It was just yesterday I wrote about NVCache, a new Ampere GPU architecture feature that will use system RAM and SSDs to speed up game load times and optimize VRAM usage. We're in throwing distance of the new Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3000 series cards with some exciting news.
In a new video from YouTube channel Moore's Law is Dead, according to "exclusive insider info" secured by Tom -- NVIDIA's new Ampere cards are not just a die shrink of Turing with more RT Cores. It is not just the "Pascal version of Turing" and instead Ampere is a "multipurpose architecture".
One of the more exciting parts of the new Ampere rumors is that ray tracing performance is significantly better than Turing -- so much so that it reportedly offers 4x better performance per tier. This means a GeForce RTX 3060 will offer the same ray tracing performance as the flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti -- if not better.
The rumors do clarify that Turing will not age well when Ampere is here, with Tom reporting "Turing doing RT will be like Kepler doing DX12". Fair enough. Not many people will be happy to hear that, especially if you just plonked down many hundreds (or over $1000 for the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti).
(New) NVIDIA Ampere GA100 Specs
- 8192 CUDA cores @ 1750MHz boost
- 1024 Tensor Cores
- 256 RT Cores
- Unknown amount of GDDR6 @ 16Gbps
- Unknown TDP
- 7nm
More reading on NVIDIA Ampere:
NVIDIA Ampere GPUs
- GA102 - 84 SMs / 5376 CUDA cores / 12GB GDDR6 / 384-bit bus - 40% faster than RTX 2080 Ti
- GA103 - 60 SMs / 3840 CUDA cores / 10GB GDDR6 / 320-bit bus - 10% faster than RTX 2080 Ti
- GA104 - 48 SMs / 3072 CUDA cores / 8GB GDDR6 / 256-bit bus - 5% slower than RTX 2080 Ti
Older NVIDIA Ampere GA100 Specs
- 8192 CUDA cores @ 2GHz (2.2GHz boost)
- 1024 Tensor Cores
- 130 RT Cores
- 48GB of HBM2e memory @ 1.2GHz
- 300W TDP
- TSMC 7nm+
- 36 TFLOPs peak output
I've already written about rumors that NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere GPU architecture would be up to 75% faster than current-gen GPUs such as the Turing architecture, right after rumors that Ampere would offer 50% more performance at half the power of Turing. This is pretty crazy stuff right there.
Not only that, but we've got some rumored specs on the purported GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards, which will both be powered by NVIDIA's new Ampere GPU architecture.
We've already heard that Ampere would offer 50% more performance at half the power of Turing, which sent the hairs on my neck standing up. Better yet, you can read about the leaked specs on the purported Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070 right here.
GA103 (GeForce RTX 3080)
- 10/20GB GDDR6
- 320-bit memory interface
- 60 SMs
- 3480 CUDA cores
GA104 (GeForce RTX 3070)
- 8/16GB GDDR6
- 256-bit memory interface
- 48 SMs
- 3072 CUDA cores
AMD also just revealed its next-gen RDNA 2 / Navi 2X plans, something we referred to as Big Navi until just recently. Those specs are monstrous, but they pale in comparison to what NVIDIA has planned for its flagship HPC destined Ampere GA100 beast.
AMD RDNA 2 / Navi 2X / Big Navi Specs
- 7nm node (confirmed)
- RDNA 2 architecture (confirmed)
- 80 compute units
- 5120 stream processors
- 17.5 TFLOPs compute performance
- Hardware ray tracing support (confirmed)