Leaks detail delayed NVIDIA Ampere GPU release dates and possible high-end pricing

News about NVIDIA's next-generation GPU architecture has been trickling out for a few months now, with the company previously expected to unleash new cards in the first half of next year. NVIDIA has confirmed that it will be switching to a 7 nm manufacturing process for its upcoming Ampere architecture, which will offer substantial performance improvements over Turing GPUs according to previous leaks.

However, there are now reports that NVIDIA will not release Ampere GPUs until the turn of Q2 and Q3 2020. According to Chris Caso via HKEPC, an analyst at Raymond James, NVIDIA is aiming to unveil high-end Ampere GPUs at Computex 2020. Hosted in Taipei from June 2 through June 6, Computex 2020 will probably mark the arrival on the RTX 3070, RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 Ti, with midrange cards appearing in Q3.

We may see NVIDIA unveil the Ampere architecture early than June though, albeit not as consumer GPUs. Instead, Caso claims that the company will use GTC 2020 in March to demonstrate Ampere-based Tesla GPUs.

Wccftech is sticking to its prediction that NVIDIA will price high-end Ampere chips more competitively than current Turing cards too. While it remains unclear whether this would apply to the whole Ampere product stack and to both AIB and Founders Edition cards, the website claims that the RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 Ti will undercut their RTX 20 siblings. If RTX 20 SUPER pricing is any indication of where NVIDIA will position its Ampere GPUs, then the RTX 3080 Ti could launch at US$1,099, US$100 shy of the RTX 2080 Ti FE. Meanwhile, we expect that the RTX 3080 will cost US$699, matching the RTX 2080 SUPER while undercutting the RTX 2080 by US$100.

Hopefully, the arrival of Ampere GPUs will coincide with RTX 20 price cuts. This could end up being wishful thinking, though.