Nvidia Seem To Be Prepping 3080 Ti and 3070 Ti GPUs To Combat New Radeon Series

Later on today (at the time of writing this article) we are going to see AMD reveal all the details in their line up of Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs, and whilst we are excited, it seems that Nvidia isn’t letting their competition steal away their limelight without a bit of fuss.

Details have emerged that seem to point to Nvidia preparing versions of their already released 3080 and the (releasing tomorrow) 3070 that feature souped-up specifications that apparently make them worthy of the titanium – or Ti moniker. It seems that AMD’s new 6000 series might give the Ampere line up of graphics cards a stauncher fight than Nvidia were expecting.

All the details of this rumour come from @Kopite7kimi, a reliable leaker who has been laser accurate in the past with a vast majority of his tweets on unreleased GPU details, with the most recent info from him alluding to the production of the 3070 Ti and the 3080 Ti from Nvidia.

These rumours aren’t new either. There have been rumblings from the Nvidia camp for a while regarding the production of enhanced GPUs, but the real question is when the cards are going to release, and the type of hardware we can expect inside them. The why of it is plainly simple: they are designed to give consumers a more powerful option in answer to the Radeon RX 6000 series. Exciting stuff.

So, as far as hardware is concerned, the 3080 Ti is expected to feature the GA102 GPU, with a GA102-250-A1 GPU core. That’s a serial number to most people, so let’s boil that down to me saying that the 3080 Ti will feature 9984 CUDA cores – shockingly close to the 3090’s 10496 CUDA cores, which simplified, even more, translates to performance between the 3080 and the 3090 from the 3080 Ti, making it the ideal high-end PC gamer GPU, with a potential 10% faster performance than the standard 3080.  

Then, there is the 3070 Ti. This card will be working with a GA102 GPU as well, which is a big upgrade from the GA104 that the standard card uses (the fact it’s the same hardware as included in the 3080 Ti should be a clue as to how big an upgrade that is). The CUDA cores in this card will be increased as well, with 7424 in the card in total – putting the 3070 Ti CUDA count around 10 percent lower than those found in the 3080, putting the 3070 Ti much closer to Nvidia’s flagship Ampere card in technical specifications and hopefully performance.

Then there is the question of VRAM. Previously, rumours pointed to the 3070 Ti shipping with 16gb of GDDR6 Ram, but now the signs are pointing to a 320-bit bus interface – which we can translate as meaning that the 3070 Ti will be shipping with 10GB of GDDR6X VRAM. This is important, as the GDDR6X memory was one of the key features of the 3080 that separated it from the 3070 initially. If these rumours about GDDR6X VRAM are true, the 3070 Ti will be offering impressive and very near 3080 level performance for sure.  

When it comes to these two new rumoured GPUs from Nvidia, we can ascertain one thing for certain, and that’s a win for us: the consumer. That’s because Nvidia has put these cards into research and development to directly combat the threat of AMD’s 6000 series GPU lineup.

So, we have two possibilities laid out in front of us. The first is that AMD announces their graphics cards, they aren’t as powerful as Nvidia had anticipated, they have the price tags to match and we have a scalable ladder of GPUs from both Nvidia and AMD  in terms of power, all the way up to the 3090.

In this instance, Nvidia might not choose to release their Ti cards, and instead focus on the line of GPUs they have available. This is still a win for us, as there is plenty of options in the GPU market no matter your price point.

The second scenario is that AMD announces a well-balanced range of GPUs that cause Nvidia concern in terms of performance and price. In this scenario, they decide to okay the launch of Ti versions of the Ampere GPUs, and we have even more options on the market when it comes to GPUs, and competitive pricing to match.

Like I say, no matter what happens, the PC gamer crowd is going to be the real winner. Obviously, we have no idea on timescale or pricing yet, so all we can do now is sit back and wait for the reveal of the AMD 6000 series GPUs, and any subsequent Nvidia reactions.

Any questions about the Nvidia or AMD line of GPUs? Don’t keep them to yourself, put them in the comments and we will do our best to answer!