Nvidia Ampere potential configurations and timing - go large on vram

[porina]

Quotes

Quote

According to our sources, NVIDIA is planning to launch 3 boards in September with 1 board following in October and 2 boards planned whose launch date has not yet been decided. Since we do not know the confirmed naming schemes yet, I will refer to these boards according to their board numbers and the RTX 2000 series card they are intended to replace.

 

Source

https://wccftech.com/exclusive-nvidia-ampere-graphics-cards-partial-specs-and-tentative-launch-schedule/

 

Quote

That said, RTX 3000 should be announced on September 9th, according to board partner discussions with GamersNexus, so it’s reasonable to assume that stock of the current cards will start to dwindle as manufacturers try to clear it out.

Source

https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/3609-hw-news-rtx-3000-release-date-amd-x86-marketshare-intel-leaks

 

Added 10 Aug:

nvidia official geforce twitter just updated their banner image as above. It is the 10th right now, so the countdown ends August 31st. This may be some kinda of initial announcement, with availability to follow later in the month.

Credit to @AlexAfterwork and @illegalwater for posting this.

 

Summary

If WCCFTech's sources are correct we have some timing for availability, with the 2080 Super successor appearing first, and the 2070 Super and 2080Ti successors close behind in mid-late September. The top model comes with a whopping 24GB vram, and the lower models are expected to come in two vram configurations, one with an amount that would be typical for today (8GB or more) and another with double that.

 

Update: GamersNexus report an announcement is expected on the 9th September.

 

My thoughts

Everyone (except perhaps the most hardcore AMD fanboys) have been wondering when we might see nvidia's next gen GPUs come out, with September being thrown around most often. If this information is correct, we should set expectations for later in that month, assuming supply constraints don't also affect availability too much given the built up demand for more performance.

 

The increase in vram offerings is also interesting and may signal a shift in what games can use. Will game devs make use of that e.g. for better texture packs if you have the higher models?

 

This also raises the question if there will be a Titan card, since it may be harder to differentiate on vram quantity now, and a small core count difference is usually neither here nor there.

 

Edit: In a scan of other recent rumour posts on Ampere, those mostly point to a 12GB 2080Ti successor but timing seems roughly similar. So maybe there is still room for a high vram Titan model and more traditional amount on the mainstream card. More vram is nice if you can use it, but it doesn't come for free. You still have to pay for it.

 

[soldier_ph]

Well you beat me to it. GG 

[porina]

3 minutes ago, Pascal... said:

Well you beat me to it. GG 

Poking around the internet a bit more, I just saw GamersNexus went further and gave a date of September 9th for announcement. Let's see how that goes.

[SavageNeo]

thats more vram that my age. I feel very young now.

[Mateyyy]

My 2070S, still not knowing whether I'm going to sell it or not: *chuckles*

[RejZoR]

2 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

My 2070S, still not knowing whether I'm going to sell it or not: *chuckles*

My GTX 1080Ti feels about the same actually... In a way I want ray tracing for Cyberpunk 2077, but on the other hand, it's fast enough for everything else on max so it's hard to justify dropping another 800€ for ray tracing alone.

 

Might get tempted if they manage to make DLSS game agnostic and potentially with other goodies that make some eye candy without having to code it specifically for games. Then I might buy one out of curiosity.

[GOTSpectrum]

Interesting that AMD according to rumour is too going big on VRAM, 16gb if I remember correctly...

 

Also interesting that everyone on the video that I watched(can't remember which it was) was saying it cant be real, no one needs 16gb on a consumer card. 

 

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

My GTX 1080Ti feels about the same actually... In a way I want ray tracing for Cyberpunk 2077, but on the other hand, it's fast enough for everything else on max so it's hard to justify dropping another 800€ for ray tracing alone.

 

Might get tempted if they manage to make DLSS game agnostic and potentially with other goodies that make some eye candy without having to code it specifically for games. Then I might buy one out of curiosity.

I feel mostly the same, I have a 1080 on water and it does great at 1080p. I also have a RTX 2060 and a 2070 though so if I get the itching for RT at least I can try it before I buy one for the gaming rig. 

[Mateyyy]

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

My GTX 1080Ti feels about the same actually... In a way I want ray tracing for Cyberpunk 2077, but on the other hand, it's fast enough for everything else on max so it's hard to justify dropping another 800€ for ray tracing alone.

 

Might get tempted if they manage to make DLSS game agnostic and potentially with other goodies that make some eye candy without having to code it specifically for games. Then I might buy one out of curiosity.

The 1080Ti was and still is a damn beast.

Playing Metro Exodus with DXR was amazing visually, but the performance hit just makes it not viable in other more fast-paced titles, so I'm really not getting my hopes up when it comes to Cyberpunk. I'm really excited to see how much RT performance improves this generation though.

[Sport Driver]

Perfect, 2060S successor should be out right around the time new Forza game, I assume. When this lands it will be time to say bye to my RX480.

[porina]

1 hour ago, GOTSpectrum said:

Interesting that AMD according to rumour is too going big on VRAM, 16gb if I remember correctly...

 

Also interesting that everyone on the video that I watched(can't remember which it was) was saying it cant be real, no one needs 16gb on a consumer card. 

If both sides provide bigger vram options I do hope that at least newer games will provide opportunity to take advantage of it. 

 

1 hour ago, GOTSpectrum said:

I feel mostly the same, I have a 1080 on water and it does great at 1080p. I also have a RTX 2060 and a 2070 though so if I get the itching for RT at least I can try it before I buy one for the gaming rig. 

I don't know about folding, but if you compare equal gaming performance Pascal and Turing cards, the Turing cards are a good amount faster at compute, and at lower power consumption. For that reason I don't want to run anything older than Turing for compute if I can help it.

 

However, similar position here. I still have a 1080Ti in my main gaming system, and a 2070 in my 2nd gaming system which I want to get upgraded for decent 4k performance.

[Serin]

3D artists everywhere simultaneously rejoice!

[porina]

12 minutes ago, Serin said:

3D artists everywhere simultaneously rejoice!

Interesting point there. While most of us think about it from a gaming perspective, would higher vram models change the affordability for some professional uses?

[Trik'Stari]

*Skyrim modding community knuckles cracking simultaneously*

[GOTSpectrum]

1 hour ago, porina said:

I don't know about folding, but if you compare equal gaming performance Pascal and Turing cards, the Turing cards are a good amount faster at compute, and at lower power consumption. For that reason I don't want to run anything older than Turing for compute if I can help it.

 

However, similar position here. I still have a 1080Ti in my main gaming system, and a 2070 in my 2nd gaming system which I want to get upgraded for decent 4k performance.

You see basically the same on folding. A 2060 will beat the 1080 in all WUs and the 1080ti on most. 

 

I just don't need more GPU horses, 1080p, mostly play stellaris, rimworld, space engineers being the only game I really play that even gets my GPU to stretch its legs. (and honestly it's not really pushing it that hard)

[Curufinwe_wins]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

My GTX 1080Ti feels about the same actually... In a way I want ray tracing for Cyberpunk 2077, but on the other hand, it's fast enough for everything else on max so it's hard to justify dropping another 800€ for ray tracing alone.

 

Might get tempted if they manage to make DLSS game agnostic and potentially with other goodies that make some eye candy without having to code it specifically for games. Then I might buy one out of curiosity.

Heh that's how I'm feeling with my 980ti sli, but also because there hasn't been another witcher 3 level game that I've really been dying to play and experience at levels the current stuff can't get to yet. Maybe with 2077.

[porina]

5 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

then again, if only the xx70 and above GPUs have that RAM bump it's going to be another generation before that becomes more widespread ,_,

Like RTX, it has to start somewhere.

[hollyh88]

7 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

then again, if only the xx70 and above GPUs have that RAM bump it's going to be another generation before that becomes more widespread ,_,

i mean 70 and everything above is already pretty widespread in their lineup only thing below that is a xx60 and xx50. i for one will probably get the 3070 super/ti with 16gb. cause well thats handy  

[straight_stewie]

11 hours ago, porina said:

Poking around the internet a bit more, I just saw GamersNexus went further and gave a date of September 9th for announcement. Let's see how that goes.

A September release date will be par for the norm for their few previous new generation announcements.

I think it suits them well because it places people who are upgrading for the holiday season games in that particular year (on a personal note, it's high time for me to upgrade from the 4770K and 2x GTX 760TIs. Don't tell anyone but I'm secretly a cyberpunk fanboy) in a position where they need to seriously consider buying the new generation reference cards directly from Nvidia over buying a mature third party board from the previous generation. If they get the introductory cost right (which they sometimes do for the higher end models), they can get some of that sweet holiday season upgrade money.

If the rumors of significantly improved raytracing end up being true, and they are very smart with the introduction pricing (and don't end up with an initial shortage like last time), a September release date could be very smart on their part.

[igormp]

Damn, a mid range card with some sweet extra vram, that's a dream come true for me!

 

8 hours ago, porina said:

Interesting point there. While most of us think about it from a gaming perspective, would higher vram models change the affordability for some professional uses?

For sure. Having to purchase a Quadro/Tesla card for use at home when doing experimentation is way too expensive, and the current 8gb of vram available limits cards that would have an acceptable performance for such tasks otherwise, be it ML, VFX, 3D rendering or numerical computations.

 

The last card that has kinda nice for professional use cases was the Radeon VII, with its 16gb of vram and nice raw performance, but the lack of software support for AMDs cards turns it into a really niche product.

[porina]

36 minutes ago, igormp said:

The last card that has kinda nice for professional use cases was the Radeon VII, with its 16gb of vram and nice raw performance, but the lack of software support for AMDs cards turns it into a really niche product.

The Radeon VII was an odd card. It was essentially a consumer version of a professional card. So not surprisingly those who wanted something more than a consumer level card loved it. In my other interest area, the FP64 performance of that card was a dream since the performance levels in consumer cards have been cut right down for a long time now.

[igormp]

46 minutes ago, porina said:

The Radeon VII was an odd card. It was essentially a consumer version of a professional card. So not surprisingly those who wanted something more than a consumer level card loved it. In my other interest area, the FP64 performance of that card was a dream since the performance levels in consumer cards have been cut right down for a long time now.

FP64 has been cut down on most professional cards too. On nvidia's side, you can only get full FP64 through their top-end chips (V100 as an example, while turing had no FP64-capable chip at all).

[Serin]

12 hours ago, porina said:

Interesting point there. While most of us think about it from a gaming perspective, would higher vram models change the affordability for some professional uses?

 

11 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

i'm guessing if unreal wants to port over the polygon streaming engine to a traditional desktop GPU, bigger RAM capacities would allow for holding more triangles

 

then again, if only the xx70 and above GPUs have that RAM bump it's going to be another generation before that becomes more widespread ,_,

More vram = more stuff in scenes. More/bigger textures. More models. More animations. Just about more everything.
Its really a huge step up after generations hovering around 11-12gb for me. And hopefully won't cost as much as an RTX titan or quadro. 

[porina]

9 hours ago, igormp said:

FP64 has been cut down on most professional cards too. On nvidia's side, you can only get full FP64 through their top-end chips (V100 as an example, while turing had no FP64-capable chip at all).

Good point, but the low-FP64 (not no-FP64) pro cards are essentially the same as the consumer versions, perhaps with different vram (ECC). I guess on nvidia we had a split that generation between Volta and Turing, but we seem to be returning to a single Ampere name covering 

[Sahl]

It looks rather interesting, but like with anything else, I want to see it before I can make any judgement.

[porina]

3 minutes ago, Sahl said:

It looks rather interesting, but like with anything else, I want to see it before I can make any judgement.

For sure. It may be there's some confusion between different product lines. Like the high vram cards might be separately sold for pro use, and the consumer cards remain at a more historic level.