Nvidia low-key just updated its wildly popular RTX 3080

Fresh off the back of yesterday’s leak, Nvidia has indeed updated the RTX 3080 product page with a new set of tech specs for a 12GB model. This new breed of RTX 3080 features improved performance, but the company doesn’t seem all that excited about letting gamers know that a more powerful model of this highly sought after card now exists.

The Nvidia RTX 3080 12GB specs detail more CUDA cores and a larger bus width, plus a higher TDP of 350W, which is in the class of the RTX 3080 Ti and 3090. Unlike the Ti model, the RTX 3080 12GB only comes with about 3% more CUDA cores than the standard RTX 3080. The RTX 3080 Ti has about 13.5% more CUDA cores than the standard RTX 3080.

This modest difference indicates the main selling point of this new RTX 3080 12GB card, the increased VRAM capacity. While an extra two gigabytes isn’t a whole lot, it will make a difference in 4K gaming and help the card to fair better over time as future games use more VRAM. Because this card is capable of generous framerates in 4K, it’s a logical improvement to make.

Now for the guessing games

Seeing as Nvidia didn’t provide an official press release, details about this card are limited at this time. We don’t know when exactly it will launch or what the MSRP, if that even means anything anymore, is supposed to be. However, we can at least use precedent to estimate when the product will arrive on shelves by comparing this action to how Nvidia recently launched the RTX 2060 12GB model. Several weeks after confirming the full specs via a product update on the company website, that card began to float into retail outlets. We can likely expect a similar scenario for the RTX 3080 12GB.

Pricing is the more difficult detail to narrow down, but we can assume the RTX 3080 12 GB will fall somewhere in between that of the standard RTX 3080 and the 3080 Ti. Even if Nvidia does assign an official price to the card, that likely won’t match up with what AIB brands charge for it. So far, only Founders Edition cards have sold at official pricing. Nvidia hasn’t stated if it will produce any Founder’s Edition cards for this model.

Either way, gamers likely won’t be thrilled about another graphics card that’s pricey and hard to acquire, even if the performance is incredibly impressive. We’ll just have to see how this pans out and if it’s worth getting your hands on.

In other news, Nvidia also revealed the RTX 3090 Ti and 3050 desktop graphics cards last week at CES 2022.