Nvidia’s upcoming Ada Lovelace graphics cards just received a new set of rumored specifications, and this time around, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.
While the news is good for one of the GPUs, the RTX 4070 actually received a cut when it comes to its specs — but the leaker says this won’t translate to a cheaper price.
And TBP, 450/420?/300W.
— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) June 23, 2022
The information comes from kopite7kimi, a well-recognized name when it comes to PC hardware leaks, who has just revealed an update to the specifications of the RTX 4090, RTX 4080, and the RTX 4070. While we’ve already heard previous whispers about the specs of the RTX 4090 and the RTX 4070, this is the first time we’re getting predictions about the specs of the RTX 4080.
Let’s start with the good news. If this rumor is true, the flagship RTX 4090 seems to have received a slight bump in the core count. The previously reported number was 16,128 CUDA cores, and this has now gone up to 16,384 cores, which translates to an upgrade from 126 streaming multiprocessors (SMs) to 128. As for the rest of the specs, they remain unchanged — the current expectation is that the GPU will get 24GB of GDDR6X memory across a 384-bit memory bus, as well as 21Gbps bandwidth.
The RTX 4090 includes the AD102 GPU, which maxes out at 144 SMs, but it seems unlikely that the RTX 4090 itself will ever reach such heights. The full version of the AD102 GPU is probably going to be found in an even better graphics card, be it a Titan or simply an RTX 4090 Ti. It’s also rumored to have monstrous power requirements. This time around, kopite7kimi didn’t reveal anything new about that card, and as of now, we still don’t know for a fact that it even exists.
Moving on to the RTX 4080 with the AD103 GPU, it’s said to come with 10,240 CUDA cores and 16GB of memory. However, according to kopite7kimi, it would rely on GDDR6 memory as opposed to GDDR6X. Seeing as the leaker predicts it to be 18Gbps, that would actually make it slower than the RTX 3080 with its 19Gbps memory. The core count is exactly the same as in the RTX 3080 Ti. So far, this GPU doesn’t sound very impressive, but it’s said to come with a much larger L2 cache that could potentially offer an upgrade in its gaming performance versus its predecessors.
When it comes to the RTX 4070, the GPU was previously rumored to come with 12GB of memory, but now, kopite7kimi predicts just 10GB across a 160-bit memory bus. It’s said to offer 7,168 CUDA cores. While it’s certainly an upgrade over the RTX 3070, it might not quite be the generational leap some users are hoping for. It’s also supposedly not going to receive a price discount based on the reduction in specs, but we still don’t know the MSRP of this GPU, so it’s hard to judge its value.
Lastly, the leaker delivered an update on the power requirements of the GPUs, which have certainly been the subject of much speculation over the last few months. The predicted TBP for the RTX 4090 is 450 watts. It’s 420 watts for the RTX 4080 and 300 watts for the RTX 4070. Those numbers are a lot more conservative than the 600 watts (and above) that we’ve seen floating around.
What does all of this mean for us — the end-users of the upcoming RTX 40-series GPUs? Not too much just yet. The specifications may yet change, and although kopite7kimi has a proven track record, they could be wrong about the specs, too. However, as things stand now, only the RTX 4090 seems to mark a huge upgrade over its predecessor while the other two are a much more modest change. It remains to be seen whether the pricing will reflect that or not.
