NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 "Ampere" Alleged PCB Picture Surfaces

[erek]

"As we are getting close to September 1st, the day NVIDIA launches its upcoming GeForce RTX graphics cards based on Ampere architecture, we are getting even more leaks. Today, an alleged PCB of the NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3090 has been pictured and posted on social media. The PCB appears to be a 3rd party design coming from one of NVIDIA's add-in board (AIB) partners - Colorful. The picture is blurred out on the most of the PCB and has Intel CPU covering the GPU die area to hide the information. There are 11 GDDR6X memory modules covering the surrounding of the GPU and being very near it. Another notable difference is the NVLink finger change, as there seems to be the new design present. Check out the screenshot of the Reddit thread and PCB pictures below:"

https://www.techpowerup.com/270986/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3090-ampere-alleged-pcb-picture-surfaces

 

[jeremyshaw]

That's a picture of the backside and another of an older GPU PCB for good measure. Insinuating there is a chip on the backside.

 

[MangoSeed]

Nonsense.

 

[kamikazi]

Man, everyone must have $1500 burning holes in their pockets wanting all of these "leaks" to be true.

 

[T4rd]

Man, everyone must have $1500 burning holes in their pockets wanting all of these "leaks" to be true.

Yeah, I wonder out of those still buying at these cards at these retarded prices, what their ceiling is before they say no. 2k.. 3k? I mean, I'm an gaming enthusiast that owns every gaming console and a decent gaming PC, and I could easily afford a 2k card if I wanted it, but fuck that $1200+ noise. I'm doing just fine with my 2080 at 3440x1440 with any game maxed out usually at 60-120 Hz. So any card in the $700ish range that's a considerable improvement on that would be good with me.

 

[DanNeely]

Yeah, I wonder out of those still buying at these cards at these retarded prices, what their ceiling is before they say no. 2k.. 3k? I mean, I'm an gaming enthusiast that owns every gaming console and a decent gaming PC, and I could easily afford a 2k card if I wanted it, but fuck that $1200+ noise. I'm doing just fine with my 2080 at 3440x1440 with any game maxed out usually at 60-120 Hz. So any card in the $700ish range that's a considerable improvement on that would be good with me.

Same here. Titan/whatever they're calling it this year, has always been a crazy halo part for people with more money than sense. It was stupidly more expensive for marginally more performance any 99% of gamers just ignored it as the suckerbait it was. But when they rebranded it 2080 Ti and left a reasonable performance uplift NVIdia discovered a lot of $600-800 card customers were willing to shell out $1200. Among DX12 cards Steam shows the 2080 at 0.99% the 2080S at 0.71%, and the 2080 Ti at 0.91%. I fear NVidia bean counters are going to read that as 1 in 4 high end gamers are willing to blow $1200 on a GPU that's substantially faster than the $700ish card. I'm hoping that what will happen is that sales of the 3080 (or whatever the $600-800 card ends up being called) will be more like the 10xx series, 2-3x what the 2080 sold, while the $1200 3090 continues to sit at less than a percent; showing it's not that as a whole we're more willing to buy crazy expensive cards than we were before, but rather that people willing to blow that much on a card were more willing to upgrade even when the performance gains were much less than normal.

 

[Snowdog]

That image is so heavily obfuscated it could be almost anything. It's a picture of 11 RAM chips on a board...

Taken at face value it's 11 RAM chips on the back of a GPU, given that the cooler is on the other side of the board, the Intel CPU isn't covering the die. It's covering the surface mount components on the back of the board behind the die, nothing complex that requires cooling. Given the freak out to obscure everything but the RAM chips, I guess the same applies to the likely generic caps/resistors that typically reside on the back of board behind the GPU die.

Why 11 RAM chips on the back? That would imply it's a 22GB card, and needing more room for the RAM chips.

 

[Grebuloner]

given that the cooler is on the other side of the board, the Intel CPU isn't covering the die. It's covering the surface mount components on the back of the board behind the die, nothing complex that requires cooling

Reading from other sites suggests it's that new separate secret chip whose name I can't remember (C something?) from a rumor a few months ago.

 

[Snowdog]

Reading from other sites suggests it's that new separate secret chip whose name I can't remember (C something?) from a rumor a few months ago.

There was an YT clickbait channel that claimed there would be a Ray Tracing coprocessor on the back. He claimed this not because there was a leak, but because he speculated that was why the leaked cooler looked strange.

It makes ZERO sense to put any significant active heat generating component on the back the board. A Ray Tracing co-processor would be a very significant active heat generating component.

 

[jeremyshaw]

There was an YT clickbait channel that claimed there would be a Ray Tracing coprocessor on the back. He claimed this not because there was a leak, but because he speculated that was why the leaked cooler looked strange.

It makes ZERO sense to put any significant active heat generating component on the back the board. A Ray Tracing co-processor would be a very significant active heat generating component.

Yeah, makes a lot more sense for something like a RAMDAC (not really a RAMDAC, just a modern version of it). It would neatly explain away why the GA100 die is supposedly lacking video outputs, something Nvidia hasn't done on any of their GPU silicon, afaik.

Or, large, flat package inductors (used as chokes?), like what Intel is now doing on their latest Ice Lake (afaik, I have to double check this) CPUs as a form of on package VRMs. They would look like medium sized ICs placed either on package or extremely close to it.


Also, might as well get ahead of the Micron "leak." Just look to the column on the left. Titan RTX and 5700XT with 384bit bus and 12GB? Don't read too much into it, other than "GDDR6X exists."