New Geekbench results for the RTX 3080 Ti show it performing as well or better than the $1,500 RTX 3090. The result, uploaded in the early hours of the morning on Thursday, would put the RTX 3080 Ti in between the top two results on the Geekbench CUDA leaderboard — and the top two slots are held by the RTX 3090.
“Would” is the operative word there because, although the results are valid, they aren’t on the leaderboard yet. The RTX 3080 Ti achieved a CUDA score of 238,603, placing it well ahead of the second place RTX 3090 at 236,941 but only slightly below the first place result at 239,003.
Aside from performance, the filing confirms some key specs about the RTX 3080 Ti. The card will launch with 12GB of video memory and come with 80 multiprocessors. That’s a significant jump from the RTX 3080, which has 68 multiprocessors. By way of contrast, the RTX 3090 has 82 multiprocessors. 80 multiprocessors translates into 10,240 CUDA cores, which is only 256 less than the RTX 3090.
In addition to the RTX 3080 Ti, the test machine features an Intel Core i9-11900K and 32GB of RAM, so the result should represent a modern, high-end gaming PC. That said, this is only a single result, and Geekbench is usually used to test processors, not graphics cards. Furthermore, the CUDA score only matters for Nvidia cards. AMD cards don’t have CUDA cores, and therefore, aren’t on the leaderboard.
Still, gamers have a lot to be excited about. The RTX 3080 Ti will reportedly launch with Nvidia’s new Lite Hash Rate (LHR) GPU core. This updated GPU uses the same underlying Ampere architecture and provides the same performance, but it limits the hash rate for mining Ethereum. That should curb some of the demand from cryptocurrency miners, who have become a driving force of revenue for Nvidia over the past year.
By all accounts, the RTX 3080 Ti is an RTX 3090 with half of the video memory. Although Nvidia hasn’t officially announced the card, a bevy of leaks and rumors all but confirm the card exists. We expect Nvidia to announce the card during its Computex 2021 keynote. The keynote begins at 10 p.m. PT on Monday, May 31. Rumors suggest the review embargo will lift a couple of days later on June 2, with an official street date of June 3. The RTX 3080 Ti is expected to cost $999.
