NVIDIA Hints At RTX 3080 Graphics Card With 20GB Memory

NVIDIA published a white paper in which every card mentioned was written without any memory details but the RTX 3080 was written specifically with the 10 gigabyte (GB) suffix. Indicating there are more variants planned and NVIDIA wanted the whitepaper to be futureproofed for any discrepancies or confusion with the 20 GB variant. The RTX 3080 10 GB is an amazing card but it has one major caveat, it only has 10 GB of video random-access memory (vRAM).

With titles like MSFS 2020 already out and requiring at least 16 GB of vRAM to run comfortably, the low amount of memory on the 3080 will bottleneck it in future titles. NVIDIA would release a 20 GB variant as well. An RTX 3080 with 20 GB of vRAM would be the perfect graphics card for the next generation of titles. Combined with RTX IO would allow asset streaming huge quantities of data and 20 GB of RAM would be sufficient for demanding killer titles like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

NVIDIA should be announcing the 3080 20 GB card within a few weeks of October 28th 2020. The crown jewel of NVIDIA’s lineup is the PG132-10 board with 24 GB of vRAM. This is the card known as the RTX 3090. The RTX 3090 is going to be replacing the RTX 2080 Ti and is currently scheduled to be available in the second half of September 2020. The RTX 3080 20 GB with PG132-20 board is going to be available late October 2020 while the RTX 3080 10 GB with PG132-30 board is going to be available in mid September 2020.

Since AMD’s Big Navi will probably have 16 GB worth of vRAM, it also explains why NVIDIA wants to go with 20 GB.

The PG142-0 and PG142-10 are both going to be replacing the RTX 2070 SUPER and will feature 16 GB and 8 GB worth of vRAM respectively. While the PG142-10 board has a known launch schedule in the second half of September 2020, the PG142-0 board has no confirmed launch date yet. The PG190-10 board which is going to be replacing the RTX 2060 SUPER graphics card and will have 8 GB of vRAM as well.

The launch schedule for the PG190-10 board has not been decided yet either. October 2020 is shaping up to be an amazing month with NVIDIA’s new RTX 3080 cards becoming available and AMD finally pushing out Big Navi in the following few weeks as well. The pressure is going to be on for AMD. In August 2020, additional specifications of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ampere Graphics Card have leaked out over at UserBenchmark.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ampere Graphics Card will be one of the several high-end enthusiast gaming options that will be showcased on September 1st 2020. According to the leak, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ampere Graphics Card is still being evaluated internally as the entry on UserBenchmark is from August 15th 2020. The listing shows the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ampere Graphics Card with a device ID of ’10DE 2206′.

In addition to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ampere Graphics Card specifications, its PCI ID 2206 has been unveiled too.

There are at least three PCI IDs for three different cards. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ampere Graphics Card was spotted with 10 GB of vRAM which was running 19 gigabits per second (Gbps). This should deliver a memory bandwidth of 760 Gbps. This is almost a 53% jump in the memory bandwidth over the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER which was already very impressive.

As for the graphics processing unit (GPU) clocks, the card has a basic input output system (BIOS) limit set to 2.1 megahertz (MHz). So clock speeds should be similar to the Turing GPUs which also peak around 2.1 GHz. The average clock speeds of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards, especially the GA102 GPU core are likely to be rated at around 1.7-1.8 GHz.

These will be the actual boost clocks for the cards while we can expect the standard operating range near 1.9 GHz. Custom cards will allow for higher clock speeds due to better power delivery and we can expect speeds to close in on the 2.1 GHz limit. What is interesting is that the graphics card was running on an unreleased 455.90 driver. The GPU performance is not that great within the benchmark but it is likely that this is still an early design candidate for the GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card.

There have been reports that the GeForce RTX 3080 will feature 20 GB of GDDR6X memory instead of 10 GB which was previously rumored.

Moving on to the GeForce RTX 3080, the rumor reports that the card will be featuring the GA102-200-KD-A1 SKU. This cut down SKU will feature the same 4352 CUDA cores as the RTX 2080 Ti. The card is reportedly going to feature up to 20 GB of memory that is also going to be GDDR6X. Assuming the memory is running at 19 Gbps across a 320-bit bus interface, we can expect a bandwidth of up to 760 Gbps.

The switch to GA102 from TU104 on the RTX 2080 is definitely an interesting one. A high-end SKU would also result in higher wattage and thermals. But this could be done to raise the bar up on the sub $500 segment which should comprise of GA104 based RTX 3070 and RTX 3060. The latest performance leaks also show a considerable performance improvement over the RTX 2080 and even the RTX 2080 Ti in synthetic benchmarks.

If the same could translate over to the gaming performance, then Ampere does look like a super enticing product for gamers who have waited for almost 2 years now. The GeForce RTX 30 Ampere Gaming graphics card lineup is expected to be announced on September 1st 2020, at a digital event hosted by CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang. We expect at the very least, three new graphics cards during the event which include the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, GeForce RTX 3080, and a next-generation Titan.