The rumour comes by way of the Igor Wallossek, founder of German tech site, Igor’s Lab. Who wrote that sources close to them said that NVIDIA is currently in the Design Validation Test phase with the alleged RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 graphics cards. Based on a chart he prepared as well, the cards should technically enter into the Production Validation Test (PVT) phase sometime during the end of next month and the beginning of August. From the looks of it, this process – along with the following two procedures – isn’t going to take up too much of NVIDIA’s time, thus technically allowing the company to enter the Mass Production phase of the cards within the month of August.
At a glance, the timing of all this seems a bit rushed. However, getting out working units – both to the media and consumers – by September is important to NVIDIA for a number of reasons. Firstly, September is the period when the GPU maker and its rival, AMD, typically begin their annual head-butting contest in graphics fidelity. Of course, the stakes are even higher for NVIDIA this year because AMD’s next-generation, high-end, RDNA2-powered Radeon GPUs are expected to come with hardware support for real-time ray-tracing and variable rate shading. Thus, putting the two on a level playing field.
Also, a September launch would also prove beneficial for NVIDIA in regards to one particular title that’s launching in the same month: CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077. On another note, Wallossek also hinted at the possibility of second heatsink design for the Founders Edition of the cards. Leading us to believe that NVIDIA is testing these designs to see which of the two offers better performance. In any case, the alleged production timelines are just hearsay at this point, so it’s best to treat them with a fairly liberal dose of scepticism, at least until NVIDIA makes an announcement of sorts. (Source: Igor’s Lab via Techspot)
