Welcome to the weekly summary of news from the world of hardware.
You will learn the most important things that happened in the past week, from all sorts of leaks to the release of new products.
You can look forward to it every Saturday at 20:00.
RTX 3060 and RTX 3080 Ti may already be on CES 2021
We recently announced that AMD is preparing a conference at CES, which will traditionally take place in early January, this time only digitally due to the situation in the world. Now rival Nvidia has come up with a similar report. GeForce Vice President Jeff Fisher will speak at her conference. The event will take place on January 12 at 18:00 Central European Time, which is exactly one hour after the start of the AMD conference, so let’s hope they don’t overlap.
And what could we see at the event? It looks like we could be introduced to the RTX 3060 graphics card, which is currently rumored to be available in two variants, similar to the GTX 1060 at the time, which was available in 3 GB and 6 GB versions. The RTX 3060 should come out with a version with 12 GB of VRAM, and later a 6 GB variant should also arrive later. Interestingly, if that’s true, the card will have more VRAM than the much more powerful RTX 3080. The release is also relatively close. The first variant with 12 GB of VRAM could be released shortly after the probable announcement at CES, but the version with 6 GB will allegedly be released in February / March, possibly later.
The second card, which has been speculated about for some time, is the RTX 3080 Ti. It should come with 20 GB of VRAM and should perform similarly to the RTX 3090. So it will be the answer to the competing RX 6900 XT from AMD. However, the release date is uncertain. It originally looked like January, but we may not see it until February, if not later.
Mark your calendars!
Join us as we unveil the latest innovations in gaming and graphics on January 12, 2021 at 9AM PST!
Learn more ???? https://t.co/Xfa6YuPVOk#UltimatePlay pic.twitter.com/wi1imnWiGT
– NVIDIA GeForce (@NVIDIAGeForce) December 16, 2020
Speculation about the RTX 3000 Super and RTX 4000
The Korean magazine reported that Nvidia has entered into another agreement with Samsung, which is currently having chips for the RTX 3000 series graphics cards manufactured on an 8nm process. The agreement was allegedly concluded on December 17. There is a lot of speculation about a possible Super refresh, which we have already seen in the case of the RTX 2000 series. But we do not have any more detailed information yet.
And although the RTX 3000 series has only been on the market for several months, speculation is also beginning on the RTX 4000 series, which should also be produced by Samsung, this time on a 5nm process. Architecture should not be called Hopper, a name that has been talked about a few months ago, but Lovelace. Probably according to the British mathematician Augusta Ada Byron, who lived in the 19th century and is known as Ada Lovelace.
The case around Nvidia and the Hardware Unboxed channel
We will focus on Nvidia in the latest innovation, but this time it is very specific. It mainly concerns the YT channel Hardware Unboxed, which we mention quite often here. It focuses on reviews of processors, graphics cards, but recently also monitors. A somewhat strange situation occurred with the issue of the RTX 3060 card, when they did not receive a reference model and had to obtain non-reference cards from AIB manufacturers. At first it seemed like nothing serious, but after a few days they received an email directly from Nvidia stating that they would not receive any more graphics cards for reviews because they allegedly “focus little on ray-tracing” in their videos. . That’s really true, however, Steve, the main face of this channel, has long argued that ray-tracing currently takes so much performance in games that it doesn’t even make sense to focus on it, and fans are still mainly interested in rasterization performance, as evidenced survey. The email further stated that Nvidia “may reconsider its position if the approach (of the Hardware Unboxed channel) changes.”
It was clear that Nvidia had crossed the line here and not only fans of the Hardware Unboxed channel were upset, but also other YT channels focusing on hardware, led by the most famous one called Linus Tech Tips. After such great outrage from various reviewers who expressed support for the Hardware Unboxed channel, Nvidia finally decided to change its original position and will continue to send reference graphics cards. The Hardware Unboxed channel then released video, where Steve describes his opinion on the whole situation, and also published an apologetic email received from a representative of Nvidia:
Hi, Steve
Thanks for the message. I want to apologize again for my original email.
I really crossed the line.
I like to see all the different ways our products are tested, and I appreciate your work.
Stopping sending you cards for reviews is simply inexcusable, and we have exceeded all limits.
I have disappointed myself, my colleagues and the whole community of reviewers that I consider to be my friends.
You all work hard and deserve a better approach than this one.
I hope that you will forgive me for this mistake and give me the opportunity to continue working with you.
It would be great if you shared this message to let the fans know how I feel.
Thank you,
Bryan Del Rizzo
–
