Rumors keep piling up that we’re going to be seeing the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 sometime soon, but we’ve just seen reports that AIB – add-in board – partners may be clearing out their stock to prepare for an Nvidia Ampere launch.
This was reported in a now-deleted post in China Times, graciously picked up by the folks over at Wccftech. In it, the outlet reports that Taiwanese manufacturers, led by Asus, have started slashing the cost of Turing graphics cards. For instance, Asus’ GeForce RTX 2060 has apparently been cut down to NT$10,000 (about $330, £270, AU$510).
Right now the word is that Nvidia Ampere graphics cards are going to start launching in Q3 2020. This timing makes sense, as aftermarket graphics card manufacturers would want to clear out stock to make room for the new hotness.
The China Times report also suggests that the launch of Nvidia Ampere may follow in the footsteps of the 2018 Turing launch, where the initial lineup would only comprise of the RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 3070, with the 3060 and below presumably following in the months afterwards – the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 didn’t launch until January 2019, after all.
Still, it’s important to note that this is all practically graphics card gossip at this point and should all be taken with a grain of salt. We won’t know what Nvidia’s next-generation graphics cards will look like until Team Green is ready to share. Then again, Nvidia apparently has something cooking for a May 14 event, so we might even end up seeing Ampere early.