NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti rumors: 450W TDP, 21Gbps memory … and new power connector?

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, the flagship reinvented

Some news on the upcoming flagship NVIDIA graphics card. 

We received some initial specs of the upcoming GeForce RTX 3090 Ti SKU that have been shared with board partners recently. According to the information, the card is not called RTX 3090 SUPER, but RTX 3090 Ti. It not only features more cores but also many changes to the memory subsystem, power configurations, and more.

RTX 3090 Ti 450W TDP and new PCIe Gen5 power connector?

Starting with power configurations. The RTX 3090 Ti allegedly will have a TDP up to 450W, this is 100W more than the ‘original’ 3090. We do not know if this is a final TDP or whether it applies to a custom card, only that such TDP is listed. This claim is not entirely new, it has already been leaked by Kopite7kimi a while ago, however only now we were able to confirm that such specs are listed on the roadmap.

What the initial rumors did not say is that the card might feature a new power connector, and that does not mean Molex Microfit 12-pin connector, but supposedly a new standard for PCIe Gen5. We have only heard about the 16-pin connector (which also appears in MicroFit format), but this information is still behind embargoed electrical specs of the new interface. Hopefully, the embargo on Gen5 will end once compatible motherboards are released next month.

Molex, Micro-Fit 3.0 16-pin connector, Source: MOLEX

Obviously, the fact that the card supposedly features a new power connector made us curious if this card is using a PCIe Gen5 interface. Unfortunately, this has not yet been confirmed, but we don’t see the point of a new power connector unless the whole card is Gen5 compatible.

RTX 3090 Ti memory upgrade: 21 Gbps/2GB modules

We have further confirmation on 21 Gbps memory for RTX 3090 Ti. The memory alone may be the reason behind the high TDP. What was not said before, however, is that those are 2GB modules, not 1GB as on current models. What this means is that the reference card will have a new board design, so we are told. Interestingly, the rumored RTX 3070 Ti 16GB is also said to have 2GB modules, but that card will not require a new PCB.

RTX 3090 Ti in January 2022

The card is now expected to launch in January alongside RTX 3070 Ti 16GB and RTX 2060 12GB. The most current roadmap that we have seen does not list any SUPER variant, which may be planned for later or not planned at all.

GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPU specifications are more or less known at this point. It’s a full GA102 GPU with 10752 CUDA cores (84 SMs) and 24GB of GDDR6X memory. Faster memory will result in over 1 TB/s of theoretical maximum bandwidth.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Specifications
VideoCardz	RTX 3090 Ti	RTX 3090	RTX 3080 Ti	RTX 3080
Picture	[ to be leaked ]
GPU	GA102-350	GA102-300	GA102-225	GA102-200
GPU Clusters	84	82	80	68
CUDAs	10752	10496	10240	8704
RTs	84	82	80	68
Tensors/TMUs	336	328	320	272
ROPs	128	112	112	96
Base Clock	TBC	1395 MHz	1365 MHz	1440 MHz
Boost Clock	TBC	1695 MHz	1665 MHz	1710 MHz
Memory	24 GB G6X	24 GB G6X	12 GB G6X	10 GB G6X
Bus	384-bit	384-bit	384-bit	320-bit
Memory Clock	21 Gbps	19.5 Gbps	19 Gbps	19 Gbps
Bandwidth	1008 GB/s	936 GB/s	912 GB/s	760 GB/s
TDP	450W	350W	350W	320W
MSRP	???	$1,499	$1,199	$699
Release Date	January 2022	September 24th, 2020	June 3rd, 2021	September 17th, 2020