Wednesday, May 24th 2023
Leadtek Copies NVIDIA's Homework - Debuts Custom GeForce RTX 4070 Card With Blower Design
It was reported earlier this morning that Leadtek was preparing a new custom design NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card - Tom's Hardware pointed out that South Korea's National Radio Research Agency had uploaded a registration for a "RTX 4070 AI BLOWER" VGA card on behalf of "Leadtek Research Inc." The article delves into a possible scenario, based on the model name alone, of Leadtek producing a cooling solution that reflects NVIDIA's blower-style reference design. Team Green has gained quite the reputation for being protective of that blueprint, despite its Founders Edition lineup of gaming-oriented cards shifting to a traditional cooling solution (back in the RTX 20-series days). Board partners are normally expected to devise their own/unique cooling solutions, and NVIDIA has mostly reserved the blower + vapor chamber combination for its professional GPU model lineups.
Leadtek has created a product page for their new custom card this afternoon, and it is immediately clear that this morning's prediction was somewhat correct. The WinFast RTX 4070 AI BLOWER 12G sports a "streamlined" yet boxy black cooling solution that appears to be closer in appearance to an NVIDIA RTX A-series professional card, although a flash of silver trim and logo on the fan provides a bit of "gamer" visual language. Leadtek's specification info states that their AI Blower cooler features an aluminium die cast housing alongside a copper finned vapor chamber. The lone mounted fan is said to have a 50,000 hour operational lifespan thanks to a special internal arrangement: "WinFast double ball bearing fan provides better reliability, higher dust resistance levels, and moreso keeps friction and noise to a minimum." Tom's Hardware posited that Leadtek's custom card would be marketed as an enterprise product (for AI processing) - the freshly uploaded product page does position it for those purposes, but the rundown also mentions its supposed gaming performance prowess.
Graphics Processing Unit (GPU): NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
Bus Interface: PCI Express 4.0
Memory Configuration: 12 GB GDDR6X
Core Clock Base clock: 1920 MHz
Boost clock: 2475 MHz
Memory Speed: 21 Gbps
Output Ports: 1x HDMI (2.1), 3x DisplayPort 1.4a
Maximum Digital Resolution: 7680x4320
Memory Interface Width: 192-bit
Memory Bandwidth: 504 GB/sec
CUDA Cores: 5888
HDCP Support: Yes
Microsoft DirectX Version: 12 Ultimate
NVIDIA RTX NVLink: No
OpenGL: 4.6
Maximum Power Draw (Watts): 200 W
Dimensions:
265 mm (length) x 111 mm (height) x 38 mm (thickness)
Package Contents:
Sources:
Tom's Hardware, RRA South Korea, Leadtek
Leadtek has created a product page for their new custom card this afternoon, and it is immediately clear that this morning's prediction was somewhat correct. The WinFast RTX 4070 AI BLOWER 12G sports a "streamlined" yet boxy black cooling solution that appears to be closer in appearance to an NVIDIA RTX A-series professional card, although a flash of silver trim and logo on the fan provides a bit of "gamer" visual language. Leadtek's specification info states that their AI Blower cooler features an aluminium die cast housing alongside a copper finned vapor chamber. The lone mounted fan is said to have a 50,000 hour operational lifespan thanks to a special internal arrangement: "WinFast double ball bearing fan provides better reliability, higher dust resistance levels, and moreso keeps friction and noise to a minimum." Tom's Hardware posited that Leadtek's custom card would be marketed as an enterprise product (for AI processing) - the freshly uploaded product page does position it for those purposes, but the rundown also mentions its supposed gaming performance prowess.
Bus Interface: PCI Express 4.0
Memory Configuration: 12 GB GDDR6X
Core Clock Base clock: 1920 MHz
Boost clock: 2475 MHz
Memory Speed: 21 Gbps
Output Ports: 1x HDMI (2.1), 3x DisplayPort 1.4a
Maximum Digital Resolution: 7680x4320
Memory Interface Width: 192-bit
Memory Bandwidth: 504 GB/sec
CUDA Cores: 5888
HDCP Support: Yes
Microsoft DirectX Version: 12 Ultimate
NVIDIA RTX NVLink: No
OpenGL: 4.6
Maximum Power Draw (Watts): 200 W
Dimensions:
265 mm (length) x 111 mm (height) x 38 mm (thickness)
- WinFast RTX 4070 AI BLOWER 12G Graphics Card
- Quick Installation Guide
- Power Cable
- Microsoft Windows 10, Windows 11 and Linux operation system (64 bit)
- PCI-Express compliant motherboard with one four-width x16 graphics slot
- One 8-pin PCI-Express supplementary power connectors
- 8 GB system memory (16 GB or higher recommended)
- 1.5 GB of available hard disk space
- A DP or HDMI compatible monitor
- Minimum 650 W Power Supply
8 Comments on Leadtek Copies NVIDIA's Homework - Debuts Custom GeForce RTX 4070 Card With Blower Design
Leadtek is also one of a very few select companies that even has access to NVIDIA's reference work anymore. They're literally on a completely different class above the usual AIB since they're authorized for professional components direct from NVIDIA.This is a confusing line because Founders Edition cards have not been blowers since 2017. So what exactly are NVIDIA protecting, a design they don't even use?
As for the blower fan, the Nvidia RTX A5000 also uses a blower fan design. The A5000 is essentially a 4090, but clocked lower and has 48GB of GDDR6 memory.
However, given that FEs are available this time I might just have that, I'd just need to source slim power adapter for it.
My GPU needs are 1) isn't too large b) reasonable cost 3) no gamer aestethics (blower preferred)Almost all of them were OEM and/or only 3080 tier cards in Ampere gen.
PNY is the partner who does Founders and their professional line, probably mostly because they're US based and can skirt around export bans.Not Founders but their professional ex-Quadro line. They're black and sleek blower cards. Also if you look at the price of the A4500 for example, expensive as hell.
I missed buying them, had to settle for A4000. FEs only came (again) avaliable this gen, being discontinued few weeks after Ampere release almost 3 years ago.I've read that some goverment contracts in the US require that you use US sourced parts and hardware, and PNY being HQ'd and having limited assembly capabilities in the US soil would skirt around that. Sorry for being bit unclear about it, I thought that's why only PNY was the only partner with these kind of products. ELSA is a name I haven't seen in ages, and to be honest, I had forgotten about Leadtek existing too. I think I used to have Winfast branded card in the Geforce 3 days.
Almost all NVIDIA professional cards I've had have been either PNY or PNY rebrands by Lenovo and Dell. New Mellanox hardware is also made by PNY.I want a professional looking product without the professional mark-up. A black box without useless RGB and quality blower fan? Sign me up.