Nvidia has been pretty active as of late, stirring the pot in the GPU world. Just last week they announced the new entry-level 30-series graphics card, the RTX 3050. A few days later the RTX 3090 Ti followed, which positions itself at the very top of the 30-series lineup and will be the most powerful GPU Nvidia has on store shelves. With this announcement, the Nvidia RTX 3080 will find itself in headlines once again with a monumental upgrade before the 40-series chips steal the limelight later this year.
According to a report by PC Games N, featured upgrades include bumping up the memory to 12GB from the original 10. There will also be an increase to a 384-bit memory bus and bandwidth limit of 912 Gbps. Probably due to added power consumption, the original 320W TDP has been upgraded up to 350W. Statistically speaking, The Verge claims that this refreshed 3080 contains 3% more CUDA cores than its predecessor, propelling the number to 8960 CUDA cores.
As of the moment, companies like MSI and ASUS are creating their own versions of the chipset. Prices haven’t been announced yet, but current market estimations put the refreshed Nvidia RTX 3080 at around $1500-2000 (USD). This might put it within the same playing field as the original RTX 3090. Availability and the privilege of purchasing an Nvidia GPU at retail prices in 2022 are separate concerns altogether.
