Rumour | NVIDIA delays Ampere GPUs until Q4 2020, but an announcement could be happening next month

The fate of the Ampere architecture is currently up in the air, but perhaps not for long. Originally slated to be announced at GTC 2020 this month, NVIDIA had been gradually scaling back the conference until it cancelled sharing any "exciting products and news".

Now there are conflicting rumours about when the company will unveil Ampere GPUs, but they could well correlate given the ongoing worldwide instability. On the one hand, Wccftech has reported that NVIDIA may not release any next-generation GPUs until Q4 2020.

While only a quarter behind previous estimates, the delay may not entirely be because of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to PC_Shopping forums member AquiariusZi, an apparently reliable leaker, NVIDIA is waiting to see what performance the AMD RDNA 2 architecture will offer before releasing its consumer Ampere GPUs.

That does not necessarily mean that NVIDIA will wait until the earliest of October before it announces the Ampere architecture. On the contrary, @kopite7kimi, a leaker with a decent track record for GPU leaks, tweeted the following:

We will see more ampere chips of other specs in next month. Be patient.

In short, do not be surprised if NVIDIA announces something Ampere related next month, with data centre  GPUs debuting first. Premium consumer cards are then likely to follow this summer before mid-range Ampere cards arrive in Q4 2020. To reiterate, this is speculative, but it would mirror NVIDIA's 2019 product cycle.