It appears NVIDIA is reportedly gearing up to unveil the next-generation Ampere 7nm process GPUs at next year’s edition of GTC in March, before releasing the high-end RTX 3080 at Computex in June.
While little is known at this point, the rumor mill has been churning away with the suggestion that NVIDIA is deep in discussion about marketing strategies for the Ampere GPUs.
NVIDIA Ampere GPU Reveal
One of the rumors alleges that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is in no rush to push out the Ampere GPUs in light of the ongoing success of the Turing-based chips that have no direct rival. There are, however, other rumors of AMD prepping a new high-end GPU known internally as the NVIDIA Killer. NVIDIA seems intent on outdoing AMD once again by bringing out the Ampere line by the middle of next year.
Raymond James analyst, Chris Caso, told HKEPC that NVIDIA is beginning to put the wheels in motion after delaying the launch a few months with GTC as the target with an Ampere TESLA accelerator AI product leading the charge. This will be followed by a gaming-focused GeForce RTX 3000 GPU showcase at Computex 2020.
What Cards Will Be Released?
Much like previous generations, NVIDIA will start with the high-end Ampere cards, notably the RTX 3070, RTX 3080, and a little later, the RTX 3080 Ti. The RTX 3080 is expected to be released around June.
Following on from this, NVIDIA will move down the food chain to mid-range consumer level products such as the RTX 3050 and RTX 3060 to replace the existing Turing equivalents. This is expected later on in the summer months.
Final Word
As for what we can expect spec-wise, speculation is rife, but improved ray tracing is almost a given, and we could also see better frame buffers, higher clock speeds, and lower TDP ratings.
More interestingly for consumers, the Ampere cards are allegedly going to market cheaper than the Turing cards (especially the high-end RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 Ti), presumably to compete with AMD.