NVIDIA has reportedly begun shipping NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards with a newer GPU SKU that changes the requirement for PCB design and is set to lower manufacturing costs. Previously, the company shipped its AD103-300-A1 SKU to power the GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards. However, the new AD103-301 SKU will power the upcoming RTX 4080 cards that the company plans to ship to its AIBs and possibly use in the reference design. With the new 301 version, the GPU performance and power envelope should not change. What does change is the PCB design requirements, as the new SKU revision possesses a different chip pinout that doesn't correspond to the old design.

HKEPC has reported that GPUs with AD103-301 SKU are shipping, while VideoCardz confirms the AIB update with Gainward also offering updated cards. GALAX offers RTX 4080 models with either AD103-300/301 as well. Additionally, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti will also see an SKU update, with AD104-250 being replaced by AD104-251. With these new silicon revisions, customers will not see any difference. However, the AIBs and NVIDIA could see a cost reduction to improve margins. HKEPC estimates around $1 BOM cost reduction with the new SKU, which will make a difference in thousands of cards shipped.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger predicts that chips and semiconductors will make up as much of the car's bill-of-materials (BOM) as the engine (or main propulsion) itself. This change will happen as early as in 2030, said Gelsinger, speaking at a keynote address, at the IAA Mobility 2021 show in Munich. Gelsinger's prediction is backed by internal research conducted by Roland Berger, and McKinsey.

As of 2019, chips barely made 4% of a vehicle's BOM, confining mainly to the ECU and an optional infotainment system. By 2030, electronics will take over a more complex set of roles, including full automation, and AI that can drive anywhere. A fully automated vehicle, or AV, will be next big thing in personal transport. Gelsinger predicts a $115 billion TAM (total addressable market) size for automobile semiconductors by the end of the decade.

Igor's Lab has posted an interesting investigative article where he advances a possible reason for the recent crash to desktop problems for RTX 3080 owners. For one, Igor mentions how the launch timings were much tighter than usual, with NVIDIA AIB partners having much less time than would be adequate to prepare and thoroughly test their designs. One of the reasons this apparently happened was that NVIDIA released the compatible driver stack much later than usual for AIB partners; this meant that their actual testing and QA for produced RTX 3080 graphics cards was mostly limited to power on and voltage stability testing, other than actual gaming/graphics workload testing, which might have allowed for some less-than-stellar chip samples to be employed on some of the companies' OC products (which, with higher operating frequencies and consequent broadband frequency mixtures, hit the apparent 2 GHz frequency wall that produces the crash to desktop).

Another reason for this, according to Igor, is the actual "reference board" PG132 design, which is used as a reference, "Base Design" for partners to architecture their custom cards around. The thing here is that apparently NVIDIA's BOM left open choices in terms of power cleanup and regulation in the mounted capacitors. The Base Design features six mandatory capacitors for filtering high frequencies on the voltage rails (NVVDD and MSVDD). There are a number of choices for capacitors to be installed here, with varying levels of capability. POSCAPs (Conductive Polymer Tantalum Solid Capacitors) are generally worse than SP-CAPs (Conductive Polymer-Aluminium-Electrolytic-Capacitors) which are superseded in quality by MLCCs (Multilayer Ceramic Chip Capacitor, which have to be deployed in groups). Below is the circuitry arrangement employed below the BGA array where NVIDIA's GA-102 chip is seated, which corresponds to the central area on the back of the PCB.

Update: Related to this story, feast your eyes on Newegg's deal of the day, with a reference, standard Sapphire RX Vega 64 for $689.99 with two "free" games. I don't think I've ever seen such a conturbated launch as this. Also, considering the scope and content of the article, I will be updating the tag for this piece as an Editorial.

There has been somewhat of an uproar in recent times regarding AMD's lack of clarity on pricing of their newly-launched Vega 64. While AMD themselves told reviewers and consumers that their RX Vega graphics cards would be available for $399 (Vega 56) and $499 (Vega 64), recent events have, at the very least, cast some doubts on Vega's supposedly clean-cut pricing. Some popular reviewers and YouTubers have even gone so far as to say they won't be accepting any more samples from AMD due to a perceived slight at the erroneous information provided by the company; when someone reviews and analyses a product based on a fixed price-point advanced by a company, and then that pricing seems to have turned out nothing more than smoke and mirrors... People's work is put out the window.

Now, AMD has come out to put rumors of false Vega pricing announcements to rest. Except the skeptic in me remains, well... skeptic. Here's what AMD has said: "Radeon RX Vega 64 demand continues to exceed expectations. AMD is working closely with its partners to address this demand. Our initial launch quantities included standalone Radeon RX Vega 64 at SEP of $499, Radeon RX Vega 64 Black Packs at SEP of $599, and Radeon RX Vega 64 Aqua Packs at SEP of $699. We are working with our partners to restock all SKUs of Radeon RX Vega 64 including the standalone cards and Gamer Packs over the next few weeks, and you should expect quantities of Vega to start arriving in the coming days."

Disclaimer things first: take this with a grain of salt, since this hasn't seen the amount of confirmations we'd like. 3D Center has come out with a table that supposedly demonstrates the schedule of RX Vega manufacturing and integration work from AMD's add-in-board partners (which includes the likes of Sapphire, XFX, PowerColor, and others.) Remember that manufacturers receive a suggested reference design from AMD as to how to incorporate their GPUs into an actually operable graphics card, with varying degrees of customization according to the particular partner we're talking about. And this process takes time.

According to the leaked schedule, the BOM (Bill Of Materials) for the required parts to properly manufacture an RX Vega graphics card was to be released sometime in June, with engineering validation tests going through the end of June towards the beginning of this month (July.) Actual working samples from AIB partners are scheduled to be available in the middle of this month, with product validation tests (PVT) stretching towards the beginning of August (you'll remember AMD has confirmed they'll be formally announcing the RX Vega graphics card(s) at SIGGRAPH 2017, which stretches through July 30th and August 3rd.)