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The RTX 40-Series Leaks Are Piling Up!
Published: 5-26-2022

Source Nvidia: The last flagship card from the 30-series.

It’s hard to believe that on September 17 2022 the RTX 30-series GPUs from Nvidia will already be two years old. That date might be more important than just a sign of how time flies by. According to well-regarded tipster Kopite7kimi the 40-series these new CPUs might arrive as early July 2022, but at least somewhere during Q3 which puts that mid-September period within the range of possibilities.

Since we are (allegedly) getting these GPUs soon, it makes sense that more and more leaks will appear as they move towards an official release date, so let’s recap some of the juicy information about the upcoming Ada Lovelace architecture.

What Do We Know About These Cards?

Everyone expects that there will be at least three cards at launch: a 4060, 4070, and 4080. Nvidia has followed this three-tier pattern for some time. However, they did break the mold by launching the RTX 3090 alongside the 3080 back in 2020.

A leak in late March 2022 suggests that there are in fact five cards coming: AD102, AD103, AD104, AD106, and AD107. No one knows which GPUs represent which cards. However, it’s a fairly safe bet that AD102 and AD103 are the 4090 and 4080 respectively,

AD104 makes sense as a 4070, but what would the missing AD105 be? If it’s a Ti model then it would be the 4060 Ti, with the AD106 representing the 4060 and the AD107 representing the 4050. This is all pure speculation, but it would be weird to see the 4050 at launch since Nvidia has historically waited with the entry-level budget GPU.

The Ada Lovelace Architecture

Lovelace is an architecture purportedly based on a 5nm process. This promises significant gains, but according to leaker TtLexington the jump could be 70% or even 100% compared to 30-series GPUs.

This does match up to separate rumors that the AD102 GPU offers a whopping 66.4 TF, nearly doubling that of the 3090.

Tom’s Hardware summarised the information for the top three SKUs in this table:

SOURCE: Tom’s Hardware

With the 30-series the gaps between these GPUs were relatively small, but as you can see here the 4090 absolutely dwarfs the number of streaming processors in the 4080, despite only a 100W difference in predicted TDP.

The 4090 Leaks Are a Little Confusing

The original leaks around the 4090 suggested that the GPU would have 144 streaming multiprocessors, totaling 18,432 CUDA cores. However, a later leak suggests that the card will have “only” 126 SMs.


This once again came from kopite7kimi:

These refreshed specs are very exciting and the 450W power requirement does make the rumors that the 4090 would require a 1000W PSU less credible.

Should You Wait?

GPU prices are finally falling back to MSRP as supply pressure eases, but unless you absolutely must have a 30-series card now it’s better to wait until Q3 of this year in case the 40-series does launch.


Even if the performance gains over the 30-series are only half as good as leakers say, it’s still a difference worth waiting for. Despite that outlandish 4090 flagships, the truly interesting card would be the 4060, since the scaling across the stack could mean that Nvidia’s entry-level to the high end could be competing with the current 3090. Anyone buying a 3090 between now and then is likely to feel burned.