Nvidia's September 1 GeForce Special Event to 'usher in a new era' of Ampere GPU. But will it really be a GeForce RTX 3080?

The green team is surely ushering in "a new era" of Nvidia Ampere-based cards at the GeForce Special Event kicking off at 9am PT on September 1 this year. And not August 31, as yesterday's 21 days tease seemed to suggest. Numbers are hard, just ask the mildly dyscalculic Titan V. The event is set to feature an address by Nvidia's leather-clad CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang.

"During the event," we're told, "Huang will highlight the company's latest innovations in gaming and graphics."

So yeah, either this is the new Nvidia Ampere reveal or we're being trolled with some more games getting added to GeForce NOW. Again the countdown site harks back to the halcyon days of 1999, when the company launched what it calls the 'world's first GPU' in the GeForce 256. And actually launched the whole GeForce brand.

The event page reads: "21 days. 21 years. Before we enter the future, join us to celebrate the biggest breakthroughs in PC gaming since 1999. And what comes next."

Nvidia's social media accounts are now going into nostalgia overdrive as it posts its favourite memories spanning the last 21 years "as a tribute to PC Gaming" with each day featuring a new year in order up until we get to 2019 on August 31. Because on September 1 Nvidia says it's going to "usher in a new era."

I'm going to take a punt now. We're not going to see an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080. We're going to see something with an entirely different name (that will essentially be what we've all been guessing the RTX 3080 is going to be). After all, the GeForce 256 graphics card ushered in the GeForce era, maybe Ampere is going to usher in something else. 

Though given the fact it's called a GeForce Special Event I guess Nvidia is unlikely to be ditching that brand name...

However it ends up turning out, you can tune in to watch the event live on September 1, 2020 at 9am Pacific, 5pm UK time.