Ampere Discussion Thread

[SteelCrysis]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia...ng-at-home

Inadvertently, the folks behind Folding@Home might have just confirmed the RTX 3050's existence, along with the GPU it is built on: the GA107. The information comes from a GPU support list that comes with the latest installation — information that was right on our PCs and may have flown under the radar if it weren't spotted by Redditor u/TrueTech0.
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In addition to a plethora of Nvidia GPUs, the list also mentions a few AMD GPUs. The most notable entries here are the RTX 3080 Ti, 20GB RTX 3080, RTX 3070 Ti, Mobile RTX 3070 Max-Q, RTX 3060, Mobile RTX 3070 16GB (Max-Q), RTX 3060, RTX 3060 Max-Q, and the RTX 3050. A Turing-based Quadro RTX 3000 mobile GPU also stands out as a bit of an oddity, along with a presumably placeholder GA103 (which as far as we know doesn't exist and likely never will). The only new AMD parts (besides the already launched Navi 21 chips) are the Navi 22 and Navi 23 entries.
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Stepping up one tier, the RTX 3060 is supposed feature the GA106 GPU in both 6GB and 12GB variants. Currently missing from the list is the RTX 3050 Ti, which given all the other model numbers floating around in Nvidia land seems like a sure thing. It could feature a cut-back GA106 GPU that didn't make it to binning full RTX 3060s. Intriguingly, there's an RTX 3060 Engineering Sample listed as well, using the GA104 GPU. Depending on yields and other factors, we may see different RTX 3060 models in the future (e.g., similar to the RTX 2060 variants that used TU104).

For now, we wouldn't read too much into these entries. There's a lot to digest, but without any official word, there's a good chance that at least some of the information is simply a placeholder for potential future releases. AMD and Nvidia also do internal testing of GPUs that end up not getting a public release, which is particularly applicable to the Engineering Samples.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-ta...ceincrease

If you were upset about miners impacting demand for the already-short-in-supply graphics cards, brace yourself for today's news: China tariff exemptions that expired with the new year (via New York Times) mean that, among other products, GPU pricing will increase significantly (as noted on Reddit).

So far, Asus has already confirmed it needs to raise GPU and motherboard prices due to logistical complications and import tariffs, and other GPU vendors, including Zotac, MSI, EVGA, and Gigabyte, are likely to follow suit, or are already doing so silently. In fact, pricing on several families of third-party GPUs from those GPU makers has gone up in the last few days.
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Naturally, supply issues in GPU land don't help, and while tariffs certainly play a part, there's more going on than just import taxes. With COVID, international shipping costs have risen significantly due to reduced international passenger transport, and labor costs have also increased due to other logistical expenses, like employee shortages due to lockdowns and sick leave.

Many will opine that the tariffs situation could also be used as a scapegoat to increase MSRPs in the midst of the PC hardware shortage, especially when you consider that GPU prices are on the rise globally and not only in the US.

In the short run, Q1 and Q2 are likely to be rough quarters for hardware prices. The goal of these tariffs is to increase production in the US and increase local employment and decrease reliance on imported goods. Manufacturers could ship almost-finished products to the US and finish assembly and packaging locally to attempt to defray the impact of these steep import taxes, but this would take years and be more expensive than tariff-exempt imports, and it isn't a panacea. The catch is, most of the components in the supply chain are also impacted by the tariffs, which are applied as those components are shipped out of China. Because the tariffs only apply to goods shipped from China to the US, companies are more likely to reroute manufacturing to other low-cost labor countries to avoid the fees.

https://www.techpowerup.com/276790/nvidi...c-pictured

NVIDIA is reportedly preparing a new GeForce RTX 30-series SKU positioned around the RTX 3060 Ti and the RTX 3070, as the company looks to fine-tune its lineup against the Radeon RX 6700 series. Called the GeForce RTX 3060 Ultra, the SKU is reportedly carved out from the same 8 nm "GA104" silicon as the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070; but with a different core-configuration, and 12 GB of GDDR6 memory. At this point, it is not known if the memory bus width is narrowed to 192-bit, or if the same 256-bit wide memory bus is used (with mixed memory chip density). WCCFTech posted a picture of the first custom-design RTX 3060 Ultra card, an ASUS TUF Gaming product, which it reports to be faster than the RTX 3060 Ti. The publication also reports the card's MSRP pricing to be USD $449.