Just last week, we saw alleged benchmarks of the upcoming RTX 3080 Ti with 20GB of VRAM. The fact this was claimed to be an engineering sample rather than an actual consumer card being tested makes more sense, now that it’s rumoured the 3080 Ti will instead be released with just 12GB of VRAM, according to Twitter leaker Kopite7kimi (via Videocardz).
This configuration is a better fit when put in line with the other graphics cards in Nvidia’s RTX 3000 range, especially if it’s targeting gamers rather than productivity. With the RTX 3080 and 3090 having 10GB and 24GB of VRAM respectively, the 3080 Ti sits somewhere in the middle with 12GB. Although this is a big drop, Koptime7kimi claims the card will have 10,240 CUDA cores, which is 17% more than found in the non-Ti 3080, but it comes very close to Nvidia’s best graphics card, the 3090 with 10,496 CUDA cores.
With just a 2.5% difference in CUDA cores between the 3080 Ti and 3090, we could see pretty similar performance between the two in games, especially when most aren’t taking anywhere near full advantage of the 24GB on offer from the 3090. The previously rumoured $1,250 price tag slots in nicely, considering the 3090-rivalling performance potentially on offer.
If this is the price, you’d essentially have the choice to pay an extra $250 for a 3090 to double your VRAM and gain a few more CUDA cores. Although, with the current stock issues, we’ll have to see whether this card will actually be available at prices close to its announced MSRP, whatever that may be.
Things have changed.
Maybe the current spec is 10240FP32, 12G GD6X. 😃— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) February 6, 2021
Videocardz also claims that the 3080 Ti will release in April, but we’ll have to wait for an official reveal from Nvidia before anything’s confirmed. If these rumours prove anything, it’s that nothing’s set in stone while still in development.