Nvidia recently confirmed that the launch of their new 3000 series Ampere GPU’s will be on September 2, a little less than two weeks away. Much has been speculated over the past year over every little detail that leaks out; from the size of the memory to the design to how much better they will actually be than the last generation of cards. While there is still a lot that isn’t known for certain, there is still quite a bit that has been confirmed and is definitely worth discussing, as Nvidia seems to be on track to really shake up the GPU market with this new generation of cards.
New Connectors?! Will My Current System Be Compatible?!
This has been one of the biggest points of contention, as no one likes to hear that their old hardware won’t work with newer hardware (which is why Apple has resisted dropping the Lightning connector for so long). The bad news is that, yes, there will be a new connector type, a new 12 pin connector that Nvidia says will be able to deliver more power when compared to connecting multiple 6 or 8 pin connectors to a single card. The good news, however, is that Nvidia has said that it will leave it up to manufacturers to decide if they want to use them in their custom card designs, and even ones that do choose to use will more than likely include adapters so that you can use your existing PSU’s power cables. As with each Nvidia GPU launch, Nvidia’s own card designs will be available first (often referred to as Founder’s Edition), and these will probably use the new 12 pin design exclusively.
Performance Boosts For Your Whole System
Not only will Nvidia’s new cards have huge amounts of super fast GDDR6X RAM to work with (the rumored 3090 is alleged to have 24 GB, the same as a Titan RTX) but they will also feature a new technology called NVCache. The idea is to have the GPU offload certain tasks, mainly texture loading, to your system’s solid state drives to help speed up load times when playing at high resolutions. While there are no benchmarks on how much NVCache affects performance as of now, it’s a safe bet that the technology will certainly improve game experiences, especially since ray tracing is becoming more and more common.
When Can I Get One?
The answer depends on which spectrum of the GPU market you’re interested in. Nvidia always announces and ships high end cards first, so the first cards to be announced will likely be the (rumored) 3090, 3080, and possibly the 3070, with mid-range cards following in the months leading up to the holidays. Nvidia usually only announces their flagship products at special events, so mid and low end cards won’t receive as much fanfare as the high end cards. As for when people can actually get their hands on them, Nvidia will likely announce both a pre-order date and a ship date at the same time as the unveiling.
Charlie O'Donnell
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