Published , by Chris Jarrard
Published , by Chris Jarrard
Do you guys remember earlier this week when it was reported that NVIDIA’s Turing-based GTX 2080 was upon us? That was a much simpler time when we all thought that we would be getting that standard NVIDIA GPU launch. After a series of leaks this morning, it appears that we had no idea of the monster that was coming our way and PC gamers who have been clamoring for more power to run their 4K or high-refresh rate displays will have reason to be excited. Product mockups from both MSI and Palit now confirm the existence of both the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 and the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.
First off, it would seem that NVIDIA is dropping its long-running GTX branding in favor of the new RTX moniker. The RTX designation was first seen on Monday when NVIDIA unveiled its new Quadro RTX lineup at SIGGRAPH. A big focus of the company’s presentation was its new ray tracing acceleration technology. It appears that this advancement will be making its way to the consumer gaming GPU lineup as well.
Obviously, the eye-catching news from this morning’s leak is the existence of the RTX 2080 Ti. The folks over at VideoCardz were able to secure photos of upcoming boards from both MSI and Palit. Both Gaming Trio and Duke variants of the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti are on display, as well as confirmation of the VRAM configuration on the cards. The regular RTX 2080 will be getting 8GB of GDDR6 memory while the RTX 2080 Ti will be sporting 11GB of GDDR6. The previous generation Pascal-based NVIDIA GPUs made use of the slower GDDR5X memory, so expect these new Turing-based cards to have increased memory bandwidth (and all the extra speed that comes with it).
It is unusual for NVIDIA to lead off a new consumer gaming GPU generation with a Ti variant. Historically, the company has always launched new cards based on a slightly cut-down version of their new chip and then followed that release with a Titan model or Ti variant as many as ten months later. The GTX 1080 Ti launched ten months after the GTX 1080 was revealed back in the summer of 2016. The regular GTX 1080 used the Pascal-based GP104 GPU, while the GTX 1080 Ti made use of the bigger GP102 chip. It is not currently known what chips will be used in these new RTX parts, but we should know more on Monday when NVIDIA is expected to give up the goods during Gamescom.
Additionally, VideoCardz made an additional post with some leaked specs on the new RTX 2080 Ti. The GPU will offer 4352 CUDA cores and 616 GB/s of memory bandwidth. For the sake of comparison, the GTX 1080 Ti (currently the world's fastest consumer gaming GPU) has only 3584 CUDA cores and 484 GB/s of memory bandwidth. It is probably not out of line to assume that this card could be a monster. These new leaks also suggest that pre-orders for the new RTX graphics cards could open as soon as Monday. If you are anxious to get your hands on one of the shiny new RTX cards, you might want to begin polishing up your credit card now.