Skip to main content

Nvidia’s next-generation GPUs could destroy Xbox Series X if leaks are true

Nvidia’s Turing-based RTX GPUs are some of the most powerful you can get your hands on today, but the next-generation is on its way. It appears that the company has begun testing its next-generation Ampere architecture, and a new series of leaked benchmarks are showing some promising results.

Several Geekbench 5 benchmarks were spotted by a Twitter user and then picked up by PCGamesN that detail some significant performance results and specifications for Nvidia’s upcoming GPU.

Stock photo of Nvidia T4 GPU
NVIDIA Newsroom/NVIDIA Corporation

Nvidia appears to have tested two Ampere GPUs with the codename of Fat Man and Little Boy, and what’s curious about these leaked early benchmarks is that the cards were tested on a non-high end system running an Intel Z370 Coffee Lake motherboard, according to PCGames N.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

The more powerful card, Fat Man, has a whopping 60% more streaming multiprocessors compared to the current GeForce RTX cards with a total of 118. If Nvidia maintains its current core-to-SM ratio from today, that will translate to 7,552 CUDA cores for Fat Man.

The card also comes 24GB of video RAM, matching what’s available on the premium Titan RTX card from today. Fat Man was tested with an unusually low boost clock speed of 1.11GHz.

PCGames N estimated that Fat Man to be capable of more than 33.5 TFLOPs at that clock speed. If Nvidia increases the speed on the card at launch, Fat Man’s computational capabilities could go even higher, making it a card that would be suitable for high end data analysis, deep learning applications, and artificial intelligence.

It’s unclear if Nvidia will be using Ampere for a rumored GeForce RTX 3080 launch, but it was previously speculated that the architecture may not be targeted at gamers, at least not initially given the massive amounts of video memory.

The less powerful Little Boy features 108 SMs but comes with double the memory of Fat Man. It’s clocked at 1.01 GHz in the leaked Geekbench test result. This should translate to roughly 6,912 CUDA cores and nearly 28 TFLOPs of compute power. Though not a direct apples-to-apples comparison of TFLOP performance, Microsoft recently revealed its new Xbox Series X comes tops out with 12 TFLOPs of compute power.

Microsoft

The TFLOP estimates assume that Nvidia will double its floating point units on Ampere, which would double the TFLOP performance. If Ampere doesn’t come with double the FP units, then the cards may max out with 17 TFLOPs and 14 TFLOPs, according to TechRadar.

Given that we still don’t know much about Ampere’s overall architecture, the CUDA core calculations as well as TFLOP approximations can drastically change when the cards are unveiled. And according to previous rumors, the Ampere graphics cards could potentially match AMD’s 7nm manufacturing process, giving it even higher efficiency than Turing.

With Nvidia’s annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC) slated to happen next month, where the company is expected to unveil Ampere.

Editors' Recommendations

Chuong Nguyen
Silicon Valley-based technology reporter and Giants baseball fan who splits his time between Northern California and Southern…
Nvidia’s new GPUs could be right around the corner
Nvidia's RTX 4070 graphics cards over a pink background.

Is Nvidia really about to add to its lineup of top GPUs? All signs point to yes, and now, we have an official Nvidia keynote on the horizon that tells us when we might hear more about the rumored RTX 40 Super. Nvidia revealed that it's going to deliver a special address on January 8 as part of CES 2024. Although the company hasn't confirmed what it's planning to cover, the rumor mill has been buzzing with information about three new desktop GPUs. But will they really be worth the upgrade?

Several reputable leakers have weighed in on the matter of the RTX 40-series refresh, and we've been getting updates about the range for a few weeks now. Nvidia doesn't need to specifically state that it'll talk about these graphics cards, as that is going to be the expectation anyway. The three GPUs in question are the RTX 4080 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and the RTX 4070 Super.

Read more
I’m scared of next-gen Nvidia GPUs, and you should be too
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang with an RTX 4090 graphics card.

Few things are as thrilling in the PC world as the release of a new lineup of some of the best graphics cards. The excitement builds for months on end, with benchmarks, leaks, predictions, and finally, the launch of said GPUs. While I'm far from immune to that sort of hype, I can't bring myself to be excited about Nvidia's RTX 5000-series. In fact, I'm kind of dreading it.

My fears are based on the last couple of generations. While Nvidia certainly knows how to push its performance to new heights, all of this comes at a price that the mainstream market may not be prepared to pay.
Nvidia's rise to dominance

Read more
Nvidia may launch three new Super GPUs to fight back AMD
Three RTX 4080 cards sitting on a pink background.

Nvidia may be readying three new GPUs -- the RTX 4080 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and the RTX 4070 Super. We haven't seen Super cards since Nvidia's RTX 20-series, but if this leak turns out to be true, they're coming back. Will they be worthwhile enough to rank high among the best graphics cards? It's hard to say, but they could help it compete against AMD's recent GPUs.

The information comes from hongxing2020, a frequent leaker in the GPU space. Nvidia already has a decent spread of GPUs between the RTX 4080, RTX 4070 Ti, and the RTX 4070. However, if a refresh to the Ada lineup is reportedly on the way, we might see some notable changes, but only if Nvidia decides to shake things up and use a different chip for at least two out of those three GPUs.

Read more