has the potential to offer a hash rate between 120 to 125 MH/s. 

The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti's Ethereum performance aligns with what we expected. Of course, there were a few optimizations behind the scenes. For example, the user had reduced the graphics card's TDP to 278W and overclocked the memory from the rumored 19 Gbps to 21.4 Gbps.

However, consumers shouldn't have to worried about cryptocurrency miners when the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti launches. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti pictured may be a qualification sample (QS) that dates prior to the introduction of the anti-mining limiter. This is evident as the driver itself didn't recognize the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or it would have sliced the mining performance in half easily.

While the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti shouldn't be on miners' radars, consumers will still have to fend off scalpers. It's feasible that Nvidia will unleash the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti in May as shipments are allegedly on the way to U.S. retailers. Previously, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti was rumored to retail for $999, however, a new leak suggests a MSRP of $1,099.

Zhiye Liu
RAM Reviewer and News Editor

Zhiye Liu is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • bigdragon
    I remember a time when game benchmarks were the priority for unreleased GPUs. What a sad state of the market that mining performance is the priority and not a single game is checked.

    Good job, Nvidia, Asus, MSI, Zotac, EVGA, PNY, Gigabyte, AMD, Sapphire, Asrock, and friends -- a slow clap for you all.
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    bigdragon said:
    I remember a time when game benchmarks were the priority for unreleased GPUs. What a sad state of the market that mining performance is the priority and not a single game is checked.

    Good job, Nvidia, Asus, MSI, Zotac, EVGA, PNY, Gigabyte, AMD, Sapphire, Asrock, and friends -- a slow clap for you all.
    If the person who got a hold of the sample was a miner, then that's all they'll care about.

    The story would be different if a gamer got their hands on it.
    Reply
  • Krotow
    bigdragon said:
    I remember a time when game benchmarks were the priority for unreleased GPUs. What a sad state of the market that mining performance is the priority and not a single game is checked.

    Good job, Nvidia, Asus, MSI, Zotac, EVGA, PNY, Gigabyte, AMD, Sapphire, Asrock, and friends -- a slow clap for you all.

    I even don't care about GPU performance news anymore. While all new batches goes directly to mining farms and remaining scraps are sold for triple prices, they are not interesting for me.

    Well, a time of for software driven graphics renaissance is coming. I hope it will cause some good adventure games in future.
    Reply
  • JamesJones44
    I still think miners will find a way around this, but hopefully it will take a while so we get some GPUs on the market that aren't 3x the MSRP because every miner on the planet is buying them in bulk.
    Reply
  • peachpuff
    hotaru.hino said:
    The story would be different if a gamer got their hands on it.
    It seems miners are outsmarting gamers since they're the ones getting all of these gpu's :LOL:
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    JamesJones44 said:
    I still think miners will find a way around this
    Well, this early model found itself in the wild and was made to work. Depending on how badly Nvidia has half-assed the mining throttling, it could be as simple as flashing GPUs with the leak card's firmware and drivers patched to work with it. I doubt Nvidia is putting much actual effort in preventing mining, otherwise it would be working on effective detection algorithms for the top-10 coins instead of only the #1 alt-coin.
    Reply
  • escksu
    bigdragon said:
    I remember a time when game benchmarks were the priority for unreleased GPUs. What a sad state of the market that mining performance is the priority and not a single game is checked.

    Good job, Nvidia, Asus, MSI, Zotac, EVGA, PNY, Gigabyte, AMD, Sapphire, Asrock, and friends -- a slow clap for you all.

    You dont need gaming benchmarks to know its perofrmance... it will be just slightly slower than 3090.. very small difference...
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    InvalidError said:
    Well, this early model found itself in the wild and was made to work. Depending on how badly Nvidia has half-assed the mining throttling, it could be as simple as flashing GPUs with the leak card's firmware and drivers patched to work with it. I doubt Nvidia is putting much actual effort in preventing mining, otherwise it would be working on effective detection algorithms for the top-10 coins instead of only the #1 alt-coin.
    Getting an effective mining limiter on their gaming cards could make Nvidia millions, so I bet they very much care to get this working properly. We already know about the $30 million contract Nvidia signed with Hut 8. Does Nvidia want to continue selling gaming GPU's at contract prices to AIB's and watch them rake in the profits selling to miners at inflated prices, or do they want to cripple the mining performance of gaming cards sold to AIB's and negotiate more multi million dollar contracts for themselves selling mining cards at inflated prices with the bonus of cutting out many of the middle men?
    Reply
  • allac666
    spongiemaster said:
    Getting an effective mining limiter on their gaming cards could make Nvidia millions, so I bet they very much care to get this working properly. We already know about the $30 million contract Nvidia signed with Hut 8. Does Nvidia want to continue selling gaming GPU's at contract prices to AIB's and watch them rake in the profits selling to miners at inflated prices, or do they want to cripple the mining performance of gaming cards sold to AIB's and negotiate more multi million dollar contracts for themselves selling mining cards at inflated prices with the bonus of cutting out many of the middle men?
    The problem is not lack of buyers, it's lack of supply - Nvidia can easily sell I every chip they make 5 times over! All they're doing atm is splitting there already meagre supply over more and more models in two distinct product lines. Supply in Australia is effectively zero, and prices from legit retailers are up 40—50% from September. Nvidia will just place what they make in the lines with the best margins unt supply ramps up
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    spongiemaster said:
    Getting an effective mining limiter on their gaming cards could make Nvidia millions
    And being stuck with a huge pile of useless GPUs if the crypto market crashes again could cost them billions.
    Reply