the upcoming Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti, which will in all likelihood be the most effective – and expensive – gaming GPU in the world.
While the mighty Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti is probably to be a niche product, it should nevertheless be a very important release, as it may additionally provide us an idea of what future Nvidia GPUs will be like. If that is certainly the case, then these new leaks have received us a little bit worried.
The latest suggests the Founders Edition of the Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti, a reference card made by means of Nvidia itself.
While we have been shown the Founders Edition at CES 2022: the world’s largest electronics expo Next January? when the RTX 3090 Ti was once first announced, things had long gone a bit quiet on that front, and the latest leaks concentrated on displaying us aftermarket RTX 3090 Ti designs (and overall performance benchmarks) from third parties.
This led some people to suppose that there may additionally now not be a Founders Edition of the RTX 3090 Ti after all, or at least now not one for customers to actually buy.
However, VideoCardz has published a series of photographs of the RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition, giving us a nearer appearance at the GPU, such as a box shot which essentially confirms that this model will additionally go on sale.
As many of us suspected, the Founders Edition RTX 3090 Ti looks nearly identical to the RTX 3090 Founders Edition, and it will as soon as again by using a hefty three-slot GPU.
So, if you weren’t a fan of the sheer size of the RTX 3090, or have a smaller PC case where space is at a premium, you might also be disappointed.
There is a major difference, however, as the RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition comes with a PCIe Gen5 16-pin energy connector, alternatively than the 12-pin connector the RTX 3090 Founders Edition sported.
With this ability, you’ll want an adaptor for your PSU (power provide unit), and one will possibly be protected in the box.
The new 16-pin connector already appears like it will be extra extensively used than the 12-pin connector, as third party RTX 3090 Tis have been pictured the usage of it, whereas the 12-pin connection was once solely found on Nvidia’s very own RTX 3090 and a few GPUs primarily based on Nvidia’s reference design.
It’s high in all likelihood that high-end models of Nvidia’s next-generation ‘Lovelace’ snapshots cards, like the rumored (and, let’s face it, virtually inevitable) RTX 4080 should use the 16-pin connector.
This ought to worry some people, as no longer only does it suggest the usage of an adaptor, however it additionally means next-gen Nvidia GPUs may want to be seriously power hungry – the RTX 3090 Ti should have a big TDP of 450W, compared to the already-high 350W of the RTX 3090.
For PC gamers with rigs powered via a PSU that provides much less than 1000W of juice, it means a new PSU will greater than likely be needed.
That’s no longer only a highly-priced upgrade, however, it can be an entire pain as well, as the PSU connects to a variety of components, together with the GPU, SSDs, and motherboard, so swapping them out can be time-consuming and fiddly.
With rapidly rising power increases, this pass ought to additionally have longer-term value impacts for gamers as well, especially if the style of evermore power-hungry GPUs continues.
However, another RTX 3090 Ti leak emerged over the weekend, which if true has us a bit extra worried.
These rumors, again reported by VideoCardz, suggest that the RTX 3090 Ti will offer a performance increase of between 5% to 10% over the RTX 3090 at 4K.
What about the price?
While this makes the 3090 Ti, which looks to offer 43 teraflops of power an incredibly impressive GPU, people hoping for a larger leap over the older card will likely be disappointed.
This will definitely be the case if the RTX 3090 Ti launches at a much higher price than the RTX 3090, as some rumors suggest.
However, another source claims the RTX 3090 Ti will launch at the same MSRP as the 3090: $1,499
This would be a (nice) surprise, which the supply claims are due to the minimal overall performance increase over the RTX 3090.
It would additionally suggest that the RTX 3090 ought to get a price drop. That would be any other nice development, although whilst GPU prices are dropping globally, it’s nonetheless very tough to find graphics cards promoting for MSRP.
We additionally hope that this incremental upgrade isn’t a sign of things to come. Nvidia’s RTX 4000 GPUs, which are anticipated to launch later this year, will want to provide a substantial overall performance increase over the current generation of RTX 3000 graphics cards to justify launching at a time when getting preserved GPUs remains difficult.
