Is a Nvidia RTX 3070 Super on the way to take down AMD Big Navi?

Nvidia RTX
(Image credit: Nvidia)

A new SKU listing by Nvidia indicates that the company is preparing a new RTX card positioned between the RTX 3070 and the RTX 3080 in anticipation of the launch of AMD's Radeon RX 6000-series next week.

According to TechPowerUp, this new card isn't the 16GB variant of the RTX 3070 - which was recently cancelled – assuming it ever existed in the first place – along with the 20GB RTX 3080, but will instead use a cut down GA102 GPU, the chip behind the RTX 3080 and 3090.  

This cut-down GA102 supposedly contains 7,424 CUDA cores on 58 streaming multiprocessors, 232 tensor cores, and 58 RT cores. The card will also use the larger 320-bit memory interface. 

It isn't known yet whether this new card will use the slower GDDR6 memory found in the RTX 3070 or the RTX 3080's GDDR6X.

While the specs indicate that the new SKU might be for a potential RTX 3070 Ti/Super, without a formal announcement from Nvidia it's impossible to know for sure. Either way, well find out more about this card if and when Nvidia deigns to reveal more information. Who knows, it might keep this graphics card up its sleeve until CES 2021, when we're expecting the RTX 3060 to appear. 

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John Loeffler
Components Editor

John (He/Him) is the Components Editor here at TechRadar and he is also a programmer, gamer, activist, and Brooklyn College alum currently living in Brooklyn, NY.

Named by the CTA as a CES 2020 Media Trailblazer for his science and technology reporting, John specializes in all areas of computer science, including industry news, hardware reviews, PC gaming, as well as general science writing and the social impact of the tech industry.

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