It is actual enjoyable to take a look at leaks of the RTX 4090 and its ludicrous graphics-processing prowess, however the unlucky actuality is that the majority of us merely don’t have $1500 or extra to put out on a graphics card. Nearly all of us are going to be chomping on the bit for the lower-tier GPUs, so leaks about these are arguably much more thrilling. That is what we have now as we speak: a efficiency rumor from kopite7kimi about AD106, the second-smallest Ada GPU.
We do not often run Time Spy Excessive as a benchmark, however we most likely do not have to inform an viewers of {hardware} fanatics that among the finest options of 3DMark is its huge database of outcomes. Perusing the outcomes archive, and taking “below 7000” to imply “over 6000”, we see the AD106 GPU in effective firm: the GeForce RTX 3070, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, and the Radeon RX 6750 XT. None of these are “weak” GPUs, able to high-refresh 1440p gaming and even full 4K UHD on some titles.
Alright, certain—by comparability to the remainder of the Ada Lovelace household, AD106 appears to be like fairly puny. That is kind of the purpose, although. The place earlier NVIDIA GPU generations have sometimes gone 102-104-106, we have the AD103 GPU slotted in close to the top-end this time round, and the place the Ampere GA103 is pretty uncommon and solely actually used for high-end cell GPUs, it seems like AD103 is perhaps the idea for the GeForce RTX 4080.
If true, that places the whole lot else down a tier, leaving the AD104 GPU for the GeForce RTX 4070 and presumably additionally the GeForce RTX 4060, in cut-down type, and if that is the case, the AD106 GPU might be relegated to strictly the GeForce RTX 4050 and lower-end elements, in addition to cell GPUs. TechPowerUp! appears to assume that is how issues will shake out, and whereas we’re not assured sufficient to make that prediction ourselves, it isn’t loopy.
On the finish of the tweet, kopite7kimi additionally notes that each of the 2 smallest next-gen NVIDIA GPUs might be restricted to a PCIe x8 interface. If we consider earlier leaks, that’ll be PCIe 4.0 x8, which has comparable efficiency to PCIe 3.0 x16. The draw back of that is that anybody putting in one in all these GPUs in a machine caught with PCIe 3.0 might be restricted to an x8 interface as effectively, however that most likely will not matter a lot for many software program.
Sadly, despite the fact that NVIDIA is purportedly poised to preview its next-gen graphics playing cards at its Challenge Past occasion later this month, all rumors point out that the reveal will doubtless be strictly for the RTX 4090 and presumably the RTX 4080. Decrease-end playing cards should wait, and presumably some time—earlier rumors appeared to say that we’ll solely see AD102 this 12 months, with the extra reasonably priced playing cards coming early subsequent 12 months.
