RTX 3080 Ti leaks have us questioning potential cryptocurrency mining limiters

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Sources have revealed the first photograph of the upcoming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, further confirming its existence, and hopefully its imminent launch in what multiple sources suggest will be May. Immediately following the first concrete proof of the chip's existence, performance numbers have begun to surface featuring none other than—you guessed it—cryptocurrency hash rates.

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What's interesting is that, while we were under the impression that the refreshed Ampere cards may be coming with hash rate limiters, it appears someone didn't get the memo.

The screenshots VideoCardz has acquired (through unnamed sources) show the RTX 3080 Ti, based on Ampere GA102-225 GPU architecture, with an Ethernet mining hash rate of 118.9 MH/s. Those numbers come after some optimisations, however, with the TDP reduced to 278W and the memory clock at 21.4 Gbps.

For context, the RTX 3080 manages 97MH/s at 250W draw, so we're looking at 22.6 percent more mining power for only a slight uptick in power draw. These kinds of numbers will see cryptocurrency miners flooding to webstores come May—that is not a hash rate to be sniffed at.

These leaks could point to the rumours of hash rate limiters coming to the full house of 30-series cards being nothing but hot air. Though, we've come to trust the word of the leaker who suggested it, so it may be that the sample in question was tested before the supposed limiters were added.

Either way, it seems we're now looking at 1365MHz base and 1665 MHz boost clocks for the RTX 3080 Ti. That places it well below the RTX 3080 but with more cores to boot. The 12GB GDDR6X memory being set to 1188MHz by default further confirms 19 Gbps speeds to match Nvidia's current flagship model, but, again, there's more of it.

This kind of graphics power is expected to set prospective buyers back by $999, that is, if the resellers don't get there first.

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Having been obsessed with game mechanics, computers and graphics for three decades, Katie took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni and has been writing about digital games, tabletop games and gaming technology for over five years since. She can be found facilitating board game design workshops and optimising everything in her path.