We’ve long known that Nvidia has a GeForce RTX focused event coming up on January 12, and while we’ve always suspected it involves the RTX 3060 GPU and RTX 30 mobile chipsets, the company has all but confirmed some of the contents in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it teaser video on Twitter.
For a nine-second video, there’s a surprising amount you can glean from it, so here’s a full breakdown. First, though, the video itself:
GeForce RTX: Game OnJanuary 12 at 9AM PSTTune in via Twitch + YouTubeJanuary 9, 2021
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The interesting bits all occur at the four-second mark, where four images are quickly flashed up in quick succession. First up, something that looks suspiciously like a gaming laptop, which is the strongest indicator yet that Nvidia is planning on giving its mobile GPUs an Ampere-based shot in the arm, in the same way that desktop GPUs were upgraded last year.
This isn’t wholly surprising. Not only is it a little odd that top-end gaming laptops currently max out at the RTX 2080 Super, when desktops can have RTX 3070 or 3080 cards installed, but we’ve already seen (quickly pulled) listings of RTX 30 based laptops, suggesting an official release is imminent. If the last leak was accurate, we can expect an Nvidia RTX 3060 with 6GB GDDR6 memory, a RTX 3070 Max-Q with 8GB of GDDR6 and a RTX 3080 Max-Q with 16GB of GDDR6 RAM.
The second quickly flashing image isn’t about hardware, but relates to a likely software tie-in. It’s a still from People Can Fly’s upcoming co-op shooter Outriders. Expect the game to have some fancy effects that make it an especially strong showcase of Nvidia’s hardware.
Next up we get a quick flash of the GeForce RTX logo, which could mean nothing given the whole event is GeForce RTX focused, but our guess is that it relates to the unveiling of the RTX 3060 GPU. The entry-level RTX 30 card has long been rumored, and is set to undercut the $400 3060 Ti for mainstream gaming PCs. Rumor has it that we’ll see both 6GB and 12GB versions, but we’ll have to wait until Tuesday to be sure.
The final shot is a picture of what seems to be Resizable BAR (Base Address Register) technology. As our sister site Tom’s Hardware explains, this clever tech boosts throughput between your CPU and GPU to improve gaming performance. Ampere GPUs already support it, but it needs to be enabled via a software update. The inclusion of it in the video suggests that Nvidia is almost ready to hit that switch.
The remaining seven seconds of video are just logos and a reminder that all will be revealed soon, with details of how to tune in to the event. As a reminder, it kicks off on January 12 at 9AM PST, and you can watch via Nvidia’s official Twitch and YouTube channels if you want to be first in the know.
