Nvidia’s most frequent leaker, kopite7kimi, just shared the specifications of a rumored RTX 4090 Ti GPU. Said to be even more powerful than the RTX 4090, Nvidia’s latest product would surely top any ranking of the best graphics cards.
It might not be the greatest GPU of this generation, though. Nvidia seems to have another ace up its sleeve that would defeat even the RTX 4090 Ti. But do we really want these two monstrous GPUs?
RTX 4090 Ti
PG136/139-SKU310
18176FP32
96M L2
24Gbps 24G GDDR6X
total board power ~600W— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) January 30, 2023
The successor to Nvidia’s RTX 3090 Ti pushes the specs even further than the RTX 4090 did. According to the Twitter tipster, the RTX 4090 Ti would come with 18,176 CUDA cores, meaning it would still be a cut-down version of the AD102 GPU (the full GPU has 18,432 cores). Compared to the RTX 4090, this means a core count increase, boosting the number by 1,792.
The memory module is also said to be upgraded to 24Gbps (versus 21Gbps on the RTX 4090), which equals a total bandwidth of 1,152GB/s. Kopite also teases a total board power (TBP) of 600 watts, but it’s hard to say whether this refers to the base board power or the maximum board power. It seems more likely that the GPU will simply allow a 600W power limit, much like the RTX 4090, due to the same shared 16-pin power connector. That’s right, the same one that’s prone to melting.
Kopite7kimi is known for having accurately leaked many graphics cards in the past. While this still needs to be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism, it’s safe to assume there might be some merit to it, too — especially if you consider the fact that we’ve been hearing rumors of an RTX 4090 Ti for months now.
Whenever we’d hear about the RTX 4090 Ti, there was always the question of whether Nvidia might release a new Titan card instead. We’ve heard whispers of a quad-slot GPU that could be the RTX 40 Titan, with telling hints of gold on the cooler design. Another leak, this time from MEGAsizeGPU on Twitter, seems to confirm the existence of such a card.
The Twitter user shared images of a massive Nvidia card equipped with the PG137 PCB. This is something Kopite has referred to in the past, calling the card “the beast.” The specifications don’t quite add up if we assume that the RTX 4090 Ti will exist as well, though — both the GPUs are said to have 18,176 CUDA cores. On the other hand, the Titan GPU was said to feature a massive 48GB of 24Gbps GDDR6X memory; an unprecedented amount. Moreover, the total board power is said to sit at 800W, which is absolutely insane.
This is not what the market needs right now
These leaks are exciting, of course. We could potentially be getting not just the RTX 4090 Ti, but also the RTX 40 Titan, both of which would be intensely powerful. It does make one wonder, though — do we really need these graphics cards right now?
The $1,600 RTX 4090 is rarely sold at MSRP as things stand now. The $1,200 RTX 4080 serves as a good way to encourage more people to buy the RTX 4090, because the flagship is simply the better deal, despite being really expensive. Then, there’s the RTX 4070 Ti, which trades blows with AMD’s less-than-desirable RX 7900 XT.
To me it feels like the high-end portion of the market is rather saturated. We have plenty of “beast GPUs” in stock, and the RTX 4090 is beefy enough to carry every single game. I’m not sure what the purpose of the RTX 4090 Ti or the RTX 40 Titan would be in a gaming scenario right now, aside from some serious future-proofing.
What the market needs is more midrange GPUs that are still priced somewhat reasonably — the equivalent of the RTX 3060 and the base RTX 3070. These last-gen graphics cards are still selling well, and that’s because they’re still sufficient, while current-gen stuff is priced through the roof.
Will Nvidia launch both the RTX 4090 Ti and the RTX 40 Titan? It seems impossible, but the rumors seem to be pointing in that direction. However, it seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. It really does make more sense for Nvidia to focus on the more affordable cards before releasing more products that fall firmly within the ultra-high-end segment.
