KEY POINTS

  • Nvidia has not yet announced the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti
  • However, rumors about the graphics card have been rife online over the past months
  • A new leak supports earlier rumors about the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti mid-May 2021 release

Nvidia has not yet announced the heavily rumored GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, but apparently, the graphics card is real and existing. Several photos of the unreleased graphics card on its way to Los Angeles surfaced on Facebook recently. Meanwhile, Nvidia says that it wants to impose stricter cryptomining limiters on the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and the rest of the RTX 30 series.

The photos, showing shipping boxes showing MIS graphics cards, were uploaded online by Facebook user Lok LOK. The said shipment is reportedly headed to the U.S., specifically in Los Angeles. One of the boxes apparently contains the unreleased Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Ventus 12 G OC from MSI.

This seemingly supports earlier rumors that the graphics card is releasing sometime this May 2021. Interestingly, it seems that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is not the only SKU heading to the U.S. Apparently, the flagship graphics card GeForce RTX 3090 is also on its way to the region. Aside from those, there are several other graphics cards included in the shipment.

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

This includes the outdated MSI Radeon RX 580 Armor 8G OC and the GT 710 2GD3 LP. The current global chip shortage and the unprecedented demand for graphics cards triggered the GPU supply crunch. While these other two SKUs are not the latest products, this is better than nothing. The AMD Radeon RX 580 is regarded as one of the best mining GPUs, according to Tom's Hardware, so it makes sense given the current trend in cryptomining.

Speaking of cryptomining, it looks like Nvidia is going to integrate far stricter limits to its graphics cards. Recent reports claimed that the chipmaker wants to restrict how much its graphics cards could be used for mining online currencies like bitcoin. Rumors have it that the cryptomining limiters would be most likely built into the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti card.

This is not the first time that the industry hears news about introducing limiters to Nvidia's products. The company said almost the same thing in March 2021 and rolled out drivers for the current series of graphics cards to discourage people from hoarding graphics cards for mining.

RELATED STORIES