KEY POINTS

  • The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti was initially rumored to launch in December
  • It is anticipated to house the GA102-250 GPU
  • A new report claims that Nvidia is using GA102-250 GPU on the RTX 3090 

The much-awaited release of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti might not happen as expected, according to a recent report. Instead of being delayed, the graphics card may have been scrapped or at the very least repurposed for GeForce RTX 3090.

An interesting post online reveals that Nvidia is repurposing the lower bin GA102-250 GPU, presumably for the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, for GA102-300 GPU of GeForce RTX 3090. The discovery was shared by Hardwareluxx forum user isoO via Neowin. Apparently, the user disassembled the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition and found that the original die marker bears the crossed-out label GA102-250 and replaced with GA102-300.

GeForce RTX 3080 | 2nd Gen RTX | The Ultimate Play
The GeForce RTX™ 3080 delivers the ultra performance that gamers crave, powered by Ampere—NVIDIA’s 2nd gen RTX architecture. It’s built with enhanced RT Cores and Tensor Cores, new streaming multiprocessors, and superfast G6X memory for an amazing gaming experience. Nvidia GeForce Official YouTube Channel

The GA102-250 GPU was rumored to be the chip powering the upcoming RTX 3080 Ti. Several consumers speculate that Nvidia is repurposing the chips to produce the GPU for the GeForce RTX 3090.

This report does not look good for the RTX 3080 Ti, according to Tom's Guide. The post suggests that if Nvidia is repurposing such an important component for another product, it would just mean that "RTX 3080 Ti production is going to be heavily delayed at best or completely canceled at worst." It also speculates that given the recent graphics card shortage, Nvidia might have felt it's wiser to produce more RTX 3090s than divide its attention with another high-end GPU.

A few days ago, ITHome reported via Videocardz that Nvidia had already announced the delay on the release of the RTX 3080 Ti through an internal company memo. Instead of April, the release should now be expected sometime in May. According to Videocardz, it received a similar update but has not yet confirmed the information with other sources.

The rumored delayed release of the much-awaited graphics card is the fifth one, following earlier leaks saying that the product would launch in mid-April. The RTX 3080 Ti was initially rumored to launch in December 2020 but the company reportedly pushed back its release several times. The graphics card was said to feature a whopping 20 GB of memory but since its announcement, it got new specs and a downgrade to 12 GB memory.

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