Nvidia's RTX 4080 GPU suddenly breaks cover in show-all spy shot

(Image credit: Nvidia)

published 14 September 2022

It seems the successor to the GeForce RTX 3080 is nearly here: a flurry of new leaks around the GeForce RTX 4000 series suggest that a launch is imminent, with some sources suggesting the big reveal will be on September 20 with shipping beginning in late October or early November.

The latest leaks show fully manufactured RTX 4080s in various packaging and on pallets and, while there's some debate over the veracity of some pictures –apparently the typography seems a bit off on some – the latest images have convinced our friends at Techradar that we're looking at the real thing. If so, the next few weeks are going to be really interesting as the 4000 Series makes a last-minute entry into the best graphics cards for 2022 and beyond.

Nvidia RTX 4080: what we expect to see

Last months' Nvidia leaks suggested that the RTX 4080 is going to come with 16GB of GDDR6X with 23Gbps video memory, and that the card's TBP (Total Board Power) demand will be 340W. That's an improvement over previously rumoured specifications, which suggested that the 4080 was only getting 21Gbps VRAM. And in the current climate a 340W power demand is a lot better than the 420W suggested in earlier rumours: more power means more money going on bills instead of on new games and hardware.

We're excited by this because if the latest rumours are accurate, PC owners aren't going to need to splash out on a massive new PSU to power the latest generation of Nvidia RTX cards. And with the semiconductor shortage fading away and Bitcoin-related shortages largely a thing of the past too, these cards should be a lot easier to get your hands on than during the great GPU shortage of recent years. That's sad news for scalpers but brilliant news for the rest of us.

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).