The rumour mill is in full swing, with a well-known leaker suggesting that Nvidia may be launching an RTX 3090 Super this year, which would offer GA102 core counts and a faster memory speed than the current flagship card.

It's funny to me that Nvidia is still knocking out new SKUs of cards, allegedly, when most folks still haven't gotten their hands on the existing offerings, but whatever the case, it seems to be working for them. The leak suggests that the new Super version of the 3090 will have the maximum number of cores and memory speed that the current architecture will be capable of, although as for if it'll happen or not, it's firmly in the "maybe" camp.

It wouldn't be a huge uplift either, with only around a 2.4% increase in performance compared to the existing RTX 3090. It'll be pushing the GA102 to its limits, too. If it's true, then the card will likely already be in production, although so far there's no evidence to corroborate the claims or proof that the card actually exists yet.

I imagine it'll be at a hefty markup too. Surprisingly, it may also lack the NVLink bridge, which has been exclusive to the 3090 so far this generation. Running in SLI is not really a thing for gamers these days, but it suggests that this card may be aimed at the gaming segment of the market, interestingly enough.

The main reason to even consider this, if true, would be the VRAM improvements. It'll feature faster speeds, 21 Gbps vs. the current 19.5 Gbps of the 3090 on the chips, meaning the card could push around one terabyte per second if true. That's a lot of memory bandwidth. All this adds up to a modest improvement in performance at best, though.

And worse still, the card will be power-hungry, with rumours suggesting it'll be around 100W more demanding than the RTX 3090, clocking in at around 450W total.

This is a card for the extreme enthusiasts then, assuming it actually exists at all. It's a curious proposition, given the shortage of silicon right now, so I don't expect these to be available in huge numbers either.

We'll be sure to report on any further news as we learn it.