Wednesday, October 19th 2022
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 isn't a Rebadged RTX 4080 12GB, To Be Cut Down
It turns out that NVIDIA didn't just cancel (unlaunch) the GeForce RTX 4080 12 GB last week, but also shelved the SKU until it is needed in the product stack. This is probably because NVIDIA intended to sell it at $900, and will find it difficult to justify a xx70-class SKU at this price-point. A Moore's Law is Dead report goes into the possible reasons NVIDIA shelved the RTX 4080 12 GB, and why it won't be rebadged as the RTX 4070.
The RTX 4070, although expected to be based on the same AD104 silicon as the RTX 4080 12 GB, won't have the same configuration. The RTX 4080 12 GB maxed out the AD104, enabling all 7,680 CUDA cores on the silicon. It's likely that the RTX 4070 will have fewer CUDA cores, even if it retains the 192-bit memory interface and 12 GB memory size. The memory clock could be changed, too. The RTX 4080 12 GB was essentially NVIDIA trying to upsell the successor of the RTX 3070 Ti (maxed out GA104) as an xx80-class SKU, at a higher price-point. Moore's Law is Dead also showed off possible designs of the RTX 4070 Founders Edition, revealing a compact design with many of the same design improvements implemented with the RTX 4090 FE. This card comes in a strictly 2-slot design.
Sources:
harukaze5719 (Twitter), Moore's Law is Dead (YouTube)
The RTX 4070, although expected to be based on the same AD104 silicon as the RTX 4080 12 GB, won't have the same configuration. The RTX 4080 12 GB maxed out the AD104, enabling all 7,680 CUDA cores on the silicon. It's likely that the RTX 4070 will have fewer CUDA cores, even if it retains the 192-bit memory interface and 12 GB memory size. The memory clock could be changed, too. The RTX 4080 12 GB was essentially NVIDIA trying to upsell the successor of the RTX 3070 Ti (maxed out GA104) as an xx80-class SKU, at a higher price-point. Moore's Law is Dead also showed off possible designs of the RTX 4070 Founders Edition, revealing a compact design with many of the same design improvements implemented with the RTX 4090 FE. This card comes in a strictly 2-slot design.
121 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 isn't a Rebadged RTX 4080 12GB, To Be Cut Down
this should say 'AD104', not 'AD102'
Unless Nvidua convinces the reviewers to only look at the frame doubled performance.
It really puzzles me how Nvidia doesn't have a well-thought out plan for the whole product stack before the launch of the flagship the way AMD and Intel do.
Honestly since they went so far to reveal it at their launch announcement, Nvidia probably would have been better off just going ahead with it. This wishy-washy approach puts them in an even more awkward situation than they were already in. Amazing that so many well paid individuals in their company couldn't come to the conclusion that this was a terrible idea from the start.
Instead of replying constructively you decided to reply with that instead. The question remains, how much more can you cut down the die compared to the 4090 and sell it for north of $700; disagreements on my usages of cutdown aside.
Only the 4090 is a reasonable uplift in performance but due to the high price it isn't impressive.
AMD should take this opportunity and crush nVidia's disappointing Alda Lovelace GPUs.
I believe that after AM5's fail to become a clear winner over Intel and the power of RTX 4090 seen in reviews combined with DLSS3 and the lack of information about RDNA3 cards, plus Intel's enter in the GPU market, they see a lack of ability from AMD to continue as an effective and strong competitor to the other two in the retail market. So, they are starting to play it nice with Nvidia. See the latest articles about GPU prices. Nvidia still sells above MSRP most of it's cards, RTX 4090 comes at $1600 to over $2000 and tech sites post articles with titles saying that GPU prices are going down and that normality in GPU pricing is back. They do say somewhere that AMD is undercutting Nvidia in pricing and that mid range Radeon cards are better, but those remarks look more like necessary small text lost in the articles than something to clearly point to and turn the reader's focus at it.
Use AD104 only for 4060 Ti 60 and 50. with 192 160 and 128 bit bus.
NVIDIA knows for each Ampere card, the price, COGS, gross margin, number of each type of core, memory size, memory bus width, memory bandwidth, pixel fillrate, texture fillrate, peak FP32, etc.
And they made Ada Lovelace GPUs, they know the same performance figure for the new generation silicon. It's their freakin' design.
They know what VRAM capacities are available to a particular memory bus width.
All they need to do is put together a simple spreadsheet with model numbers from 3050 to 3090 Ti and an adjacent cells listing model numbers from 4050 to 4090 Ti. Look for anomalies, try to fix those and price accordingly.
Now they have no real space above the Ampere stack to do anything meaningful gen to gen without looking like clowns. And it appears AMD is being more competent about it. And precisely: last gen is turning highly competitive now all of a sudden. Working as intended?! Not if there are sub 700 dollar top end cards destroying your new offering...
As said before, my popcorn is ready :D
If only products based on chips with defective parts form the basis of the initial launch, then I want to know where fully working chips go - probably to storage to be sold for an even higher price later. This is why I was scratching my head during the Ampere launch, and this is why I'm scratching my head now.
They know they own the market. Even if AMD turns out with better price/performance cards, they can't make enough of them to really matter. And scalpers are going to be great levellers of the game now.
And why all the clusterfuck with announcing RTX 4080 12GB, and unannouncing it afterwards? Well, marketing departments are apparently getting so responsive now we see their reactions in almost real time. Don't worry, it will be us, buyers that will pay for all the rebadging and repackaging.
Remember, Turing released with zero price/performance increase compared to Pascal. All you had was a promise of RTX abd DLSS - and it took a long time to be at least partially fulfilled, and only the top end really had a semi-useful ray-tracing capability.
And now you have a frame doubling promise. Even if it really increases the latency, works only in high FPS (again limiting it to top end cards), and introduces very noticeable artifacts (moving GUI elements being hit the worst).
Enough to sell a 4080 16GB for $1200, RTX 4070 for north of $700? Only we, the buyers, will decide that. But that doesn't mean Nvidia has to change the price. They can remain expensive, show falling quarterly revenues, and bitch about the backstabbing gamers for years.
And wait for the real customers. Next crypto wave. Which their not-so-secret crypto department is surely planning.