Leak: when Nvidia plans to release the RTX 4090, 4080 and 4070

Lovelace unveiling might come in July, but no availability until August

There’s been news today about Nvidia delaying the new low-cost graphics planned for the bottom of the company’s lineup. It seems that some delay could also occur in the highend. Apparently, the Lovelace architecture and the GeForce RTX 4000 next-gen gaming graphics based on it won’t start launching until August, not as early as July as was previously leaked. Also, the specifications of these graphics cards have been clarified a bit.

The previously-known timeline of Lovelace, according to a leaker nicknamed Kopite7kimi, was that Nvidia could release next-generation graphics as early as next month (July). But any July event will probably end up being just a preliminary paper unveiling of the architecture and any new technologies Nvidia will introduce in it. VideoCardz website has now come up with a report that the actual physical release of the cards and the start of sales of these graphics is scheduled for a slightly later date, with the first models coming out in the following months, starting in August. VideoCardz doesn’t have information about any advance pre-launch unveiling’s date, so something like that could still happen next month.

According to VideoCardz, the GeForce RTX 4090 card will be the first Lovelace SKU to come out. This card is allegedly based on the AD102 chip, perhaps in the AD102-300 version. It is supposed to have 126 SM blocks, which would give 16 128 shaders if one SM block still has 128 shaders / FP32 units. On top of that, the card will have 24 GB of GDDR6X memory at an effective clock speed of 21.0 GHz, so with a 384-bit bus, memory bandwidth will reach 1008 GB/s, like on today’s GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. The TDP will also resemble that card, since it is expected to be 450 W. So far it’s not the 600W that has been reported. Thankfully.

This model is said to be scheduled for release in August. That would be a month ahead of the September 2020 release date of the first Ampere cards. According to VideoCardz, the model/PCB card has the internal designation PG139-SKU330.

The next card in line should be the GeForce RTX 4080, which will come first after the RTX 4090. According to VideoCardz, it should be based on a smaller, cheaper AD103 chip (variant is not known yet). But the model has an internal designation PG139-SKU360, suggesting that it is derived from the same PCB. This could mean that the AD102 and AD103 have a compatible package, and Nvidia could use both chips interchangeably on the same boards. So it’s possible that instead of the AD103 chip, especially in the beginning, these models could be produced with a trimmed down AD102 chip (using harvested dies).

According to VideoCardz, this card won’t be out until September. Nvidia has reportedly not yet revealed its specifications to partner card manufacturers. Thus, there are no specs for it yet and it is possible that Nvidia hasn’t finalized them and is just waiting and making up its mind. What could perhaps be clear is the capacity and width of the memory that is specified by the AD103 chip. The card is expected to carry 16 GB of GDDR6X on a 256-bit bus, which could give bandwidths of up to 672 GB/s (if the effective memory clock speed is the same as Nvidia uses for the RTX 4090; it could be lower though).

Leaked photos of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 or 4090 Ti cooler (Source: Chiphell, via: VideoCardz)

Tip: First photos of GeForce RTX 4090 Ti: Nvidia failed to keep Lovelace graphics cards cooler under wraps

The third card to come out is reportedly the GeForce RTX 4070, which is also coming a bit later after the previous SKU and now said to be scheduled for release in October 2022. This card is based on a third chip, the AD104 (possibly in the AD104-400 variant). Here the PCB is different, the model should have the internal designation PG141-SKU341. Again, Nvidia has not yet disclosed the parameters to the card manufacturers and again, they probably may not even be decided yet.

At the moment, there is information that this card should have 12 GB of memory (supposedly confirmed by two sources), and therefore a 192-bit bus. However, it’s not clear whether the memory used is GDDR6X, or just GDDR6 (which could be running at a high clock speed, such as 18.0 GHz like on the newer Radeons). The TDP could be 300 W, or maybe even more.

GeForce RTX 4090, RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 specifications know so far. The data in bold is reportedly confirmed separately from two sources, however Nvidia may still make changes to them (Source: VideoCardz)

Ampere cards still in stock, could lead to Lovelace delay

Note that while providing these dates, VideoCardz points out that Nvidia may still move the release schedule. It’s been allegedly verified that the company is currently working with these dates, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be changed. In fact, Nvidia might probably do so as in reaction to the direction the graphics market will take, influenced by, among other things, fluctuations in cryptocurrency prices and the resulting waning interest in mining.

Card manufacturers are said to have relatively large inventories of GeForce RTX 3000 generation graphics due to the fact that they have been ramping up production to meet massive demand during the shortage. However, they would be in trouble if the stock of these cards still remained large at the time of the release of new models, because then they would lose value and manufacturers would have to get rid of them at discounts, or worse, perhaps even having trouble getting rid of them at all. Therefore, it may be that the release of some models (more mainstream RTX 4070 and RTX 4080 I guess?) may still be pushed back to a later date. Such a delay would help with digesting the existing stock of Ampere graphics.

Source: VideoCardz

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš, original text by Jan Olšan, editor for Cnews.cz


  •  
  •  
  •  
Flattr this!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *