Nvidia’s RTX 3080 and 3090 graphics cards are leaked with pics and reported specs

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
(Image credit: TechRadar)

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 have witnessed some major leakage, with images from two manufacturers spilled online – plus the purported final specs of the graphics cards – and pics of the RTX 3070 too.

Gainward and Zotac are the subject of these leaks, with images of the former’s Phoenix graphics cards coming complete with spec details on the RTX 3080 and 3090, as highlighted by Videocardz.

As well as confirming the names, which are clearly on the packaging, the leak lets us know that the GPUs are built on 7nm and Gainward’s 3080 and 3090 have a 2.7-slot design with three fans (so unsurprisingly, the third-party cards aren’t small, either – but they aren’t on the same scale as Nvidia’s purported giant Founders Edition which we glimpsed recently).

Gainward Phoenix RTX 3090

(Image credit: Gainward / Videocardz)

As for those specs, the RTX 3090 is loaded up with 5,248 CUDA cores (as was previously rumored), with a massive 24GB of GDDR6X video memory (ditto) featuring a speed of 19.5Gbps, with power consumption pegged at 350W (again as rumored before).

With the RTX 3080, you’re looking at 4,352 CUDA cores, 10GB of GDDR6X VRAM (at 19Gbps) and 320W on the power front (a version with more video memory may be launched further down the line).

Gainward will run the RTX 3090 at a boost clock of 1,725MHz with the RTX 3080 reaching 1,740MHz. Remember, we can’t take this as a cast-iron certainty, as with any leak, but at this point, the spec sheet looks pretty convincing (and marries with previous speculation, and the fresh spillage from Zotac as well).

Let there be RGB

Zotac’s leaked images (again via Videocardz) of its RTX 3080 and 3090 models, as well as 3070 boards, also shows Trinity HoLo models of the 3080 and 3090 (alongside plain Trinity – which ditches the RGB lighting – as well as AMP Extreme versions) which are triple slot graphics cards with three fans like Gainward’s GPUs.

Zotac Ampere graphics

(Image credit: Zotac / Videocardz)

Zotac’s RTX 3070 GPU will be a smaller graphics card with a dual-fan configuration (with an RGB version, and one without any fancy lighting).

Further note that the leaks reveal that Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 will supposedly benefit from NVLink SLI, meaning you can pair up two of these GPUs for monster performance (although the cost of two cards will doubtless reach a truly astronomical level).

These Ampere graphics cards will support PCIe 4.0, and come with second-gen ray tracing cores – a massive uplift in performance has been previously rumored when it comes to the RT cores. At any rate, the launch of these GPUs is almost upon us now, and we’ll soon know the full official details: Nvidia is expected to conduct the big reveal on September 1, in just two days.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).