With the arrival of the RTX 3060 on the market and the introduction of the Radeon RX 6700 XT, the territory of the next generation mid-range is complete. Now it will be the rumored RTX 3080 Ti to attract the attention of the public . But what do we know about NVIDIA's mystery object? Target of numerous rumors that have repeatedly shuffled the cards on the table, the 3080 Ti will occupy a place among the top of its class, with only the RTX 3090 remaining superior to it.
The first numbers of the new top of the range
Like its high-end sisters, the 3080 Ti will also have an
Ampere GA102 GPU with 8 nanometer architecture and a renewed design of the
graphics cores . The card could have 10240 CUDA Cores, 80 Ray Tracing Cores and
320 Tensor Cores, placing it much closer to the 10496 CUDA Core RTX 3090 than
the 3080, which has 8704 CUDA Cores.
With its 12 GB of GDDR6 VRAM, the RTX 3060 had let us
imagine that the right cut for the new Ti would have been the 20 GB one, but
also on this card NVIDIA could opt for the magic formula of 12 GB of VRAM, this
time around. GDDR6X type, much more performing than those adopted on the
newborn 3060. The speed of the memories will be of 19 Gbps as for the RTX 3080,
on a 384 bit bus, while the operating frequencies are not known for now.
After all, the RTX 3070's outstanding performance at 1440p
resolution with just 8GB of dedicated video memory is confirmation that in this
generation the amount of video memory required is far less than one might
imagine.
On the consumption front we should not see any changes
compared to cards of the same range, with a TGP of 320 W.
NVIDIA's recipe for gamers
These specs, if confirmed, will make the 3080 Ti one of the
most powerful GPUs launched by NVIDIA in the last period, a problem given the
interest of miners in gaming video cards. Although NVIDIA has made it clear
that the block against mining will not be included in the video cards already
launched on the market, the 3080 Ti should arrive with the same algorithm as
the 3060 , which promises to halve its performance in Ethereum mining .
The 3080 is able to offer very affordable performance in
mining, managing to reach an average of about 6 euros per day using the
Ethereum blockchain. These are interesting numbers, especially at the list
price at which the 3080 is offered by NVIDIA. If the 3080 Ti had similar
potential to the 3080,the halving of the performance in mining would place it
below the 3070 and even the 3060 Ti , making it very inconvenient especially
due to the price range. In the RTX 3060 the block seems to do what it promised,
with lower mining performance even than the last generation.
But mining isn't the only thing that could ruin the launch
of the new GPU. What has contributed most to the current market situation is
the activity of scalpers , who have made it impossible to find video cards at
the price suggested by the manufacturers.. By purchasing them in large
quantities, speculators have in fact imposed much higher prices, which
inevitably also involved the second-hand market, with valuations often doubled
or tripled compared to real values.
The new 3080 Ti should arrive on the market by April, only
then will we be able to find out if the solutions adopted by NVIDIA to bring
the market back to a more normal situation will be successful.