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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti mainstream Ampere GPU rumored to launch on November 17th [UPDATE]

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Just a few days ago Nvidia’s unannounced Geforce RTX 3060 Ti Ampere GPU was listed for pre-order in the ASIAN retail market. Now we have some fresh data coming via MyDrivers stating that NVIDIA is allegedly set to launch the RTX 3060 Ti GPU on November 17th.

There is no word on the non-Ti variant of this SKU yet, but the plain RTX 3060 has also been in the pipeline for long. Previous rumors have already indicated a mid-November launch date.

According to some reports from AIBs, the RTX 3060 Ti GPU is going to see a similar stock issue at launch. Since this is a mid-range/mainstream card, the demand for this GPU is bound to be higher. Even though the launch date of the RTX 3070 was delayed by almost 2 weeks, the card was still sold out very soon, despite more stock.

There have been reports that the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti will launch after RTX 3070 Ampere GPU, and we have already seen some leaks from Gigabyte and Galax as well. This should be the first budget mainstream offering from Nvidia, and the next GPU to get released in the Ampere lineup.

Coming to the specs, the RTX 3060 Ti is going to be based on the 392 mm², 17.4 billion transistor GA104-200 GPU silicon chip. The RTX 3060 Ti is the new mid-range/mainstream graphics card in the Ampere lineup, and the price is expected to be around $400 USD (a rough estimate).

Nvidia has not yet announced this x60 SKU, though we have been hearing rumors that Nvidia might release two variants, based on the GA106 and GA104 GPU core/silicon die.

The GA104 GPU would likely adopt the Ti or Super branding. And we expect the GA106 silicon to be featured on the plain RTX 3060 GPU (the non-Ti/Super variant), and rumor has it that this card might feature 6 GB of GDDR6 memory over a 192-bit wide bus interface.

The RTX 3060 Ti on the other hand will sport 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM over a 256-bit wide memory bus interface, and the memory clock speed would be 14 Gbps. The RTX 3060 Ti GPU would allegedly feature a total of 4864 CUDA cores, in a total of 38 SMs, which is 1024 CUDA cores less than the RTX 3070’s 5888 count. The max bandwidth should be around 448 GB/s.

Moreover, the card will have 152 Tensor Cores, and 38 RT Cores, respectively, and the power consumption or TDP is expected to be around 180-200 Watts. This GPU seems to be more of a successor to the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER SKU. We also expect the RTX 3060 Ti to even match the performance of the RTX 2080 Turing GPU clock for clock.

Someone also posted a GPU-Z screenshot confirming most of the specs of this GPU, as outlined above. This appears to be a custom card from board partner HP. Most of the specs are accurate except for the TMU/texture mapping unit count.

ROP or raster operations pipeline count is 80. Also, the RTX 3060 Ti will have a base clock of 1410 MHz and a boost clock value of 1665 MHz, as reported by the software. This screenshot further confirms the existence of this new Ampere GPU.

Also, don’t expect similar pricing for these variants. These Ti/Super variants aren’t meant to replace the existing RTX 30-series lineup either, but they rather offer a step-up and upgrade in terms of memory and better core specs, but at slightly higher prices.

This all depends on how AMD responds back with their mainstream NAVI 2X lineup based on the new RDNA2 architecture.

“For what it’s worth, NVIDIA’s yields for the initial few batches of the Samsung 8nm node are lower than expected and expensive. The company expects the yields (and therefore prices for wafers) to significantly improve in the coming months. To protect its shareholders, the company has been cautious about its orders of the first few batches and has placed significantly higher volume orders for later batches.

This problem was further exacerbated by bots scraping up the entire volume from the get-go. We expect the bulk orders to start hitting before the holiday season (assuming, once again, that miners don’t gobble it all up of course)”- via Wccftech.

Stay tuned for more!

UPDATE:

It appears that the launch date of this GPU has been allegedly postponed, as reported by Expreview, coming via Twitter user @momomo_us. But do make a note that this is a Rumor, and should not be treated as an official confirmation, since Nvidia has not even announced this new Ampere SKU, let alone postpone it.

So we should exercise caution with such leaks/rumors, at least for now. According to Expreview, the new launch date of this GPU is now scheduled for December 2nd, 2020. We also don’t know whether Nvidia is planning to release a Founders Edition variant of this GPU model. But we can surely expect to see several AIB custom Models for this card though.