The much-rumored Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card looks ever more likely, with a new driver released by HP apparently accidently confirming the GPU.
As VideoCardz reports, a HP OEM driver lists several device IDs of graphics cards that have yet to be released, and with a bit of research by the Laptopvideo2go forums, it appears that one device ID, NVIDIA_DEV.2205, refers to the RTX 3080 Ti. Apparently, other pieces of software have been spotted that connect the 2205 ID to the RTX 3080 Ti.
We’ve not seen that evidence, and due to the nature of this rumor we’d take this all with a hefty dose of salt, but with the growing amount of RTX 3080 Ti leaks that have been popping up recently, we’re becoming more convinced that Nvidia is prepping to launch this GPU at some point.
Where does that leave the RTX 3080?
The fact that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has popped up in a laptop and PC maker’s drivers means we could see the new GPU soon, and it again looks like the RTX 3080 Ti will come with 20GB VRAM.
This would put it between the RTX 3080, with 10GB of VRAM, and the top-end RTX 3090 with 24GB. The RTX 3090 is a very pricy card, selling for $1,499 / £1,399 (around AU$2,030) when it occasionally comes into stock, so the RTX 3080 Ti is likely to be pitched as a performance upgrade over the RTX 3080 for people who can’t afford the RTX 3090.
It would also give Nvidia a card to compete with AMD, which recently launched the Radeon RX 6900 XT, which comes with 16GB of GDDR6 memory.
All rather exciting, unless you bought an RTX 3080, perhaps. That card being so quickly supplanted by a more powerful variant (Nvidia usually leaves it quite a while before releasing a ‘Ti’ or ‘Super’ version of a GPU) may not go down too well.
Also, with Nvidia still struggling to meet demand of the RTX 3080, along with the RTX 3090 and RTX 3070, the fact that it's planning yet another GPU launch will certainly raise a few eyebrows.
If the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti does indeed exist, you can be sure that we’ll be getting our hands on it and giving it a thorough review soon.
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