Just ahead of the Nvidia event (scheduled to go live at 3am Tuesday morning, on September 2nd here in New Zealand) there has been a rush of new information leaked about the upcoming, RTX 3070, RTX 3080 and a new flagship RTX 3090 graphics cards.
We'll have to wait until Nvidia confirms all the details, but right now it's looking like the new high-end GPU will use the PCIe 4.0 interface, great news for all those who have built with certain models of the latest motherboards, but has everyone else checking their manuals for the expansion slot specifications.
Why do PCIe 4.0 expansion slots matter?
Well, we need something really powerful to take advantage of the new PCIe 4.0 expansion slots for graphics cards but there hasn't been a graphics card to do it... yet.
A PCIe 4.0 x16 slot has a max set at 32 gigabytes per second (GB/s) of data flowing in each direction, while current PCIe 3.0 sits maxed out at around 16GB/s - so the potential is there to see a big boost in performance if the new graphics cards can make use of it.
Looking at the beast of the bunch, the GeForce RTX 3090 is said to come with 24 GB of GDDR6X memory running on a 384-bit bus at 19.5 Gbps. It's hinted to have support for the latest display outputs like HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a, so it could be pushing 120Hz 4K to our screens, or 8K at 60Hz - and that's some extremely heavy lifting.
We might not have to worry about the compact 12pin power supply adapter now though, it looks like the aftermarket partner RTX 3000 graphics cards from Gigabyte AORUS and Asus ROG will be powered by two standard 8-pin connectors - that would be so wonderful and easy!
Why are the recent leaks so credible? Well, at the end of Nvidia’s tease video they briefly show a GPU design that matches recent GPU leaks showing the RTX 3090 and the new cooler design.
Not long to wait now either, we'll keep our eyes on the Nvidia Store for the latest!
