There's nothing quite as exciting as a new graphics card announcement. Even early rumors are enough to make enthusiasts pay attention, and that's exactly what we have here with the NVIDIA RTX 4080 Ti. It's no surprise that NVIDIA would plan such a GPU, since the precedence is there with previous generations (GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, anyone?). The RTX 4080 Ti—or alternatively an RTX 4080 "Super"—may be shaping up to be an interesting release. There are some reasons why it will not simply be just another gap filler.
First, it brings some performance differentiators to the lineup that help alleviate some pressure from potential future competition. According to Videocardz, it could be packing "20GB of GDDR6X" memory - landing it smack dab in the middle of the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090. As gamers have found out recently, many new titles like The Last of Us Part 1 are VRAM hungry at higher resolutions. More VRAM also allows NVIDIA to better compete with AMD's high-end offerings, such as the 7900 XTX, which comes with more VRAM out of the box but undercut the RTX 4080's price.
RTX 4080 Cooler can be big, and the 4080 Ti will likely be similar
We should expect the AD102 GPU RTX 4090 to bare more similarities with the RTX 4080 Ti, which may also be an AD102 GPU. What does this mean for potential power draw? While the mighty RTX 4090 has a 450W TDP, it's still unknown where a potential RTX 4080 Ti would land, but we'd guess slightly less (and likely above the AD103 GPU RTX 4080's 320W TDP). Given the fact that the RTX 4090 has almost overpowered performance, a slightly less powerful RTX 4080 Ti still sounds tremendously performant. We'd also expect similar air cooler sizes as to the existing RTX 4090, although no designs have yet been seen.
Here's the big game changer if it's true: price. If NVIDIA prices the RTX 4080 Ti close to or at the $1,199 MSRP of the current RTX 4080, that's significant. First, that means the existing RTX 4080 will get a price cut, potentially by a few hundred dollars. Gamers seem adverse to purchasing it now at the current price, so this would increase its value-to-performance.
Secondly, a cheaper "4090-like" GPU with beefy specs will allow NVIDIA to dominate the $1,000 and over price point absolutely. AMD's 7900 XTX can normally be found for well under its $999 MSRP, so there is no competition for NVIDIA above that price point. The question that everyone also wants to know is "When is it coming out?" While we don't know dates, rumors indicate an early 2024 release is possible.