Nvidia rumored to cancel the RTX 3080 20 GB and RTX 3070 16 GB models

Initial reviews for the RTX 3080 noted that the 10 GB of GDDR6 VRAM might not be enough to future proof the cards for the next couple of years, as some AAA games running at 4K with RTX effects enabled seem to already require more than 8 GB. Of course, Nvidia will argue that users can activate DLSS to compensate for any memory bottlenecks, but not too many games include DLSS support for now, and game developers do not really seem to prioritize this feature. Even though Nvidia did not make official announcements, a few AIB partners already spilled the beans about 20 GB variants for the RTX 3080 and 16 GB variants for the RTX 3070, both of these being expected to launch some time this December. However, a new rumor now claims that Nvidia has allegedly canceled the release for these two versions.

The cancellation rumors come from the guys over at Videocardz, who cite two independent sources. Nvidia already cancelled the RTX 3070 Ti model that was supposed to launch this November allegedly due to low SKU yields, and it looks like Nvidia is now scraping the RTX 3080 20 GB version due to low GDDR6X yields. It is still unclear why the RTX 3070 16 GB version got cancelled. According to the same sources, the RTX 3060 Ti still remains on track for a mid-November launch, but this version gets only 8 GB of VRAM.

While Nvidia is still struggling to get decent SKU yields for the RTX 3080, AMD is quite confident that the supply for the Navi 21 cards would be sufficient at launch time. Additionally, AMD’s cards competing with the RTX 3080 / 3070 models are expected to integrate 16 GB of GDDR6 VRAM, giving Team Red a significant advantage when it comes to future proofing. There is still a chance that the 20 GB and 16 GB RTX 3000 cards could be launched next year, when Nvidia is rumored to make the switch to TSMC.

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