Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 could arrive in September with surprise new model

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By Roland Moore-Colyer
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Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 could arrive in September ready for killer gaming PCs

GeForce RTX 3080
(Image credit: dertpert88 via Reddit)

Rumors around the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 keep coming, with the latest one fueling previous leaks that the next-generation graphics card will launch this September. And it might not be the only GPU Nvidia is gearing up to release.

This rumor comes courtesy of Igor’s Lab and is apparently based on a release timetable reportedly supplied by reliable sources. Apparently, Nvidia will begin mass-producing its new RTX graphics cards in August, and have them ready for a reveal the month after. 

A September release would put the next-generation GeForce cards just over two years since the current generation Turing graphics cards came out. The Ampere architecture was revealed in May for business-grade graphics use, so it would make sense for the consumer-grade graphics cards to arrive a little later either in the summer or September. This would track with how Nivida tackled its Turing architecture in 2018. 

Igor’s Lab also reinforces the rumor that a more powerful GTX 3090 will be launched at the same time as the RTX 3080. We are still a little skeptical that a GTX 3090 will actually launch at the same time, as Nvidia tends to launch a trio of high-end but still reasonably mainstream graphics cards, with the top-end card usually labelled with a ‘Ti’ suffix. The company's even more powerful graphics cards tend to be revealed a little bit later. 

But then again, Nivida could be planing to creating a new higher-end tier to its GeForce range, aimed at giving PC gamers with deep pockets a top-of-the-line GPU to put into their powerful gaming rigs. Alternatively, an RTX 3090 could simply be used to replace the top-end Ti graphics cards instead. 

A recent rumor suggests that the RTX 3080 and its alleged RTX 3090 stablemate will have a dual-sided PCB with a dedicated co-processor for powering ray-tracing graphics. 

Ray-tracing support is coming to the console world soon with the PS5 and Xbox Series X. So having more powerful PC hardware will further push the envelope for ray-tracing rendering, which seems to be shaping up to be the future of game graphics. 

Roland Moore-Colyer
Roland Moore-Colyer

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.