Rumor mill: While an increasing number of leaks hint at the upcoming RTX 3090's specs, we're still in the dark about its price. But a slew of recent rumors could give an idea of how much it'll cost. Spoiler: a lot, from $1,499 right up to an eye-watering $2,000.
It was last week when Micron's tech briefing revealed some details of what will presumably be Nvidia's 3000-series flagship. It's listed as having 12 GDDR6X modules, 19-21 Gb/s/pin, 76-84 GB/s/placement, 912-1008 GB/s/system and a total frame buffer of 12 GB. "At 21 GB/s, a graphics card with 12 pcs of GDDR6X will be able to break the 1 TB/s of system bandwidth barrier!" states Micron's brief.
It's obvious that such power isn't going to come cheap, but the RTX 3090 could be even more than expected. Chiphell forum user Wjm47196, who has a history of revealing accurate details ahead of time, believes its starting price will be $1,399, with the Founders Edition $100 extra at $1,499. That would make it costlier than the RTX 2080 Ti, which started at around $999 and had a Founders Edition priced at $1,199.
Another leak comes from what is alleged to be an internal memo. It claims that the RTX 3090 will be ¥1,3999 in Chinese yuan---about $2,000!
While the Micron leak has the RTX 3090 down as having 12GB of GDDR6X, other rumors claim the card will have a massive 24GB of blazing-fast memory. Should the latter prove true, that could mean Nvidia is positioning the RTX 3090 as a direct successor to the Titan RTX, which has 24GB of GDDR6 and costs $2,499. If that is the case, $2,000 would be the more likely selling price of the RTX 3090.
Whether $1,499 or $2,000, it seems the RTX 3090 is going to be a wallet crusher. What that means for the RTX 3080 isn't clear, but here's hoping it's cheaper than expected---a recent database entry listed the card's 10GB of GDDR6X and 2.1GHz maximum clock speed. All should become clearer when Nvidia's Ampere event arrives on September 1.