A photo of an alleged NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 surfaced on the web recently. The news spread like wildfire and was published in various outlets in just a few minutes. The photo came from ChipHell’s forum and the cards looks like they are engineering samples. There are several very interesting features of the RTX 3080 graphics card revealed by the leaked photo. Let’s take a look at them one by one.
UPDATE: GeForce RTX 3080 Graphics Cards available on Newegg.com here, B&H Photo here
Alleged NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Smiles To The Camera For The First Time
You can see two RTX 3080 from the photo above. They primarily have a black color with silver accent and the blue stuff you see is just a protective cover. Just like the RTX 20 series, the RTX 30 series features a dual fan design, but with a twist.
The front portion of the cooler shroud has one fan, near the output ports. And there is another fan on the back side, rear-end, of the graphics card. For the past generations, usually the fans are only on one side, at the front portion; and at back is usually bare PCB or a backplate.
You can also see that the fans are someone unique; the fan blades are attached to an “outer ring”. This reminds of Asus’ axial-tech fans. Based on the photo, it looks like both fans are intake; sucking in air and directing them towards the center of the graphics card. The heat will be exhausted at the center of the card. That’s probably why the design has a “>” and “<” indicating the flow of the air.
Or, I could be wrong and the (bottom) front fan is an intake fan; while the (top) back fan is an exhaust fan. I noticed that the shape of the fan blades is not the same with the shape of the fan blades on the other side. Perhaps the second fan is rotating at the opposite direction. I’m just guessing here, but I am more curious to find out how well this new cooling solution and design will work, when the RTX 3080 is released.
Another interesting thing about the design of the GeForce RTX 3080 is that the PCB has a “V” or “<” shape end. Perhaps the cooling system has something to do with the odd shape of the PCB. But I am curious to find out if board partners will also follow the same PCB layout and design.
The PCIe power connector doesn’t seem to be on its usual place, this could mean that they put it at the rear portion of the card and it looks like the SLI / NVLink connector is somewhat different as well. But it is hard to tell just by looking at the photo. I am also guessing that the “RTX 3080” logo on the back will lit up, more or less with green glow.
At the end of the day, I don’t think that that is going to be the final look of the RTX 3080. I mean, it just pales in comparison with the RTX 2080 Super/Ti Founders Edition’s design. If that is the real deal, the cooling design and other elements is as is, but I’m guessing that NVIDIA will make it more aesthetically pleasing.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Specs (Rumored)
The upcoming NVIDIA RTX 3080 is rumored to feature a GA103 GPU chip based on a 7nm fabrication process. It is rumored to have 3840 CUDA cores, 60 SMs, 10GB GDDR6 and 320-bit memory interface. It is said to be around 10% faster than the current RTX 2080 Ti. In contrast, the RTX 2080 Super features 3072 CUDA cores while the RTX 2080 Ti has 4352 CUDA cores.
Additionally, the GA102, rumored to be the RTX 3080 Ti will have 5376 CUDA cores, 84 SMs, 12GB GDDR6 on a 384-bit memory interface. It is also rumored to be around 40% faster than the current RTX 2080 Ti. Finally, the GA104, which is probably going to be the RTX 3070 has 3072 CUDA cores, 48 SMs, 8GB GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit memory interface, and it said to be just a bit slower than the RTX 2080 Ti.
NVIDIA RTX 3080 Released Date (Rumored)
We don’t know the exact release date of these new RTX 3080 (Ti) / RTX 3070 graphics cards yet. But since AMD may announce their Big NAVI GPU this September, perhaps we may hear about the new RTX 30 series cards around that time as well. However, knowing NVIDIA, they may announce their RTX 30 series cards ahead of the competition. This is going to be very interesting, so let’s just wait and see.
