It is a little over a week until Nvidia's #UltimateCountdown concludes. The initial salvo of GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards (RTX 3090 and 3080?) are expected to be the stars of the show at the special event on 1st Sept, starting at 9am PT (5pm BST). As predicted, leaks about these exciting new products are piling up and there have been two major spills over the weekend.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 pictured
On Friday evening a cloud security researcher by the name of @GarnetSunset published a couple of photos of a purported Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 which was sat on his desk next to an RTX 2080 Founders Edition graphics card, for scale. The Tweeted images showed the comparison face-up and face down.
A lot of replies seemed to be about the poster having manipulated the images to make the RTX 3090 look bigger than it really is. However, this accusation is staunchly denied, with the OP puzzled about why people think he would do such a thing. In one notable reply @GarnetSunset asked a fellow Twitterer what he would gain by making a GPU look approx 4 per cent larger than it is.
So, what can we see here? The GeForce RTX 3090, the Titan of the Ampere generation, uses the cooling shroud we first saw back in early June. It is a triple slot cooler, and the source asserts it is 310mm long.
The source also provided some pricing for the whole upcoming range, as follows:
- RTX 3060 $400
- RTX 3070 $600
- RTX 3080 $800
- RTX 3090 $1,400
Size doesn't look manipulated, just some type of lens/view/perspective distortion is at play
We don't have much in the way of specs for the upcoming Ampere GeForce cards but 10 days ago we reported upon the Micron PDF that shared the RTX 3090's memory configuration. A week ago we followed up with some RTX 2080 benchmark details.
Ampere GeForce new power connector
There have been some rumours about the next GeForce generation using a new power connector. At the weekend it was revealed that PSU maker Seasonic has produced an adapter so its customers could convert 2x 8-pin Molex connectors the Nvidia 12-Pin PCIe connector as used by upcoming Founders Edition graphics cards.
HardwareLuxx editor Andreas Schilling described the new connector in the above link, took some pictures of the new connector next to familiar reference points, and published them to his Twitter account. Above you can see the connector next to the more familiar 2x 8-pin config. The new 12 pin connector is about the same width as one 8-pin Molex connector.