On January 5, 2023, the third graphics card of the Ada Lovelace architecture, previously presented under the name GeForce RTX 4080 12 GB, is to be released two months late as the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti. Now a photo of the presumed AD104 graphics chip is circulating on the internet for the first time – and it's quite small.
The AD104 is half the size of the AD102< /h2>
The GeForce RTX 4090 (test) as Nvidia's new top model will soon be on the market for two months. The GeForce RTX 4080 (test) followed exactly two weeks ago – but only with the AD103 as the graphics chip and 16 GB of graphics memory. The third RTX 4000 graphics card with a smaller AD104 GPU and 12 GB of graphics memory, which was once presented, is still a long time coming, although the forthcoming launch of an RTX 4070 Ti was only confirmed a few days ago with eight custom models from Gigabyte that appeared. It is most likely the exact graphics card that was originally supposed to appear as the GeForce RTX 4080 with 12 GB of graphics memory – but that is still not certain.
The fact that the next Nvidia graphics card will almost certainly be based on the AD104 chip is confirmed by a photo of the said GPU that Twitter user @Zed__Wang aka MEGAsizeGPU circulated. Wccftech, in turn, compared the package to a GA104, i.e. the direct predecessor from the Ampere generation, which is used in the GeForce RTX 3070 (test) and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti (test), for example. And the comparison is surprising at first glance: the supposed graphics chip of the RTX 4070 is a good deal smaller. According to Twitter user @harukaze5719, the die's area is around 295mm², while the GA104 is 392mm². For comparison: The mighty AD102 of the GeForce RTX 4090 measures 608 mm², so it is about twice as big.
There is no reason to worry that the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti cannot live up to its name. The recording also reveals that it is actually an AD104-400-A1, i.e. the maximum configuration without deactivated execution units. That model is said to have 60 streaming multiprocessors with a total of 7,680 FP32 ALUs, whereas the GA104 of the GeForce RTX 3070 only has 46 SMs with 5,888 execution units. The FP32 computing power is said to have even doubled. There is only a cut from 256 bits to 192 bits in the memory interface, but the actual memory bandwidth should not collapse due to an increased throughput of 21 Gbps instead of 14 Gbps – but remains below the level of the RTX 3070 Ti.
The smaller size, on the other hand, can be easily explained: Nvidia does not rely on an adapted 8 nm production from Samsung to manufacture the Ada Lovelace graphics chips, as it did with Gaming Ampere, but has them manufactured by TSMC in N4. With the AD102, which works in the GeForce RTX 4090, the more modern lithography resulted in around 125.5 million transistors per mm², whereas the packing density of the predecessor GA102 was only 44.6 million transistors per mm². When stepping from GA104 to AD104, the relationship will be similar. In all likelihood, this will again bring benefits in terms of power consumption, as the two larger Ada Lovelace graphics cards have already demonstrated. >In terms of performance and price, one can only speculate
In terms of performance, the expected GeForce RTX 4070 Ti will presumably be at the level of a GeForce RTX 3090 (test) or even RTX 3090 Ti (test), which means that the distance to the GeForce RTX 4080 should be in the range of 20 to 40 percent – depending on the game and resolution. The price is still unknown. The smaller GeForce RTX 4080 with 12 GB VRAM was originally supposed to cost around 1,100 euros according to the recommended retail price. It is quite possible that the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti will adopt this RRP unchanged.