Highly anticipated: Pallets of MSI GPUs have been photographed in transit to Los Angeles. In amidst the eclectic assortment is the upcoming "GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Ventus 12G OC," which will, as the armchair generals of the forums have it, release in a month's time.
Caught in the camera's lens are a handful of pallets, each containing a dozen boxes of maybe a hundred GPUs. The well-protected crate is labeled with the 3090 and aforementioned 3080 Ti. The cardboard boxes contain GeForce GT 710's and Radeon RX 580's.
If the 3080 Ti is shipping to distribution centers now, then it should release soon. The popular prediction is mid-May. The expectation that the Ti will be paired with 12 GB of memory also finds support in MSI's package label; the "12G" in the card's lengthy name couldn't mean much else, but there's some risk of it being incorrect.
The current, if dubious predictions about the Ti pin the card's core count at 10,240 and its boost clock at 1,665 MHz. If those figures are true, then it will perform like a 3090, but with a little luck, it'll be priced closer to the vanilla 3080.
It could even be cheaper if it has a built-in mining limiter that makes it less valuable to the crypto-crazed. And if the mining limiter works...