NVIDIA has been dropping a trail of breadcrumbs in its GeForce twitter feed over the past week surrounding "Project Beyond," which from the get go was interpreted as its debut of the GeForce RTX 40-series, based on the "Ada" graphics architecture (named after Ada Lovelace, credited with being the mother of computer programming). In its latest tweet, the company posted a picture of the famous "Diagram for the computation by the Engine," believed to be a computer program she wrote for the Charles Babbage number engine (an analog computer from the early 19th century).

The teaser video shows a copy of Lovelace's chart lying on a modern PC desk. One of the two monitors has a sticky note with a phone number scribbled on it—(208)-629-7538. Punters on social media decoded this not to be a random phone number, but a well-crafted hint about the vital specs of the top GeForce RTX 4090. "208" could denote 2.08 times the performance (or at least FP32 compute throughput) of the RTX 3090 "Ampere." 629 could be the die-size in mm², and 7538 could mean 75.38 billion transistors (the rumored transistor count of the 5 nm "AD102" silicon on which the RTX 4090 is based).

It looks like NVIDIA is finally taking AMD's route in the mid-range by giving the third-largest silicon in its next-generation GeForce "Ada" RTX 40-series a narrower PCI-Express host interface. The AD106 silicon will be NVIDIA's third largest client GPU based on the "Ada" architecture, and succeeds the GA106 powering the likes of the GeForce RTX 3060. This chip reportedly features a narrower PCI-Express x8 host interface. At this point we don't know if the AD106 comes with PCI-Express Gen 5 or Gen 4. Regardless, having a PCIe lane count of 8 could possibly impact performance of the GPU on systems with PCI-Express Gen 3, such as 10th Gen Intel "Comet Lake," or even AMD's Ryzen 7 5700G APU.

Interestingly, the same leak also claims that the AD107, the fourth largest silicon powering lower mid-range SKUs, and which succeeds the GA107, features the same PCIe lane-count of x8. This is unlike AMD, which gives the "Navi 24" silicon a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 interface. Lowering the PCIe lane count simplifies PCB design, since there are fewer PCIe lanes to be wired out in precise trace-lengths to avoid asynchrony. It also reduces the pin-count of the GPU package. NVIDIA's calculation here is that there are now at least two generations of Intel and AMD platforms with PCIe Gen 4 or later (Intel "Rocket Lake" and "Alder Lake," AMD "Zen 2," and "Zen 3,") and so it makes sense to lower the PCIe lane-count.

The rumored 12 GB and 16 GB variants of the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 "Ada" graphics cards could launch simultaneously, according to MEGAsizeGPU, who broke the story about the presence of two memory-based variants of the RTX 4080. A simultaneous launch of the two would make things similar to that of the GTX 1060 series, which came in 3 GB and 6 GB variants. Besides memory size, the two variants of the GTX 1060 differed in core-configuration (mainly CUDA core count), which widened the performance gulf between the two. The more recent example of memory-based variants is with the RTX 3080—which comes in 10 GB and 12 GB variants with different CUDA core counts; but which were launched far apart from each other.

NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 40 series Ada Lovelace graphics card lineup is slowly shaping up to be a significant performance uplift compared to the previous generation. Today, according to a well-known hardware leaker kopite7kimi, we are speculating that a mid-range AD104 SKU could match the performance of the last-generation flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card. The full AD104 SKU is set to feature 7680 FP32 CUDA cores, paired with 12 GB of 21 Gbps GDDR6X memory running on a 192-bit bus. Coming with a large TGP of 400 Watts, it should have a performance of the GA102-350-A1 SKU found in GeForce RTX 3090 Ti.

Regarding naming this complete AD104 SKU, it should end up as a GeForce RTX 4070 Ti model. Of course, we must wait and see what NVIDIA decides to do with the lineup and what the final models will look like.

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.

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.

A technological race is brewing between NVIDIA and AMD over which brand's GPU reaches the 100 TFLOP/s peak FP32 throughput mark first. AMD's TeraScale graphics architecture and the "RV770" silicon, were the first to hit the 1 TFLOP/s mark, way back in 2008. It would take 14 years for this figure to reach 100 TFLOP/s for flagship GPUs. NVIDIA's next generation big GPU based on the "Ada Lovelace," the AD102, is the green team's contender for the 100 TFLOP/s mark, according to kopite7kimi. To achieve this, all 144 streaming multiprocessors (SM) or 18,432 CUDA cores, of the AD102 will have to be enabled.

From the red team, the biggest GPU based on the next-generation RDNA3 graphics architecture, "Navi 31," could offer peak FP32 throughput of 92 TFLOP/s according to greymon55, which gives AMD the freedom to create special SKUs running at high engine clocks, just to reach the 100 TFLOP/s mark. The Navi 31 silicon is expected to triple the compute unit count over its predecessor, resulting in 15,360 stream processors. Both the AD102 and Navi 31 are expected to be built on the same TSMC N5 (5 nm EUV) node, and product launches for both are expected by year-end.

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.

Supply issues seem to continue to affect Intel's ambitious desktop GPU launch plans, with the Arc "Alchemist" line of desktop discrete GPUs now launching at "late Q2 or early Q3," sources tell VideoCardz. This would put the launch toward the end of June, or some time in July. This follows a similar trend with availability of notebooks powered by Arc "Alchemist" discrete GPUs, which are expected to be available in June, despite a March product launch.

A mid-year launch risks putting Intel's nascent dGPU lineup perilously close to AMD's RX 6x50 refresh, and NVIDIA's RTX 40-series "Ada Lovelace" graphics cards, expected to debut across the second half of 2022. At launch, Intel's desktop graphics card lineup will include as many as five SKUs, including the Arc A380, the Arc A580, the Arc A770, and the flagship Arc A780, which is probably a Limited Edition SKU. With the rumored performance numbers we're seeing, These SKUs have the potential to impress gamers, provided they aren't obsolete at launch by next-generation models from NVIDIA and AMD.

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 deluge of NVIDIA leaks continue following the major cyber-attack on the company, with hackers getting away with sensitive information about current and upcoming products. The latest in this series covers the memory bus widths of the next-generation RTX 40-series GPUs based on the "Ada Lovelace" graphics architecture. There is early-information covering the streaming multiprocessor (SM) counts of each GPU, and their large on-die caches.

The top-of-the-line AD102 silicon allegedly has a 384-bit wide memory bus, similar to its predecessor. The next-best AD103 silicon has a 256-bit wide memory bus. Things get very interesting with the AD104, which has a 192-bit wide memory bus. The AD104 is a revelation here, because it succeeds a long line of NVIDIA GPUs with 256-bit memory buses (eg: GA104, TU104, GP104, GM204, etc). This confirms the theory that much like AMD, NVIDIA is narrowing the memory bus widths in the lower segments to cut board costs, and compensate for the narrower bus-width with large on-die caches, high memory data-rates, and other memory-management optimizations.

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).