It's hard at times to keep up with the pace of graphics card development. Many gamers are still contemplating a move to Nvidia's RTX 20 line of cards to unlock real-time ray-tracing, but now we're hearing next-generation RTX 3080 cards are on the horizon.

Nvidia's existing range of RTX 20 cards use an optimized 16nm Turing microarchitecture, but as Wccftech reports, analysts believe Nvidia is preparing the 7nm Ampere architecture for launch early next year. More specifically, an unveiling is expected at the GTC 2020 AI conference in late March. The first Ampere products are thought to be for the datacenter and will be AI-focused.

What follows is the inevitable introduction of RTX 30 cards and a new range of GPUs and graphics cards carrying the name RTX 3080. Apparently Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is very confident of the lead the existing RTX 2080 cards hold in the market, so the first high-end RTX 3080 and mid-range RTX 3070 cards aren't expected to launch until June 2020., After that, Nvidia will spend several months launching new cards to slowly replace its mid and low-end cards. At some point an RTX 3080 Ti card is sure to appear.

Nvidia faces three challenges next year that could impact the sales potential of RTX 30 cards. The first is just how good the existing RTX 20 cards are, meaning there's going to be very little reason to upgrade at launch. The RTX 2080 cards especially will continue to be more than capable for a couple of years to come. Secondly, AMD will launch new cards with hardware support for ray-tracing, and depending on how they are priced/perform, it could eat into Nvidia's sales.

The third, and likely most significant challenge Nvidia faces comes from Sony and Microsoft. The marketing machines for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Project Scarlett will kick into high gear over the summer months of 2020, right when Nvidia is trying to grab our attention for RTX 30 and Ampere. At least some of those consumers who'd consider purchasing a $1,000 graphics card will instead opt to save their cash for a $500 console and a few games later in the year.

For now, nothing is confirmed about when Ampere will be officially launched or the first RTX 30 graphics cards will appear. But you can be sure Nvidia is watching what AMD does very closely ready to react, and will time launches so as not to be overshadowed by PS5 and Xbox marketing.

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