The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, formerly one of the best graphics cards, has a long-lost sibling that never debuted on the market. However, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16GB, which we’ve seen in multiple EEC listings, seems real or at least has existed for some time.
Hardware leaker MEGAsizeGPU (opens in new tab) has shared some photographs and a GPU-Z screenshot of what appears to be the unreleased GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16GB. It’s a little confusing, though. The pictures show a GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition. The design and the model name on the backplate confirm it.
However, the GPU-Z screenshot reveals the specifications for the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti but with 16GB of GDDR6 memory instead of 8GB. From the looks of it, we suspect that a manufacturer had recycled the GeForce RTX 3070 cooler for this specific GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16GB. However, we’ve already seen user mods that increase the GeForce RTX 3070’s memory capacity twice fold, so we wouldn’t be surprised if this GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16GB is a laboratory experiment from someone’s garage.
The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16GB is still on the GA104 (Ampere) silicon, the same one used in the vanilla GeForce RTX 3070 Ti. It still wields 6,144 CUDA cores in conjunction with 192 Tensor cores and 48 RT cores. However, the clock speeds are seemingly different. While the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has a 1,575 MHz base clock and 1,770 MHz boost clock, the never-before-seen 16GB variant sports a 1,590 MHz base clock and 1,800 MHz boost clock.
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As the name implies, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16GB has double the memory of the original GeForce RTX 3070 Ti. However, the memory modules are different, according to the leaked GPU-Z screenshot. All this time, we thought that the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16GB would use the same GDDR6X memory modules as the regular variant. However, the GPU-Z screenshot says otherwise. Instead, the 16GB model allegedly uses much slower GDDR6 memory modules.
The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has 19 Gbps GDDR6X memory modules that communicate across a 256-bit interface to supply a memory bandwidth of up to 608 GBps. On the other hand, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16GB reportedly has 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory modules. However, since it retains the 256-bit memory bus, the graphics card only delivers 512 GBps of memory bandwidth.
While the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16GB has slightly faster clock speeds and double the memory capacity, the Ampere graphics card offers lower memory bandwidth than the 8GB model. Sadly, we’ve never seen any leaked benchmarks for the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16GB, so its performance remains a mystery.