Nvidia’s RTX 4000 (Lovelace) graphics cards will be released later this year, and we’ve just seen another rumor dump on Twitter about how the higher-end models will look — with one very concerning characteristic.
The well-known leaker Kopite7kimi has been busy spilling the GPU beans in a tweet in which he provided us with some supposed spec information about the upcoming RTX 4080 and RTX 4070.
As you can see, the theory is that the RTX 4080 will employ the AD103 Lovelace GPU, which differs from what other rumor mongers have previously said — namely, that this graphics card will use the AD102 chip that powers the RTX 4090. The 4080 is said to be equipped with 16GB of GDDR6X VRAM.
The RTX 4070, according to Kopite7kimi, will be built with AD104 processors and 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM.
According to Kopite7kimi, testing on these graphics cards will begin shortly, with AD102 already in the works — to be used in the RTX 4090, potentially the 4090 Ti, and possibly even an RTX Titan for Lovelace, which will push AD102 to its limits.
As with everything from the rumor mill, all of the following should be treated with extreme caution.
More on the power consumption of these RTX 4000 GPUs are also exposed here — and is very much the hot topic with Lovelace, pun completely intended. The RTX 4090 could have a massive 600W power drain, according to Kopite7kimi (and the aforementioned super heavyweight — possibly RTX Titan — spin on AD102 could be closer to 900W, which is a genuinely amazing figure).
According to this recent leak from Kopite7kimi, the RTX 4070 will have a TGP or power consumption of 300W.
The RTX 4080, on the other hand, will reportedly use a “similar TGP to GA102,” which is the chip that powers the existing RTX 3080 and 3090 models (hence the expectation that AD102 would also serve the RTX 4080, which is not the case).
The leaker is most likely referring to the TGP of Nvidia’s RTX 3090/3090 Ti when he says GA102, thus expect the RTX 4080 to use roughly 350W to 450W of power. If the 4070 is 300W, then 400W sounds about right to us, or maybe a little more, as Kopite7kimi’s sources indicate that things aren’t fully set down yet (hence the vagueness on the 4080).
While we must be cautious about the truth of any of this — after all, it’s simply rumor from the grapevine and some guesswork — none of it allays our suspicions that Lovelace’s power consumption will be a troublesome issue. With the RTX 4070, a graphics card that represents the (relatively) more affordable end of Nvidia’s higher-end GPU cards, the rise to 300W from the RTX 3070’s 220W is a significant one. Indeed, it’s a 36% growth from 2070 to 3070, compared to a 25% increase from 2070 to 3070.
Remember that the RTX 3070 requires a 650W power supply, so what are our options for the RTX 4070? Even at this lower end of the top dog Lovelace graphics cards, gamers may benefit from a power supply update. On the cost and trouble fronts, this isn’t a pleasing concept. (It’s worth noting that Nvidia’s power supply recommendations are intentionally high because the firm can’t assume consumers have a high-quality PSU — unit quality varies widely, of course — so keep that in mind, but the point remains that this is all quite troubling on the power front.)
There have also been some concerns raised regarding the RTX 4080 being set to employ a lower-end chip in the form of AD103 rather than AD102, with the latter reserved solely for the 4090.
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