Nvidia rumored to prepare for Big Navi battle with rumored RTX 3060 and 3070 ‘Super’ GPUs

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia may just have showcased its RTX 3000 GPUs last week, but it's reportedly already planning faster variants of its Ampere graphics cards to counter the threat of AMD Big Navi.  

This latest rumor comes via Twitter leaker Kopite7kimi, who has spilled some details about the high-powered variant of the GeForce RTX 3060, as well souped-up versions of the GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3080.

The GeForce RTX 3060 is expected to show up in November, and if Kopite7kimi’s information is to be believed, there will be two variants: one based on the GA106 GPU, and a higher-spec variant based on the GA104 GPU.

The latter, which will likely adopt either ’Ti’ or ‘Super’ branding, is said to feature 4,864 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR6 memory - the same as the GeForce RTX 2060 Super

Super charged

The RTX 3060 won't be the only Ampere GPU to get a faster sibling, as the leaker also suggests that Nvidia is planning variants of the GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 with double the memory. 

Although the GeForce RTX 3070 is yet to be made official, its souped-up variant will reportedly ship with double the memory of the standard version (16GB vs 8GB) and will feature a price-tag similar to that of the standard RTX 3080 ($699). 

The GeForce RTX 3080 model will double the standard 10GB of memory to 20GB, according to the leak, and will likely fetch between $799 and $899. 

While there’s talk that Nvidia is planning to launch new RTX 3000 series cards later this year, its launch plans for these faster variants are currently unclear.  Koppite7kimi says the RTX 3080 20GB could arrive as soon as October, but Wccftech suggests that the company will wait until AMD’s Big Navi launch, to see whether the firm leverages higher VRAM capacity as one of the big selling points of its next-generation GPUs. 

AMD is expected to showcase its first RDNA 2 graphics cards later this month, with a release to follow in November. 

Carly Page

Carly Page is a Freelance journalist, copywriter and editor specialising in Consumer/B2B technology. She has written for a range of titles including Computer Shopper, Expert Reviews, IT Pro, the Metro, PC Pro, TechRadar and Tes. 

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