Nvidia GeForce RTX Mobile GPUs Pop Up in Alleged Leak, GeForce RTX 2060 Could Launch Soon

Multiple leaks appear to suggest that Nvidia is about to get very busy launching new gaming GPUs across product segments and price bands. First, we have a report of new mobile GeForce RTX graphics processors for laptops, which are the most likely to be real as the company nearly always offers mobile versions of its desktop GPUs. Next, there are reports of a desktop GeForce RTX 2060 that would be slotted below the existing GeForce RTX 2070. There have also been vague reports of a GeForce RTX 2050, although in a strange twist, other reports suggest that a whole new mid-range GeForce GTX 11-series is to be announced instead or in addition to these GPUs.

Starting with the most believable rumour, Tom's Hardware cites a Reddit post in which a user has shared photos of what appear to be a minor Taiwanese ODM's spec sheet for upcoming gaming laptops. The specifications include MXM (Mobile PCIe Module) what are being called the GeForce RTX 2080 MXM OC, GeForce RTX 2070 MXM OC, and GeForce RTX 2060 MXM OC. All three are labelled as “hardware overclocking version”.

While the higher-end two mobile GPUs are listed with 8GB of GDDR6 RAM, the GeForce RTX 2060 MXM OC has 6GB of GDDR6 RAM. From high-end to low-end, the three GPUs will have 2,944, 2,304, and 1,526 CUDA cores respectively. January 15 is mentioned as a tentative shipping date for the GPU, though it will be up to individual brands such as Asus, MSI, HP, Dell, Lenovo and Acer to announce laptops based on them.

The purported Taiwanese ODM's slides even show a graph of what appears to be projected relative performance gains against existing mobile GeForce GTX GPUs. The GeForce RTX 2070 is shown to be roughly 20 percent faster than the GeForce GTX 1070 when running at stock and up to 40 percent faster when overclocked. The overclocked GeForce RTX 2080 is shown to be over 60 percent faster.

This news comes just days after an apparent leak of an upcoming GeForce MX 250 GPU for entry-level gaming or general-purpose laptops with discrete GPUs. The GeForce MX250 name popped up in a spec sheet for an upcoming HP business laptop, which was shared on Twitter.

Next, we have reports of a desktop GeForce RTX 2060. While perhaps inevitable that Nvidia will launch such a product, the source of the leak is a purported registration filing by Gigabyte with the Eurasian Economic Commission. What's most surprising is that Gigabyte has apparently developed as many as 39 graphics card SKUs. It seems that there could be versions in retail with 3GB, 4GB and 6GB of RAM, and each variant could use either GDDR6, GDDR5X, or GDDR5 RAM. This would be highly unusual and could lead to mass confusion amongst buyers.

It's important to note that these are not retail listings, so if the leak is genuine, Gigabyte might have been pre-empting Nvidia's final releases, and far fewer variants will actually make it to market. Amongst the 39 variants would be some that are overclocked, some with two-fan and three-fan coolers, and some compact versions for the Mini-ITX market.

Finally, the most curious rumour is that Nvidia could soon sell mid-range versions of its Turing-based GPUs under the GeForce GTX brand. These would not have the hardware dedicated to real-time ray tracing, but could be the same physical GPUs with those blocks disabled rather than a whole new design.

Prior to the launch of the GeForce RTX series, it was widely reported that there would be a GeForce GTX 11 series. This could mean that Nvidia has planned a split product line for some time, or that the company is reacting to backlash over the high prices of its latest GPUs. Regardless of branding, the GPU that will eventually replace the GeForce GTX 1050 has popped up in the online Geekbench database. 

If Nvidia is planning a big blitz, its upcoming event at CES 2019 in early January could be the venue for one or more of these announcements. The GeForce RTX 2070, GeForce RTX 2080, and GeForce RTX 2080 Ti were launched in late August 2018.