That ugly Nvidia Ampere cooler costs $150 to make, better start saving for your RTX 3080

[ENTERPRISE]

You can tell Nvidia Ampere cards for us PC gamers are getting close because of the increasing cadence of leaky leaks, and I've got some bad news for you… it's looking like the Founders Edition tax is back. Over the weekend we had reports from Chinese forum, Chiphell, showing off a potential (fugly) design for the Founders Edition (FE) version of the GeForce RTX 3080 card, and now we're getting some more supposed specs confirmation for three launch day Ampere cards.

 

Igor's Lab has published some more details about both the leaked RTX 3080 shroud designs as well as the memory configurations of the different cards coming at launch. Those are supposedly going to be the RTX 3090 Ti, RTX 3080 Ti, and RTX 3080. That immediately sounds frickin' weird; a pair of different Ti cards at launch and a whole new top naming scheme.

 

That looks like a trio of ultra-expensive, enthusiast-class graphics cards to me, and it feels like we might end up waiting a while for the more affordable options to surface. Which might also tell you a little about what's happening with the competition.

 

Source: https://www-pcgamer-com.cdn.ampproje...ers-edition%2F

 

To be perfectly honest, I do not mind the new reference cooler design all that much. Does not affect me even if I was as I tend not to go for reference design due to the FE "Tax" they put on cards, I would rather get a better card from an AIB. Odd to see a 3090Ti making the rounds though, looks like it will replace the Titan in my humble opinion.

[J7SC_Orion]

...so $150 for an air cooler I won't use, and another $150++ for a w-block ? May be there will be another set of nice factory w-blocked, custom PCB cards I will go for, unless I skip Ampere for Hopper altogether...

 

Be that as it may, the 'PC Gamer' article had that nice table below...looks like may be Titan 'AmpTX' might be moving upmarket, with a new top-gamer card in-between...allows even more price differentiation for NVidia to maximize revenues.

 

 

[ENTERPRISE]

...so $150 for an air cooler I won't use, and another $150++ for a w-block ? May be there will be another set of nice factory w-blocked, custom PCB cards I will go for, unless I skip Ampere for Hopper altogether...

 

Be that as it may, the 'PC Gamer' article had that nice table below...looks like may be Titan 'AmpTX' might be moving upmarket, with a new top-gamer card in-between...allows even more price differentiation for NVidia to maximize revenues.

 

 

I would not even go for a reference card to slap a new cooler on. A. Due to the fact you will be paying a fair bit for a cooler you are going to take off for a better aftermarket cooler or WC and B. I prefer to wait for the AIB cards with beefed up power management etc and as you say the AIB cards eventually come out with WC blocks as standard.

[J7SC_Orion]

 

I would not even go for a reference card to slap a new cooler on. A. Due to the fact you will be paying a fair bit for a cooler you are going to take off for a better aftermarket cooler or WC and B. I prefer to wait for the AIB cards with beefed up power management etc and as you say the AIB cards eventually come out with WC blocks as standard.

 

...truth be told, I have NOT bought a GPU WITHOUT custom PCB for personal use for well over a decade (forget company Quadro stuff, they made me do it by kidnapping my dog !).

 

With 'stock' 350W (recall our NVidia A100 400W discussion elsewhere on EHW) which is well before you kick in MSI AB power target, I would not want to even try a top-level Ampere w/o water-cooling, or w/o custom PCB, it would be so frustrating...time to talk to the accounting dep't about Galax and / or KP 3090xx edition

[schuck6566]

ROTFL Just wait 6-9 months after the release of the "3090Ti" and you'll be able to get a new 3090 Ti SUPER with water cooling for $75.00 more if they run this series like they did the 20xx series.

[ENTERPRISE]

This is something I am expecting to happen to be honest, a mid life refresh.