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Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti spotted: Are we close to a release date?

Monica J. White
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A new graphics card PCB listing has been spotted on the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) website, and it’s possible that this is the printed circuit board (PCB) for Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 3090 Ti graphics card.

If this proves to be true, this could mean good news for the card, which is yet to receive a release date — but it also implies that the release date may not be as close as we hoped.

The new RTX 3090 Ti graphics card.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Mysterious at first glance, the EEC listing (first found by harukaze5719 on Twitter) makes sense when looked at closely. The item listed is an Nvidia product referred to as PG136C. This is very close to Nvidia’s previous reference numbers for its board designs. The number of the PCB for Nvidia’s RTX 3090 Founders Edition is PG136, while PG132 is the PCB for all of the RTX 3090 graphics cards made by Nvidia’s board partners.

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Other than their intended use, the PCBs vary by design and power connectors. The PG136 PCB had a V-shaped design, much different from the rectangular PG132, and the PG136 had a new 12-pin power connector while the PG132 sports dual 8-pin connectors.

Following that lead suggests that this could be a refreshed version of Nvidia’s own RTX 3090 or, which is perhaps more likely, the listed PCB belongs to the upcoming RTX 3090 Ti. The new PG136C PCB would likely bring additional changes if it was the RTX 3090 Ti, likely changing the 12-pin connector to a 12+4 design. VideoCardz also notes that Nvidia would no longer need to use both sides of the PCB for memory due to the switch to 2GB GDDR6X memory modules.

Assuming that the listing indeed refers to the RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition, this could mean that the design stage for the PCB is 100% complete. It’s unlikely that Nvidia would have the PCB listed in the EEC if it had any further changes planned for it. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the rumored issues with the card have all been resolved.

The road to the release of RTX 3090 Ti has been quite rocky so far. Nvidia officially unveiled the RTX 3090 Ti during CES 2022 alongside the budget RTX 3050. While the latter has already been launched, the former is still left up in the air. Rumors from various sources suggest that Nvidia asked all of its board partners to halt the production of the GPU. This could be due to the graphics card allegedly having power issues and problems with the BIOS.

NVIDIA PG136Chttps://t.co/qAutBOgWCB

— 포시포시 (@harukaze5719) February 10, 2022

Nvidia promised to talk about the GPU during the month of January, but we’re almost halfway through February and no word has been said by the company. While the EEC listing marks an important step for the GPU, the release date still remains unclear.

PC hardware is often found through the EEC and then leaked to the public because of that, such as these Biostar motherboards for the Intel Raptor Lake platform. However, there is no set amount of time between the listing and the actual release of the product — this seems to vary on a case-by-case basis. As an example, the aforementioned motherboards leaked months ahead of their release, and the company denied the accuracy of the listing. Similarly, listings for the RTX 3080 Ti have been found in January 2021, and the card itself was released in June 2021.

If we’re looking at a similar pattern as the RTX 3080 Ti, it’s possible that the upcoming king of the best graphics cards will not hit the shelves for another few months. On the other hand, with Nvidia’s plans to release the next-generation RTX 4000 graphics cards in 2022, there is not that much time for the company to release the RTX 3090 Ti and give it enough time to shine. All that remains is to hope for Nvidia to speak up on the matter and announce the official release date for the card sometime soon.

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Monica J. White
Monica J. White
Computing Writer
Monica is a UK-based freelance writer and self-proclaimed geek. A firm believer in the "PC building is just like expensive…
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