Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is real — and it's already shipping to the US

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Facebook photo shows unreleased RTX 3080 Ti GPUs in shipment to Los Angeles

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
(Image credit: Nvidia)

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti doesn’t officially exist yet, but it looks like that’s going to change very soon indeed, if a photo snapped by Facebook user Lok LOK is legitimate.

The picture, embedded below, shows a palette of MSI GPUs being shipped to Los Angeles, and one of the boxes has a particularly enticing label: “GEFORCE RTX 3080 TI VENTUS 3X 12GB OC.”

A shipment of RTX 3080 Ti cards

(Image credit: Lok LOK/Facebook)

Other pictures show a stash of GeForce RTX 3090 stock in the shipment, as well as Radeon RX 580 Armor 8G OC and GT 710 2GD3 LP GPUs. The latter two are considerably less powerful than the super-popular RTX 30 GPUs, but with all graphics cards in short supply and going for such inflated prices, any kind of extra inventory is welcome. 

If the image is all that it seems, and not some kind of elaborate prank, then it all but confirms the recent reports that Nvidia has reduced the power of the RTX 3080 Ti. The card was originally said to have 20GB RAM, but both the EEC filing for Gigabyte’s version of the card and now this MSI shipment clearly say it’ll have ‘just’ the 12GB.

To be clear, that won’t make the card a slouch in any sense. The latest rumors point to a card with 10,240 CUDA cores, 80 RT cores and 320 Tensor cores. The 12GB memory, even if it is less than originally hoped for, will likely be GDDR6X clocked at 19 Gbps. In short, it should offer pretty incredible performance, somewhere between the $499 base RTX 3080 and $1,499 RTX 3090. Rumor has it that the RTX 3080 Ti will launch at around $999 in order to compete with AMD’s Radeon 6900XT.

Of course the above RRPs are all somewhat wishful thinking at this point. Demand is such that cards are selling out almost as soon as they are available, and the second-hand market is awash with GPUs selling for vastly inflated prices. Even last-generation RTX 20 cards are going for alarmingly high prices, in part due to their appeal to cryptocurrency miners.

While Nvidia has admitted that supply problems are likely to continue for the foreseeable future, it’s rumored that the company will at least be taking steps to make the RTX 3080 Ti less appealing to cryptominers by introducing a hash rate limiter as found on the recent RTX 3060. Assuming it can’t be sidestepped — and the 3060’s could — that will be a welcome move for those looking to use their graphics cards for their intended gaming purpose.

While not officially announced, previous rumors have pointed to a May launch for the RTX 3080 Ti. If the cards are part of a shipment already bound for LA, that prediction just became a lot more likely.

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Alan Martin
Alan Martin

Freelance contributor Alan has been writing about tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the web and in the occasional magazine too. When not weighing up the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you'll probably find him tackling his ever-growing games backlog. He also handles all the Wordle coverage on Tom's Guide and has been playing the addictive NYT game for the last several years in an effort to keep his streak forever intact.