NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12GB cards are genuine and shipped according to leaked photos

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MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti

There is new evidence to suggest that NVIDIA is about to launch a new Ampere product, and in particular the oft-rumored GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, with more internal memory than the non-Ti variant. It comes from leaked photos showing pallets of MSI brand graphics cards being prepared for shipment from China to the United States.

This is the latest in a long series of leaks hinting at the imminent launch of a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. Another of NVIDIA’s add-inboard (AIB) partners, Gigabyte, recently listed a dozen custom GeForce RTX 3080 Ti models at the Eurasian Economic Commission, including both factory overclocked and water-cooled variants. And before that, the unannounced Ampere SKU had made cameos at various points on the ASUS and HP websites.

What’s especially interesting about the leaked GeForce RTX 3080 Ti photo you see above, posted by Lok LOK on Facebook, is that it seemingly shows that the new SKU will include 12 GB of GDDR6X memory, the same as what Gigabyte’s most recent EEC list. . That’s according to the label of this alleged shipment, which reads “GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Ventus 3X 12G OC.”

That’s not exactly a cryptic label, but lest there be any doubt, MSI offers a Ventus version of the regular GeForce RTX 3080, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ventus 3X 10G OC. Those last two sets of characters indicate the amount of memory and a factory overclock.

Of course, nothing is certain until the new SKU becomes official. It’s worth noting that previous leaks and rumors had tied the Ti model with 20 GB of memory. In an even earlier entry to the EEC, Gigabyte had registered some GeForce RTX 3080 Ti cards with model numbers suggesting 20 GB of memory, and ASUS had slipped a ROG Strix variant on one of its support pages, also at 20 GB.

Shipping label GeForce RTX 3080 Ti

What gives? It’s possible that NVIDIA was originally intended to offer a Ti model with 20 GB of memory, but has since changed plans for some reason – cost, availability, and / or not really AMD’s competitive pressure on the feel high side. Plus, it’s not like NVIDIA has trouble selling every single GPU it can get its hands on. Whatever the reason, it’s somewhat disappointing to see that the Ti model only adds 2 GB of extra memory over the non-Ti variant.

It’s the same amount (12 GB) that AMD uses on its Radeon RX 6700 XT, while all three more expensive models – Radeon RX 6800, 6800 XT and 6900 XT – all have 16 GB of memory. NVIDIA will no doubt use faster GDDR6X memory chips, but if you were hoping for 20GB, it doesn’t seem like that is going to happen.
There are no other specifications on the alleged shipping label. However, according to past rumors, the Ti model will arrive with 10,240 CUDA cores instead of 8,704 as found on the regular model, along with base and boost clocks of 1,396 MHz and 1,695 MHz, respectively. NVIDIA could also justify the release by adding more Tensor and RT cores, although we’ll have to wait and see.

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