As more and more details have emerged about the incoming Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 series of 'Ampere' graphics cards, our mouths have been well and truly whetted here at T3.com.
First benchmarks for the cards leaked and showed that they are going to offer a fat 30 per cent performance increase over the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition.
- Breaking! Xbox Series X video UNLEASHES PS5-smoking "Velocity" special weapon
- Radical Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 design update breaks cover
- Ghost of Tsushima review
And then an actual image of an Asus-brand Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti broke cover, along with a leak reportedly listing the Ampere family's hardware specs. The card looked monstrously powerful and the leaked specs backed it up.
A recently leaked image of an Asus ROG RTX 3080 Ti graphics card.
Now, though, our excitement just moved to an entirely new level with the news that, actually, we may be all placing our orders for an RTX 3080 GPU a lot sooner than anyone thought.
That's because, as reported by wccftech, Nvidia has ceased production of its GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards, effectively putting its 'Turing' architecture to bed. That means that no more RTX 2080 Ti, 2080 Super, 2070 Super and 2070 cards are being made.
And, naturally, this has led to commentary that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 series of new Ampere cards are about to launch, with an August or September reveal mooted. After all, why would Nvidia stop producing its flagship range of graphics cards if it wasn't about to be directly replaced by something even better?
This is great news for graphics card enthusiasts and for anyone who has been looking to give their computer an upgrade before landmark titles like Cyberpunk 2077 come out.
Now gamers can secure a smoking hot new GPU and get it installed and bedded in with a series of driver updates before the big winter holiday season new games rush. Therefore being 100% ready to game in maximum fidelity and with every awesome graphical effect like real time ray tracing turned on.
It's also good news as it likely ushers in a period where we are going to see those RTX 20-series cards drop in price significantly, which is brilliant as they are still incredibly powerful GPUs capable of crushing today's most demanding AAA games.
Here's hoping we hear more about the RTX 3080 family of GPUs soon, and specifically how much they are going to cost.
