NVIDIA CEO Jen Hsun Huang, in his Q2 Fiscal-2023 Results call confirmed that the company's next-generation GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards could be revealed at GTC Fall 2022, to be held next month in September. NVIDIA's launch of the RTX 40-series "Ada" will be unlike those of the previous few generations, despite retaining a "top-down" launch cycle (of launching high-end SKUs first). CEO Jen Hsun says that the first products will be "layered on top" of the current-generation "Ampere" products, so they don't cannibalize the sales of current-generation products.

"Ampere is the most popular GPU we've ever created. It is in the top 15 most popular gaming GPUs on Steam. And it remains the best GPUs in the world, and it will be very successful for some time. However, we do have exciting new next-generation coming and it's going to be layered on top of that. And so, we've taken—we've done two things. We've reduced sell-in to let channel inventory correct and we've implemented programs with our partners to price position the products in the channel in preparation for our next generation," said CEO Jen Hsun Huang. This could mean that the RTX 40-series could see a ramp-up to the various mainstream market segments, and gain volumes from them, only in 2023. The remainder of 2022 could see a high-end debut of the RTX 40-series, selling alongside attractively priced RTX 30-series cards.Update 09:48 UTC: NVIDIA states that the CEO Keynote for GTC is scheduled for September 20.

Memory giant Micron Technology has commenced mass-production of 21 Gbps and 24 Gbps-rated GDDR6X memory chips that will be exclusively used by NVIDIA in its next-generation RTX 40-series "Ada" graphics cards. GDDR6X is a derivative of GDDR6 co-developed by NVIDIA and Micron, which leverages PAM4 signaling to increase data-rates. Depending on the graphics card model, NVIDIA will use 8 Gbit (1 GB) or 16 Gbit (2 GB) density memory chips. We're hearing that 21 Gbps will be the standard data-rate used by SKUs that succeed the RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 Ti; while 24 Gbps will be used by the faster RTX 3090/Ti successors. The part numbers of these memory chips are listed below.

Amidst all the news of NVIDIA going slow with its GeForce RTX 40-series "Ada Lovelace" launch cycle to allow the market to absorb inventories of current-gen cards as demand from crypto-currency miners has crashed; and amidst related news that NVIDIA has delayed the production ramp of these GPUs with foundry-partner TSMC by at least a quarter (3 months), we're getting reports that production of these cards are sticking to the original launch timeline. This need not be a contradictory report, as it could be a case of NVIDIA moving forward with a limited production run in preparation to a launch.

Tech publication PRO Hi-Tech reports that one of their contacts among NVIDIA add-in-card (AIC) partners told them, that the AIC could receive the first RTX 40-series cards from NVIDIA "in less than a month" (mid/late August). This roughly aligns with the product development timeline reported by Igor's Lab, which put the final stages of hardware development by July 2022, with production validation testing in August, with video-BIOS source release, and start of mass-production toward the end of August. This would mean that prototypes of the cards are already in the hands of the AICs, and August could see them receive close-to-final hardware while they await the release of a working BIOS. With mass-production commencing toward the end of August or September, product launches could commence by Q4-2022.

NVIDIA's next-generation GeForce RTX 4090 "Ada" flagship graphics card allegedly scores over 19000 points in the 3DMark Time Spy Extreme synthetic benchmark, according to kopite7kimi, a reliable source with NVIDIA leaks. This would put its score around 66 percent above that of the current RTX 3090 Ti flagship. The RTX 4090 is expected to be based on the 5 nm AD102 silicon, with a rumored CUDA core count of 16,384. The higher IPC from the new architecture, coupled with higher clock speeds and power limits, could be contributing to this feat. Time Spy Extreme is a traditional DirectX 12 raster-only benchmark, with no ray traced elements. The Ada graphics architecture is expected to reduce the "cost" of ray tracing (versus raster-only rendering), although we're yet to see leaks of RTX performance, yet.

NVIDIA's next generation of graphics cards, codenamed RTX 40 series, Ada Lovelace, is expected to arrive sometime in October. However, the latest information from the YouTube channel "Moore's Law Is Dead" suggests that NVIDIA could postpone the arrival of the new GPU generation to December. Why, you might be wondering? The report claims that the current GPU market is flooded with used GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs. Thus, NVIDIA could postpone the availability of the latest GPUs to keep the demand high and ensure that the market is searching for additional graphics cards.

Retailers are experiencing smaller demand as the used GPU market is full of devices used for cryptocurrency mining, and the recent crypto crash has helped the situation. What we could see is NVIDIA announcing Ada Lovelace GPUs in October, with availability arriving later in December. Of course, these are just the current industry rumors, and we are yet to see how the market and NVIDIA will respond.

Rumors of NVIDIA's upcoming Ada Lovelace graphics cards keep appearing. With every new update, it seems like the total power consumption is getting bigger, and today we are getting information about different SKUs, including mobile and desktop variants. According to a well-known leaker, kopite7kimi, we have information about the power limits of the upcoming GPUs. The new RTX 40 series GPUs will feature a few initial SKUs: AD102, AD103, AD104, and AD106. Every SKU, except the top AD102, will be available as well. The first in line, AD102, is the most power-hungry SKU with a maximum power limit rating of 800 Watts. This will require multiple power connectors and a very beefy cooling solution to keep it running.

Going down the stack, we have an AD103 SKU limited to 450 Watts on desktop and 175 Watts on mobile. The AD104 chip is limited to 400 Watts on desktop, while the mobile version is still 175 Watts. Additionally, the AD106 SKU is limited to 260 Watts on desktop and 140 Watts on mobile.

That NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce "Ada Lovelace" graphics architecture will feature significant increases in board power across the lineup, is widely reported, with the top AD102 silicon as the RTX 3090-successor allegedly drawing over 400 W. All that power drawn converts to heat that needs to be dissipated, and so we'll see proportionately larger cooling solutions. Kopite7kimi, a reliable source with NVIDIA rumors, claims that the reference design AD102 board features three fans.

To be clear, the reference design board is not the same thing as the Founders Edition product. The reference-design is an internal prototype NVIDIA develops the product around, and it rarely makes public appearances. The Founders Edition is a technically a "custom design" card from NVIDIA, that features higher clock speeds than reference, and is known for a high level for industrial design that sets standards for board partners and their custom-designs. We know from a May 2022 rumor and alleged photo leak that the Dual-Axial Flow-through concept of air-based cooling solutions, will make a comeback with Ada Founders Edition cards. and its design appears to have the usual layout of two large fans; unless NVIDIA somehow found room for a third fan. We'll know soon enough.

An alleged technical drawing of the PCB of reference-design NVIDIA "Ada" AD102 silicon was leaked to the web, courtesy of Igor's Lab. It reveals a large GPU pad that's roughly the size of the GA102 (the size of the fiberglass substrate or package, only, not the die); surrounded by twelve memory chips, which are likely GDDR6X. There are also provision for at least 24 power phases, although not all of them are populated by sets of chokes and DrMOS in the final products (a few of them end up vacant).

We also spy the 16-pin ATX 3.0 power connector that's capable of delivering up to 600 W of power; and four display outputs, including a USB-C in lieu of a larger connector (such as DP or HDMI). A curious thing to note is that the card continues to have an NVLink connector. Multi-GPU is dead, which means the NVLink on the reference design will likely be rudimentary in the GeForce RTX product (unless used for implicit multi-GPU). The connector may play a bigger role in the professional-visualization graphics cards (RTX AD-series) based on this silicon.

AMD has historically thrown brute memory bus width at solving memory-management problems in its graphics architectures, but the Infinity Cache technology launched with RDNA2 proved to be a game changer, as GPUs with narrow 256-bit memory interfaces could compete with NVIDIA's offerings that have 384-bit wide memory interfaces and faster GDDR6X memory types. It looks like the competition between NVIDIA "Ada" and AMD RDNA3 graphics architectures is about to heat up, as rumors are emerging of AMD giving its biggest next-gen ASIC, the "Navi 31," a 384-bit wide memory interface.

This 50 percent increase in memory bus width, runs in concert with two associated rumors—one, that the company will use faster 20 Gbps GDDR6 memory chips; and two, that AMD may increase the size of the on-die Infinity Cache memory. Samsung is already mass-producing 20 Gbps and 24 Gbps GDDR6 memory chips. These are regular GDDR6 memory chips with JEDEC-standard signaling, and not GDDR6X, an exclusive memory type innovated by NVIDIA and Micron Technology, which leverages PAM4 signaling to increase data-rates. A theoretical "Navi 31" with 20 Gbps GDDR6 memory speeds would enjoy 960 GB/s of memory bandwidth, a massive 87.5 percent bandwidth increase over the RX 6900 XT. The on-die Infinity Cache operates at speeds measured in several TB/s. The increased bus width could also signal an increase in memory sizes, with the RX 6950 XT successor featuring at least 24 GB of memory.

In what is a sign that the July 2022 rumored debut of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 "Ada Lovelace" graphics card is on track; the first spy pictures of its Founders Edition cooler surfaced on ChipHell forums. The cooler appears to be an evolution of the Dual-Axial Flow-Through cooling architecture NVIDIA debuted with the RTX 30-series "Ampere" Founders Edition cards, where air is drawn in from one end of the card, flows through the cooling solution that's a series of aluminium fin-stacks skewered by a series of heatpipes; and ventilated through the back of the card, with a second fan in "pull" configuration.

From the looks of it, the aluminium fins on the RTX 4090 Founders Edition cooler appears to have a dark-grey matte finish, which could indicate some form of ceramic surface-treatment that improves heat-dissipation; while the cooler's base making primary contact with the GPU and memory chips, appears to be a vapor-chamber plate with a nickel-plated copper surface. From the location and sizes of the thermal pads for the memory chips, we guess that the GPU is surrounded by 10 memory chips, which could indicate a 320-bit memory interface, making this card a possible successor to the original RTX 3080. The cooler itself is more than 2 slots thick, and appears to be as thick as the RTX 3090 FE cooler.

NVIDIA's next-generation GeForce RTX 40 series of graphics cards, codenamed Ada Lovelace, is shaping up to be a powerful graphics card lineup. Allegedly, we can expect to see a mid-July launch of NVIDIA's newest gaming offerings, where customers can expect some impressive performance. According to a reliable hardware leaker, kopite7kimi, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card will feature AD102-300 GPU SKU. This model is equipped with 126 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), which brings the total number of FP32 CUDA cores to 16128. Compared to the full AD102 GPU with 144 SMs, this leads us to think that there will be an RTX 4090 Ti model following up later as well.

Paired with 24 GB of 21 Gbps GDDR6X memory, the RTX 4090 graphics card has a TDP of 450 Watts. While this number may appear as a very power-hungry design, bear in mind that the targeted performance improvement over the previous RTX 3090 model is expected to be a two-fold scale. Paired with TSMC's new N4 node and new architecture design, performance scaling should follow at the cost of higher TDPs. These claims are yet to be validated by real-world benchmarks of independent tech media, so please take all of this information with a grain of salt and wait for TechPowerUp reviews once the card arrives.

The next-generation NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40-series "Ada Lovelace" graphics cards could launch as early as July, according to a credible rumor by kopite7kimi. They mention the series debut in "Q3 early," (which implies July). A July debut could mean NVIDIA starts marketing these in earnest by later this month (Computex 2022). The company is expected to launch high-end SKUs first, followed by increasingly higher-volume SKUs in the performance and mid-range segments. A high-end debut could mean the launch of SKUs succeeding the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 just two months from now.

With the release of Hopper, NVIDIA's cycle of new architecture releases is not yet over. Later this year, we expect to see next-generation gaming architecture codenamed Ada Lovelace. According to a well-known hardware leaker for NVIDIA products, @kopite7kimi, on Twitter, the green team is reportedly testing a potent variant of the upcoming AD102 SKU. As the leak indicates, we could see an Ada Lovelace AD102 SKU with a Total Graphics Power (TGP) of 900 Watts. While we don't know where this SKU is supposed to sit in the Ada Lovelace family, it could be the most powerful, Titan-like design making a comeback. Alternatively, this could be a GeForce RTX 4090 Ti SKU. It carries 48 GB of GDDR6X memory running at 24 Gbps speeds alongside monstrous TGP. Feeding the card are two 16-pin connectors.

Another confirmation from the leaker is that the upcoming RTX 4080 GPU uses the AD103 SKU variant, while the RTX 4090 uses AD102. For further information, we have to wait a few more months and see what NVIDIA decides to launch in the upcoming generation of gaming-oriented graphics cards.

NVIDIA's next-generation GeForce "Ada" graphics architecture may stick to PCI-Express 4.0 as its system bus interface, according to kopite7kimi, a reliable source with NVIDIA leaks. This is unlike Ada's sister-architecture for compute, "Hopper," which leverages PCI-Express 5.0 in its AIC form-factor cards, for its shared memory pools and other resource-sharing features similar to CXL. This would make Ada the second graphics architecture from NVIDIA to use PCIe Gen 4, after the current-gen "Ampere." The previous-gen "Turing" used PCIe Gen 3. PCI-Express 4.0 x16 offers 32 GB/s per-direction bandwidth, and NVIDIA has implemented the Resizable-BAR feature with "Ampere," which lets the system see the entire dedicated video memory as one addressable block, rather than through tiny 256 MB apertures.

Despite using PCI-Express 4.0 for its host interface, GeForce "Ada" graphics cards are expected to extensively use the ATX 3.0 spec 16-pin power connector that the company debuted with the RTX 3090 Ti, particularly with higher-end GPUs that have typical board power above 225 W. The 16-pin connector is being marketed as a "PCIe Gen 5" generation standard, particularly by PSU manufacturers cashing in on early-adopter demand. All eyes are now on AMD's RDNA3 graphics architecture, on whether it's first to market with PCI-Express Gen 5, the way RDNA (RX 5000 series) was with PCIe Gen 4. The decision to stick with PCIe Gen 4 is particularly interesting given that Microsoft DirectStorage may gain use in the coming years, something that is expected to strain the system bus for the GPU, as SSD I/O transfer-rates increase with M.2 PCIe Gen 5 SSDs.

Everyone's favorite GPU-news leaker Kopite7kimi has updated his tweet from April 1 with more specific board part numbers, and suddenly the information contained there—which could have been misinterpreted as an April 1st joke—now all seems to add up with our own posting from last month about memory bus widths. The update seems to indicate the boards will now feature 21 Gbps memory, which is the same as what we saw on the recently made available RTX 3090 Ti cards, and Videocardz goes further to speculate the 3090 Ti could have been a dry run for the upcoming cards, including with a similar 600 W TDP rating to follow. Note also that the leaker is shying away from referring to these as the RTX 4080/4090 series, leaving room in case NVIDIA decides to jump in naming scheme for reasons including marketing and what the competition decides.

After the data center-oriented Hopper architecture launch, NVIDIA is slowly preparing to transition the consumer section to new, gaming-focused designs codenamed Ada Lovelace. For starters, the source claims that NVIDIA is using the upcoming GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPU as a test run for the next-generation Ada Lovelace AD102 GPU. Thanks to the authorities over at Igor's Lab, we have some additional information about the upcoming lineup. We have a sneak peek of a few features regarding the top-end GeForce RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 GPU SKUs. According to Igor's claims, NVIDIA is testing the PCIe Gen5 power connector and wants to see how it fares with the biggest GA102 SKU - GeForce RTX 3090 Ti.

Additionally, we find that the AD102 GPU is supposed to be pin-compatible with GA102. This means that the number of pins located on GA102 is the same as what we are going to see on AD102. There are 12 places for memory modules on the AD102 reference design board, resulting in up to 24 GB of GDDR6X memory. As much as 24 voltage converters surround the GPU, NVIDIA will likely implement uP9512 SKU. It can drive eight phases, resulting in three voltage converters per phase, ensuring proper power delivery. The total board power (TBP) is likely rated at up to 600 Watts, meaning that the GPU, memory, and power delivery combined output 600 Watts of heat. Igor notes that board partners will bundle 12+4 (12VHPWR) to four 8-pin (PCIe old) converters to enable PSU compatibility.

NVIDIA is finally coming around to launching its top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 3090 Ti "Ampere" graphics card on March 29, 2022, according to a source on the ChipHell community, cited by Wccftech. The same source also mentions that NVIDIA has dropped the idea of releasing a 16 GB variant of the performance-segment GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, which means the company is possibly wrapping up the its RTX 30-series "Ampere" product-stack updates going into Spring-Summer, so it could prepare for its next-generation RTX 40-series based on the "Ada Lovelace" graphics architecture, with mid-year announcements followed by product launches in the second half of 2022.

The next-generation "Ada Lovelace" graphics architecture powering NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards, could see a significant increase in on-die cache memory, according to leaked source-code related to drivers or firmware, seen by XinoAssassin on Twitter. The source-code leak emanates from the recent large-scale cyber-attack on NVIDIA. When comparing source files related to Ampere and Ada architectures, XinoAssassin noticed lines that reference large cache slices.

From this, it was analyzed that the top-of-the-line AD102 silicon will have 96 MB of last-level cache on the silicon; the AD103 and AD104 chips have 64 MB; the AD106 has 48 MB, and the smallest AD107 has 32 MB. Compare this to the 6 MB on the GA102, puny 4 MB on the GA103 and GA104; 3 MB on the GA106, and 2 MB on the GA107. NVIDIA is known to make innovations in generational memory bandwidth increase and memory management, with each new architecture. The company could tap into even faster versions of GDDR6X memory it co-developed with Micron (GDDR6 with PAM4 signaling).