What I Want To See At Today’s Nvidia Keynote — The 2080 Ti

I’m not going to fart around on this one. Let’s dive straight into it. Yeah, the 2080 is what people are talking about, but I’m waiting for the inevitable Ti variant. And, if these (surprisingly detailed) leaks are any indication, well, we may see this card sooner than the typical Spring release reserved for the Ti cards.

Personally, while I think it’s fun for me to speculate on rumors, I ultimately tend not to put too much stock in them because the facts are the facts: rumors are, by definition, unconfirmed. So until that day when an announcement is made, rumors remain just that: rumors.

This, though? Man, I’m finding it difficult to brush these 2080 Ti rumors aside so easily, simply because of the sheer volume and detail on hand here. Let me be clear, an abundance of detail does not mean that something is legitimate or guaranteed. You can fake detail convincingly enough to pass something off as legitimate. However, my gut (this most subjective of emotions) is telling my objective brain that these 2080 Ti rumors and leaks might actually bear credence.

Nvidia has been teasing their keynote at Gamescom, and even have a Twitch countdown on their page. They’re widely expected to announce their next-generation RTX 2080 today at 1p ET. I was expecting this. However, what I was not expecting, was an announcement of the 2080 Ti. When I saw these rumors Friday night, I definitely did a double take and read through pretty much all of them. So let’s get some last minute speculation in ahead of Nvidia’s keynote.

The information and leaks on this Reddit post are extremely interesting. As I looked through these specs, it looks like this 2080 Ti is shaping up to be one extremely powerful card. Year on year, generation after generation, the Ti variant is always the one I’m interested in most. I know that, as history dictates, Nvidia generally launches with their xx80 and xx70 variants in the late Summer, followed by a Titan and xx60 in Autumn. And behind every Titan is a Ti, generally in Spring of the following year.

Should Nvidia drop the Ti alongside the xx80 variant this year, it would be a departure from the past release cadences. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. But, it does beg a different question: will we see a 2070 announced today as well?

As a quick refresher, the specs from Nvidia’s SIGGRAPH keynotes are above, highlighting the Quadro RTX series, courtesy of WCCFTech. You can see that all Quadro cards are built off of the GT102 GPU, sporting 4608 cores. Each sport shiny new GDDR6 memory and performing simple math yields us a Memory Speed of 14 Gbps. Either way you look at it, these are very impressive specs.

And this is what makes these 2080 Ti rumored specs so interesting. By and large, the 2080 Ti looks to be a cut down version of the Quadro 6000. Compared to the Quadro, the Ti sports a reduction from 4608 cores to a still mighty 4352 cores, a reduction of 256 cores, or a 5% cutdown.

Additionally, a slight cut back in Memory Bus Width while maintaining that 14 Gbps Memory Speed yields a slightly cut back, but still very impressive, 616 GB/s Memory Bandwidth. It looks like Nvidia are still going with 11 GB allocation here, but going with the superior GDDR6 means much greater performance across the spectrum. The Reddit leak citing a PNY spec sheet aligns with this.

The interesting bit here is that, while the Reddit leak points to a $1000 price point from PNY, the WCCFTech rumor is citing a price of $899. These are unquestionably expensive prices, meant for enthusiasts. But, if these specs are to be believed, then we’re essentially getting the performance of a $6300 Quadro card for one sixth the price. In my humble opinion, that’s an insane value.

So, are we to believe these rumors? Like I mentioned at the top, I tend to take rumors with a grain of salt. This time, though, there are so many different reports largely saying the same thing. And when you throw in the leaks citing manufacturers packaging from Asus, Zotac, and MSI, things begin to look plausible.

Personally, I certainly hope this is real. If so, then damn. This 2080 Ti looks to be one hell of a card. I can’t wait to pop this into my PC and just go. But of course, let’s sit tightly for today before Nvidia’s keynote at 1p ET.

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