Not a day goes by without some rumour on team green or red. Today a new rumour indicates that NVIDIA might be software locking the 384-bit memory bus for 12GB to 320-bits wide and thus 10 GB for the GeForce RTX 3080. NVIDIA would want to wait and see what big RDNA2 aka Big Navi would bring and likes to keep some options open.

The rumour (and I cannot state this often enough, rumour) is that NVIDIA would be applying a 'software lock' slash BIOS lock for GeForce RTX 3080 that would get 12GB VRAM on a 384-bit memory bus. The lock enforced would make the card configured at 10GB VRAM on a 320-bit bus. So if they need extra perf or VRAM, NVIDIA can inlock that at the last moment. If not required, the bill of materials, later on, can be changed, which makes the product cheaper to fab (less memory ICs). The rumours originate from Youtuber Moore's Law, as to the validity of the claims (or guesswork), we can't say a thing, as we just don't know. 

If there is any truth to the story and NVIDIA would stick to a 10GB activated model, I predict there will be a lot of custom BIOSes floating around for the early batches holding all memory chips ;)

Is this too unusual? Well, who's to say?, remember what happened with AMD's Radeon 5600XT 12 Gbps GDDR6 being bumped to 14 Gbps two days before release?

Rumour indicates NVIDIA might be BIOS locking RTX 3080 memory bus forcing 12GB to 10 GB