Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 and future GeForce RTX 3090 appear to offer significantly improved ray tracing performance thanks to a rumored double-sided design.

A video by Coreteks details how the next generation GeForce graphics cards based on Nvidia's Ampere architecture will feature the main GPU on one side of the printed circuit board (PCB) and a co-processor on the other side. This co-processor will be based on the dedicated ray tracing core that the current GeForce RTX 20 series graphics cards have, and will be specialized for ray tracing rendering.

While there is little to support this rumor, Coreteks has proven to be a reliable source of technical information in the past. This is because, so far, leaked images of the GeForce RTX 3080 do not necessarily show a graphics card with a double-sided PCB.

However, WCCFtech noted that Nvidia patented a traversal co-processor to aid ray tracing in 2018. So in some cases, the next GeForce series of graphics cards will include a co-processor that does the job of the ray-tracing core while avoiding the need to fit everything on the GPU die. [All of this should lead to improved ray-tracing performance in Nvidia's next-generation GeForce graphics cards. While such performance gains are to be expected, improved ray-tracing performance could have important implications for the gaming world.

This is because the PS5 and Xbox Series X will be able to transform the look of games with more realistic lighting by supporting ray tracing. Consoles with ray tracing capabilities will provide developers with more users who can support advanced rendering techniques.

This will likely result in more games using ray tracing, but how those games will run on PS5 and Xbox Series X hardware remains to be seen. However, if the GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 offer significant improvements in ray-tracing performance, it may clearly become possible for PC gamers to run such titles at very high resolutions and high frame rates.

While there is no official information on the RTX 3080 yet, Nvidia is rumored to announce a new GPU as early as August. AMD is also expected to announce a powerful graphics card to compete with Nvidia's top-of-the-line GPUs around September, making the second half of this year interesting for PC gamers as well as Xbox and PlayStation fans.