Before you get mad at me, let me say that if you're in love with the RTX 3080 design pictured below, I completely understand. The RTX 3080 from Chinese language forum Chiphell is an unusual twin-fan design, and its many heatsinks and wind tunnel designs have already been well received by nosy enthusiasts.

However, all of us PC Gamer hardware people agree that it's a bit creepy. The crosshair design, the weird fins, the lack of detail, the tiny font ...... Everything is a bit basic. Does this really mean that we are seeing Nvidia's Ampere architecture in GeForce for the first time?

We have only one photo (via 9550pro on Twitter), and it is far from conclusive proof in the tech world. The fonts, black and silver shroud, and profound Jensen styling certainly look Nvidia special, but there is still nothing to tie this design to Nvidia.

At the very least, the PCB underneath appears to be quite short, but this could be due to the toboggan fan design and could be a small form factor card. Such a design would change my opinion of the Series 30's appearance, and I would be very interested to see how it would look.

If this shroud were to become a commercial product and be installed in a gaming PC, it would likely have a couple of additional improvements over what we have seen here today. Or maybe that is just wishful thinking. A little embellishment and final touches can transform a hunk of metal and plastic into something that looks right at home among high-end PC parts, but I'm still waiting for something a little more sophisticated. [GPU shrouds tend to leak months earlier than the real thing, but that's far from an exact science. Still, it could be an encouraging sign that a new graphics card is indeed on the way; a year-end battle royal between Nvidia Ampere and AMD RDNA 2 has been planned for some time, and at least AMD is confident that everything is going according to plan. This bodes well for whatever Nvidia has in store.