Nvidia set to release 'Super' RTX graphics cards in response to AMD's Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 launch

It always pays to keep something in reserve…

Nvidia is planning to release a range of ‘Super' RTX graphics cards in response to AMD's well-received launch of the Radeon RX 5700-series earlier this week. The shake-up is also expected to include price cuts to the current range of RTX 2060, 2070 and 2080 graphics cards.

It follows leaks at the end of May indicating that Nvidia planned a shake-up for its flagship GPUs in June. Now, specialist PC hardware sites are indicating that Nvidia could make its move as early as next week. The Videocardz website claims to have independently confirmed imminent plans to launch the Super series of graphics cards.

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WCCFTech, meanwhile, claims that Nvidia is about "to unleash all its fury in one sweeping lineup change" with a launch that will confirm suspicions that the company was holding back when it unveiled the RTX range back in August 2018, as well as pinning as high a price as it could on the cards.

Nvidia's RTX range is the first to offer ray-tracing technology for consumer graphics cards. At launch, it comfortably out-performed AMD's RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64 flagship cards.

WCCFTech continued: "Rumours had stated that only the 2060, 2070 and 2080 were going to get Super versions and they were going to be refreshes - let's just say that's not even half of the story… I can confirm that the Super series is very much a new line-up in its own right and contains a new flagship: The RTX 2080 Ti Super (yes, even the 2080 Ti is getting a Super version)."

The Super series is very much a new line-up in its own right and contains a new flagship: The RTX 2080 Ti Super

The launch, it suggested, has been pencilled in for 21^st June, with existing cards to be slashed in price to accommodate the new Super RTX cards in Nvidia's line-up. However, the RTX TI Super branded cards will only become available later in the year, months after the non-TI Super RTX cards.

In terms of ‘unleashing fury', Nvidia has designed a completely new chip for its RTX 2080 Ti Super, which will be available to add-in board (AIB) manufacturers, such as Asus and MSI, unlocked. This means they could crank up the wattage to as high as 300 watts in order to maximise performance, heat dissipation notwithstanding.

The move from Nvidia comes in response to the launch of the Radeon RX 5700 series and, in particular, AMD's new RDNA architecture, the micro-architecture code-named ‘Navi'. The launch last week was arguably better received than Navi's predecessor, Vega, which failed to dent Nvidia's performance lead while consuming considerably more power and, therefore, running somewhat warm.

AMD claims a 1.25-times increase in performance per clock cycle and a one-and-a-half times increase in performance per watt for Navi over Vega. Further lowering costs and improving competitiveness, AMD has also dropped HBM video memory for more standard GDDR6 with Navi.

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