[The Exiled]

nVidia's Next-Gen reference cooler Costs $150 by itself, to feature in three SKUs

Pictures of alleged next-generation GeForce "Ampere" graphics cards emerged over the weekend, which many of our readers found hard to believe. It features a dual-fan cooling solution, in which one of the two fans is on the reverse side of the card, blowing air outward from the cooling solution, while the PCB extends two-thirds the length of the card. Since then, there have been several fan-made 3D renders of the card. nVidia is not happy with the leak, and started an investigation into two of its contractors responsible for manufacturing Founders Edition (reference design) GeForce graphics cards, Foxconn and BYD (Build Your Dreams), according to a report by Igor's Lab.

According to the report, the cooling solution, which looks a lot more overengineered than the company's RTX 20-series Founders Edition cooler, costs a hefty USD $150, or roughly the price of a 280 mm AIO CLC. The cooler consists of several interconnected heatsink elements with the PCB in the middle. Igor's Lab reports that the card is estimated to be 21.9 cm in length. Given its cost, nVidia is reserving this cooler for only the top three SKUs in the lineup, the TITAN RTX successor, the RTX 2080 Ti successor, and the RTX 2080/SUPER successor. All three will use the same cooling solution, and a common PCB design codenamed PG132. Further, all three cards will be based on a common ASIC, codenamed "GA102," with varying hardware specs. When launched, "Ampere" could be the first implementation of the new GDDR6X memory standard, which could come with data-rates above even the 16 Gbps of today's GDDR6, likely in the 18-20 Gbps range, if not more. Lesser SKUs could use current-gen GDDR6 memory at data-rates of up to 16 Gbps.

• The "SKU10" could ditch the TITAN brand to carry the model name "GeForce RTX 3090," max out the 384-bit wide memory bus of the GA102 ASIC, and feature a whopping 24 GB of GDDR6X memory, with 350 W typical board power.

• The next SKU, the SK20 will likely feature the RTX 3080 Ti brandingr, will be cut down from SKU10. It will feature 11 GB of GDDR6X memory across a 352-bit wide memory interface, and have a 320 W typical board power rating.

• Lastly, there's the SKU30, which is further cut-down, features 10 GB of GDDR6X memory across a 320-bit wide memory interface, and it bears the RTX 3080 model number, succeeding the RTX 2080 / RTX 2080 Super.

Izvor: TechPowerUp