Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti could crush AMD Big Navi with this huge upgrade

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 will be announced at the start of September. But the card to look out for could be the Ti version, as that one's rumored to have a massive 20GB of video memory.

On the Chiphell forums (via Videocardz) a hardware leaker going by the name of wjm47196 claims that the RTX 3080 Ti could have 20GB of VRAM, making it a monstrously powerful graphics card. We don’t know whether this GPU will be the GeForce RTX 3090 or the RTX 3080 Ti, but the name won’t really matter when the performance could be vast.

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Previous reports have hinted at a next-generation GeForce card, based on Nvidia’s new Ampere architecture, to have 24GB of VRAM. But that card could be a follow up to the very high-end Titan RTX GPU, which isn’t really designed for consumer use.

However, given the current top-end Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti has 11GB of VRAM, the RTX 3080 Ti or RTX 3090’s 20GB means it will likely decimate its predecessor as well as rival cards. That's unless the AMD Big Navi GPU that’s tipped to be an "Nvidia-killer" has some truly impressive performance.

AMD's high-end Radeon VII GPU has 16GB off VRAM, so it would need to build upon that if it's to challenge what's shaping up to be the best of Nvidia's next-generation GPUs. But there’s a catch, and one that AMD could exploit.

The big price problem

The current crop of GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards are far from cheap, with the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti often sitting around the $1,000 mark. There had been murmurs that Ampere will build upon the foundations set by Nvidia’s Turing architecture to deliver more performance but at a lower price; the RTX 20-series were arguably priced beyond the reach of a lot of PC gamers.

But memory prices are quite high at the moment, and the more VRAM a graphics card has the more expensive it can be — especially if it’s using the latest video memory tech. So with 20GB of VRAM we can expect the RTX 3090 or RTX 3080 Ti to be pretty expensive and aimed at hardcore PC gamers with deep pockets. If AMD Big Navi can deliver large amounts of performance but drastically undercut the next wave of high-end GeForces, it could be onto a winner.

The flipside to this could be that the likes of the GeForce RTX 3060 could be cheaper than its predecessor, the RTX 2060. Given ray-tracing is set to get a boost in adoption thanks to the PS5 and Xbox Series X, we imagine Nvidia will want PC gamers to turn to it for ray-tracing capable GPUs. And a well-priced RTX 3060 that delivers impressive performance could be just the ticket.

With mere weeks to go before Nvidia starts ushering in a new generation of graphics cards, we’ve not got long to wait to see what’s in store for the future of GeForce GPUs.

Roland Moore-Colyer a Managing Editor at Tom’s Guide with a focus on news, features and opinion articles. He often writes about gaming, phones, laptops and other bits of hardware; he’s also got an interest in cars. When not at his desk Roland can be found wandering around London, often with a look of curiosity on his face.