Leaker shows massive triple-slot NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders' Edition card, reveals possible RTX 3000-series pricing
Only 10 days remain until the official reveal of the Ampere RTX 3000 gaming GPUs from Nvidia, and the leaks are intensifying by the day. We have already seen the bulky cooler for the Founders’ Edition version of the RTX 3080, but twitter user GarnetSunset managed to snag a few pics of the RTX 3090 card placed right next to the Founders’ Edition model of the RTX 2080 and we can now see that the difference is quite striking.
Nvidia’s reference cooler for the RTX 3090 appears to have a massive triple-slot slot design with frontal / rear fans, and word on the street is that custom versions from Nvidia’s AIB partners could get a 3.5-slot design with at least triple-fans on front. This bulkier design is needed to keep all the components cool as the card itself is supposed to be drawing almost 400 W of power through the new 12-pin power connectors or the triple-8-pin adaptors.
These flagship cards are still expected to be produced on Samsung’s 8 nm nodes, so the energy efficiency will be somewhat subpar compared to TSMC’s 7 nm node used for AMD’s Navi 21 high-end GPUs, which may at least win the TGP wars. We also hear that AMD is preparing to launch a more efficient mid-range Navi 22 GPU to replace the current RX 5700 XT models later this year, which could cause problems for Nvidia’s RTX 3070 cards.
GarnetSunset later tweeted a tentative price scheme for most of the RTX 3000-series. The flagship RTX 3090 is expected to retail for US$1,400 which would be only a couple of hundred more expensive than the RTX 2080 Ti at launch. Now, the performance increase over the RTX 2080 Ti is rumored to be around 40%, so that price might actually be decent. Going down the line, the RTX 3080 is priced at $800, while the RTX 3070 gets a US$600 MSRP, and the RTX 3060 may cost US$400. Apparently, the lower-end cards don’t show impressive performance boosts so these prices might not be justified, unless there is considerable overclocking potential.
