Despite radio silence from Nvidia, its upcoming high-end RTX 3080 Ti is rumoured to release next month with specs that could give it a serious chance at toppling the RTX 3080 from our best graphics card guide. Shipments of the model are reportedly already in transit to the United States, indicating that Nvidia can’t be far from officially announcing the GPU.
The latest leak from Videocardz shows a photograph of the GA102-225 GPU that purportedly sits within the upcoming RTX 3080 Ti. This is a variant of the chip used in the RTX 3090, and is said to house 10,240 CUDA cores and 12GB of video memory. Despite these similarities, ITHome suggests the model will retail for 7,999 yuan ($1,226),compared to the 3090’s $1,499 MSRP.
The report also offers a screenshot of the card in a mining application, running with base and boost clocks of 1365MHz and 1665MHz respectively, compared to the 3090’s 1410MHz and 1740MHz. While the consumer version of the RTX 3080 Ti is expected to have a revised chip that ensures only drivers with Ethereum mining nerfs are compatible, this is a sample model that is fully unlocked for mining.
The screenshot also reveals a 118.9MH/s hash rate on the unlocked 3080 Ti, which would make the card capable of mining around $380 of Ethereum a month if Nvidia wasn’t to include new limitations.
With a bit of overclocking, then, the RTX 3080 Ti could be a great gaming alternative to the RTX 3090, even if it has just half the VRAM. The RTX 3090 might carry the GeForce moniker meant for gaming, but there aren’t any games that use that amount of memory yet, anyway, placing it firmly as a productivity GPU. But let’s be honest, you might not be able to buy a graphics card until the second quarter of 2022, so it’s going to be difficult to get your hands on either.