A Twitter consumer named @hongxing2020 just lately shared photographs of a mysterious MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ventus 3X 20G OC, packing a formidable however uncommon reminiscence capability of 20GB. The consumer claims that as much as 100 items can be found for between $432 to $576, insinuating that these may very well be leftover playing cards from mining operations. Core specs are unknown, however the graphics card is probably going the long-rumored 20GB variant of the vanilla RTX 3080, modified to help Micron reminiscence chips with double the capability.
It would not be the primary time Nvidia has reportedly messed round doubling VRAM capacities on its high-end GPUs. Nearly each technology of Nvidia graphics playing cards has featured some rumor or suspicion pointing to a 2x larger capability variant properly after the GPU’s preliminary launch.
Previously, Nvidia has bought totally different reminiscence capability variants of the identical GPU mannequin, with one variant that includes 2x the reminiscence capability over the opposite. Its technique was prevalent throughout the Kepler technology and older fashions, the place playing cards just like the GTX 780 3GB and GTX 770 2GB had extra 6GB and 4GB fashions, respectively.
Making a brand new GPU with 2x the reminiscence capability is not arduous; it is one of many best methods so as to add extra VRAM capability to a GPU. All Nvidia has to do is swap out reminiscence ICs with ones that includes two occasions the capability of the earlier variant.
If Nvidia wished so as to add various ranges of VRAM decrease or larger than 2x, creating such a configuration will get rather more difficult. It entails modifying the reminiscence bus width and reminiscence configuration. However, it’s as a result of reminiscence producers virtually all the time select to make reminiscence ICs based mostly on 512MB, 1GB, or 2GB reminiscence configs with no capacities in between.
Most of the time, you see reminiscence configurations on some Nvidia GPUs, together with the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti with a 24GB of VRAM, and the RTX 3060 with a really odd 12GB of reminiscence – when the upper tier RTX 3060 Ti has 8GB. Usually, it is simpler to double VRAM capability if extra VRAM is required, as an alternative of making a brand new die with extra or fewer reminiscence controllers only for a particular capability or, worse, disabling reminiscence controllers to hit a decrease than 2x capability – which Nvidia has performed earlier than.
Nevertheless, if Nvidia was serious about an RTX 3080 20GB, it will have created extra issues than advantages. Probably the most important issue, after all, is the RTX 3080 12GB, which might be its direct competitor – particularly now that it has resurged this 12 months.
The RTX 3080 12GB is rather more than a measly 2GB capability improve over the RTX 3080. As acknowledged earlier, Nvidia needed to improve the RTX 3080 12GB with extra reminiscence controllers and extra CUDA cores, so as to add the additional 2GB to the cardboard. As well as, it introduced the RTX 3080 12GB’s CUDA core capability up by a further 256 cores, and, better of all, introduced the cardboard’s bus width as much as the identical spec because the 3080 Ti and RTX 3090.
It could make the RTX 3080 20GB extra of a downgrade for avid gamers than the rest. Since 20GB is a superbly even 2x improve over the 10GB, Nvidia must run the precise core specs and reminiscence bus width because the 10GB mannequin. It means the RTX 3080 12GB can be noticeably faster than the RTX 3080 20GB in titles not utilizing over 12GB of reminiscence.
One other concern with the 20GB mannequin is reminiscence utilization in video games. Solely a choose few titles operating at very excessive resolutions and maxed-out texture packs can break 12GB of VRAM on an Nvidia GPU, because of Nvidia’s superior reminiscence compression know-how. Consequently, the RTX 3080 20GB’s extra 8GB of VRAM would hardly ever be useful for many avid gamers.
Technically a 20GB SKU can be an excellent improve over a 10GB mannequin, however with a 12GB variant already current, a 20GB mannequin for avid gamers is senseless. The one place an RTX 3080 20GB would make sense is within the prosumer aspect of the market, the place gobs of reminiscence capability are helpful for non-gaming duties corresponding to 3D rendering and high-resolution video timelines with tons of various visible results. However Nvidia already has the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti to bridge this hole, making the RTX 3080 20GB much more pointless.
