New rumors have emerged that Nvidia is gearing up to launch its RTX 3000 series of next-gen graphics cards this September with the widely-expected GeForce RTX 3080 going on sale alongside a rather unexpected addition – the RTX 3090.
The rumors come from Igor’s Lab (and reported by Wccftech), which is based on a timetable reportedly provided by its reliable sources. According to the rumors, Nvidia will be starting mass production of the GPUs in August, with a reveal and media event (including first official benchmarks) in September 2020.
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As Wccftech points out, with this timetable, it’s likely that Nvidia could show off the GPUs a bit earlier than the media event at a public event, possibly at Gamescom 2020 – which is going digital-only this year.
Surprise RTX 3090
While we’ve been expecting the Nvidia RTX 3080 to launch around that time, one thing that stands out about this new rumor is the mention of an RTX 3090 launching at the same time.
We’ve heard a few rumors about an RTX 3090 before now, but if Nvidia actually does release a GPU by that name, it’ll still come as a bit surprise.
This is because Nvidia hasn’t released a x90 chip since the GTX 690 back in 2012. Before then, an x90 GPU was a dual-chip card – and that’s something Nvidia hasn’t made since the Titan Z in 2014.
Instead, Nvidia’s flagship consumer cards are the Ti cards, like the RTX 2080 Ti. At first we dismissed the idea of an RTX 3090, and assumed that previous rumors were either false, or they were mistakenly talking about the RTX 3080 Ti.
However, the persistence of RTX 3090 rumors is giving us second thoughts. What we don’t know is that if (and that’s a big ‘if’) the RTX 3090 exists, will it be a step above the RTX 3080 Ti, or will it simply replace it?
Also, would the RTX 3090 once again be another dual-chip GPU?
Nvidia going back to the x90 naming convention would certainly be an odd choice – and could end up confusing people.
Wccftech actually has an interesting theory about why Nvidia may be embracing the x90. With both AMD and Intel releasing ‘9’ series enthusiast products (the Ryzen 9 and Core i9 respectively), could Nvidia be aligning its products as well?
If consumers are beginning to associate products with a ‘9’ in their names with high performance, enthusiast, components, then that could be an explanation.
Either way, we shouldn’t have too long to wait to find out, if this new rumor is to be believed.
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