Nvidia reportedly cancels RTX 3080 20GB and RTX 3070 16GB, two cards that may never have existed

Rumour suggests two planned yet unreleased Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics cards, the RTX 3080 20GB and RTX 3070 16GB, have been cancelled—if they ever existed at all. 

According to two sources speaking with VideoCardz, Nvidia has decided to scrap two graphics cards that were reportedly works in progress. Now, this one is a bit up in the air considering not only is the cancellation a rumour, but the mere existence of the two graphics cards was also only loosely suspected from previous hearsay.

There were actually three cards roughly proposed at one time or another: the RTX 3080 20GB, RTX 3070 16GB, and RTX 3070 Ti 16GB. The confirmed RTX 3080 comes with 10GB of GDDR6X memory today (if you can find one in stock) and the RTX 3070 will launch with 8GB of GDDR6 come October 29.

And why so much memory? The proposed change has been often linked to AMD's incoming RX 6000 series GPUs, built on the RDNA 2 architecture. The high-end cards has been all but officially confirmed to feature 16GB of GDDR6 memory, and thus would've offered a memory buffer advantage over Nvidia's comparative lineup. That all depends on whether AMD could meet Nvidia in both price and performance, however, neither of which has been confirmed as of yet.

A subsequent cancellation of Nvidia's cards could be seen as a sign of Nvidia's relative calm in the face of the RX 6000 series, but that's not the only working theory. For one, it could be that Nvidia is simply waiting until a later date, or Super lineup, to release higher memory specifications. It could also be scared of weakening the prospect of the RTX 3090, which itself comes with 24GB of GDDR6X memory.

Or the whole thing has been entirely fabricated somewhere down the line. Those we've spoken to at graphics card manufacturers have no knowledge of either 20GB or 16GB card in the works, meaning either Nvidia was playing this one incredibly close to the chest or they never existed to begin with. Call it a conspiracy theory, but I wouldn't be all that surprised to find out Nvidia was just jebaiting AMD with the whole 20GB/16GB thing.

There are a lot of loose threads with this one, but it's entertaining enough to speculate on what could've happened to these fabled cards. You can at least be sure that there's bound to be more jostling in the graphics card market once we know where both the RTX 30-series and RX 6000 series land.