Earlier this month, Nvidia kicked off the GPU wars by announcing the next-generation of RTX graphics cards. The announcement includes the reveal of the monstrous RTX 3090 with 24GB of VRAM, the RTX 3080 with 10GB of VRAM, and the RTX 3070 with 8GB of VRAM. There's no doubt that these GPUs feature impressive specs and claim to offer drastically improved performance over the RTX 20 series GPUs. However, a recently leaked Nvidia roadmap suggests that the company may have more variants of the GPU that have yet to be revealed.
According to the roadmap, Nvidia is gearing up to reveal three more RTX 30 series GPUs including the RTX 3060, the RTX 3070Ti/Super, and the RTX 3080 with 20GB of VRAM. This specific roadmap first appeared at a Galax presentation in China. A photo of it was posted on Baidu (which has now been deleted). However, the same photo was later posted on Twitter.
high resolution pic.twitter.com/J9kgwK98VK
— 포시포시 (@harukaze5719) September 23, 2020
It seems that Nvidia is waiting for AMD to respond with their RDNA 2 GPU reveals before the company announces these variants. Given how Nvidia has had variants of RTX 20 and GTX 10 series GPUs, it makes sense that the RTX 30 series GPUs will also target a wide range of audiences across all budgets.
Of course, the RTX 3070 is said to be as equal in power as the RTX 2080Ti, but understandably not everyone is willing to spend $500 on a graphics card, and this is where cheaper variants like the RTX 3060 will fit in. Moreover, the RTX 3070Ti and RTX 3080 with 20GB of VRAM will also close some gaps between the currently known Ampere GPUs.
Nvidia's Ampere lineup seems pretty strong, but it can get wavery once AMD reveals the RX 6000 RDNA 2 GPUs on October 28. Moreover, even if AMD reveals the RDNA 2 GPUs, it's highly likely that the company won't reveal all of its GPU variants on the same day. AMD might wait for Nvidia to reveal these new GPUs before firing back again. Additionally, AMD is also hosting an event on October 8 in which the company will reveal the next-generation of AMD Zen CPUs.
There's no doubt that the Nvidia vs. AMD competition is only going to get spicier.
