Rumor mill: We know that Nvidia is going to launch its Ampere-based RTX 3000 graphics cards this year, but it hasn't yet revealed when. According to a new report, they will arrive sometime in the third quarter, and add-in board partners are already clearing stock in preparation.
The claim comes from a now deleted China Times post, which stated that three new generations of Ampere cards would arrive in the second half of the third quarter, so we might see them launch sometime around September.
It's presumed that Nvidia will repeat what it did with the RTX 2000-series cards and reveal the RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3080, and RTX 3070 first, with the RTX 3060 following quite a few months later.
The report also alleges that Taiwan manufacturers Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI are trying to clear their stock of current Nvidia cards. In the case of Asus, it has cut the price of the RTX 2060 to NT$10,000, or around US$330, while the RTX 2080 is down to NT$16,000, or US$538.
It's important to take the report with a grain of salt, especially as it's been deleted. However, the third quarter of the year is when many expect Ampere to launch, mostly because it's presumed that the Covid-19 disruption will be (hopefully) gone by that time.
We'll find out about Ampere and Nvidia's plans for its new architecture in two weeks from today, when the company will deliver a keynote at its annual Graphics Technology Conference (GTC) that has the byline "get amped."