Leaks surrounding the upcoming RTX 3090 Ti have surfaced on the internet for quite some time. It is subject to replace the RTX 3090 as Nvidia’s flagship offering, and although initial leaks were quite promising, they are starting to fall off with this new leak from ITDepot. We have received a leaked picture of the packaging of the TUF Gaming variant of the RTX 3090 Ti from ASUS (via ITHome). Although this single picture might not give enough info about a card, if you dig deep, you can uncover a lot of info from this leak.
All the Leaks
The packaging showcases the design of the graphics card on its left side. The first thing we can see is a chunkier heatsink design as compared to the RTX 3090. This might mean that the RTX 3090 Ti might have a 450W TDP as compared 300W TDP of the RTX 3090. This is a huge jump in terms of power limits. And, at this point, it is truly a bit concerning. Also, if you look closely, you can find the number ‘4’ in the VRAM info section of the board. This can mean that the card might have 24 GB of GDDR6X VRAM. Also, besides that, we find PCIe Gen 4.0 inscribed. This can shatter the hope of having the world’s first PCIe Gen 5.0 card with the RTX 3090 Ti.
The 3090 Ti is pitched to be announced at CES 2022 which is scheduled to be held in January 2022. Also, there have been rumors that the other graphics cards scheduled to be announced at the CES could also be delayed. These include the desktop variant of the budget-focused RTX 3050 with more VRAM as compared to its mobile variant which debuted earlier this year. The other graphics card pending announcement is the 16 GB variant of the RTX 3070 Ti. These cards could be delayed till other big events like Computex, etc. However, the 3090 Ti might not be delayed any further.
Also, the RTX 3090 Ti is rumored to have the GA102 GPU, the same GPU that powers the RTX 3090 and the RTX 3080 Ti. It is supposed to come with 10,752 CUDA cores, up from the 10,496 cores found in the RTX 3090. The board is also supposed to have a newer design with 2GB VRAM modules instead of the 1GB VRAM modules on the RTX 3090. The classic board design involving 1GB memory chips found in the RTX 3090 meant putting 12 VRAM modules on the front of the PCB and the other 12 behind it. This made the card overheat tremendously, and it was aptly named a “heat chamber” by reviewers. This problem could be solved with the new design, which would have just 12 VRAM modules, all housed around the GPU in the front of the card.
The RTX 3090 Ti is also supposed to come with a new power connector with higher power delivery. This could prevent it from requiring the card to hog power through 4 8-pin PCIe power cables. This new connector was supposed to be the upcoming PCIe Gen 5.0 standard, but this new development kinda contradicts this assumption.
But, take all of these guesses and assumptions with a grain of salt. None of these have been officially confirmed by Nvidia. So, they might be erroneous.