Nvidia RTX 3080 specs just leaked ahead of next week’s launch

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Here's the latest on the three high-end RTX graphics chips expected to debut on Sept. 1

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
(Image credit: creper9000 at Reddit)

Nvidia's trio of high-end RTX GPUs are on the way, and we may just have gotten our first reliable peek at the GeForce RTX 30 series' (also known as Ampere) upcoming specs.

If new information by way of Videocardz in advance of Nvidia’s Sept. 1 event is to be believed, the new cards will debut with both second-generation raytracing cores and third-generation Tensor cores. 

Videocardz' report claims that Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090, GeForce RTX 3080, and GeForce RTX 3070 will officially be announced at that Nvidia event next Tuesday. Out of the trio, the RTX 3080 and 3090 will hit retail shelves first in the middle of September, according to the publication’s sources

Among some of the information in this treasure trove of rumors are juicy new specs: the GeForce RTX 3080 is estimated to arrive with 4,352 CUDA cores and 10GB of GDDR6X memory, while the 3090 looks like it will offer GA102-300 silicon for a whopping 5,248 cores and 24GB of GDDR6X memory with a 384-bit memory interface.

It should be noted, however that while custom models will require two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, the Founders Editions will only need one 12-pin PCIe connector instead. You'll be paying extra for this convenience, of course. 

There isn't any information on the RTX 3070's CUDA cores just yet, but it will allegedly come packing 8GB of GDDR6X memory. That card could debut by the end of next month, so we may have to wait a bit longer than the other two cards to glean any additional specifics from it. As far as memory chip speed, Videocardz estimates the RTX 3070 could potentially come clocked at 16 Gbps. 

There's more to the story, however: Ampere series' A100 utilized TSMC's 7nm FinFET process node, and Videocardz claims that the same 7-nanometer node will be implemented in consumer graphics cards in the near future. Unfortunately, there's been no independent confirmation of these claims just yet. If this is the case, though, the consumer-grade Ampere will likely debut with the peppy PCIe 4.0 interface as well as native support for HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a outputs. 

Recent regulatory filings out of South Korea suggested that there could be an imminent launch for the new Nvidia release, and that was potentially slated for September 1. Until now, there have been very few details about the new enthusiast-grade GPUs, so these new specs are certainly something new to analyze. We're still very much in the dark about the naming scheme, whether the RTX series will have the capability to deliver raytracing at UHD without sacrificing frame rate, and plenty of other details.

Nvidia’s Sept. 1 event kicks off at noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT. We’ll be covering the news in full detail, so stay tuned for the latest on Nvidia’s upcoming graphic chips.

Brittany Vincent
Brittany Vincent

Brittany Vincent has been covering video games and tech for over 13 years for publications including Tom's Guide, MTV, Rolling Stone, CNN, Popular Science, Playboy, IGN, GamesRadar, Polygon, Kotaku, Maxim, and more. She's also appeared as a panelist at video game conventions like PAX East and PAX West and has coordinated social media for companies like CNET. When she's not writing or gaming, she's looking for the next great visual novel in the vein of Saya no Uta. You can follow her on Twitter @MolotovCupcake.