Friday, January 17th 2025
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series "Blackwell" Features Similar L1/L2 Cache Architecture to RTX 40 Series
NVIDIA's upcoming RTX 5090 and 5080 graphics cards are maintaining similar L1 cache architectures as their predecessors while introducing marginal improvements to L2 cache capacity, according to recent specifications reported by HardwareLuxx. The flagship RTX 5090 maintains the same 128 KB L1 cache per SM as the RTX 4090 but achieves a higher total L1 cache of 21.7 MB thanks to its increased SM count of 170. This represents a notable improvement over the RTX 4090's 16.3 MB total L1 cache, which features 128 SMs. In terms of L2 cache, the RTX 5090 sees a 33.3% increase over its predecessor, boasting 96 MB compared to the RTX 4090's 72 MB, with SM count going up by 32.8%, so there is a slight difference.
However, this improvement is relatively modest compared to the previous generation's leap, where the RTX 4090 featured twelve times more L2 cache than the RTX 3090. The RTX 5080 shows more conservative improvements, with its L1 cache capacity only marginally exceeding its predecessor by 1 MB (10.7 MB vs 9.7 MB). Its L2 cache maintains parity at 64 MB, matching the RTX 4080 and 4080 Super. To compensate for these incremental cache improvements, NVIDIA is implementing faster GDDR7 memory across the RTX 50 series. Most models will feature 28 Gbps modules, with the RTX 5080 receiving special treatment with 30 Gbps memory. Additionally, some models are getting wider memory buses, with the RTX 5090 featuring a 512-bit bus and the RTX 5070 Ti upgrading to a 256-bit interface.
Sources:
HardwareLuxx, via Tom's Hardware
However, this improvement is relatively modest compared to the previous generation's leap, where the RTX 4090 featured twelve times more L2 cache than the RTX 3090. The RTX 5080 shows more conservative improvements, with its L1 cache capacity only marginally exceeding its predecessor by 1 MB (10.7 MB vs 9.7 MB). Its L2 cache maintains parity at 64 MB, matching the RTX 4080 and 4080 Super. To compensate for these incremental cache improvements, NVIDIA is implementing faster GDDR7 memory across the RTX 50 series. Most models will feature 28 Gbps modules, with the RTX 5080 receiving special treatment with 30 Gbps memory. Additionally, some models are getting wider memory buses, with the RTX 5090 featuring a 512-bit bus and the RTX 5070 Ti upgrading to a 256-bit interface.
12 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series "Blackwell" Features Similar L1/L2 Cache Architecture to RTX 40 Series
put a slab of l3 under or above it reduce the l2 and replace it with more logic
L2 sits in the center, acessed by everything and interfacing with the memory.
besides didn't 5090 have 88 MB L2 overall. where is the whitepaper showing this..
videocardz.com/newz/geforce-rtx-5090d-reviewer-says-this-generation-hardware-improvements-arent-massive
videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-appears-in-first-geekbench-opencl-vulkan-leaks
I’m going to stick to the 1000’s of games of yesteryear that I still haven’t played. I can run them at 4K/Ultra/120 fps with my 7900XT.
Now it's all about low quality upscaling and fake frames generating... For double the price.
You gotta love those callous and greedy megacorporations.
They are holding back a lot actually
Now scale that to the monster that is the 5090.
If RDNA use MALL cache, that would also be the case. The thing is it's not a big deal as you seem to say. Firstly cache don't cache data but memory line. The data would be naturally spread across all memory controller in order to benefits from the whole bandwidth available. That would also mean the cache load would be spread accross all of those chiplets naturally.