Could we say goodbye to colossal GPUs with the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti? I hope so!
Cut down to size
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A new rumor floating around suggests the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti’s GPU chip - which was previously slated for use in theRTX 4080 12GB- will be 30% smaller than the chip found in the previous-gen RTX 3070 Ti, and 50% smaller than the AD102 chip used by theRTX 4090.
This comes fromMEGAsizeGPUon Twitter, who posted an image of the incredibly tiny AD104 chip, which has an area of 296mm^2. The RTX 4070 Ti will feature the AD104 chip paired with 12GB of GDDR6X memory, and will allegedly launch with a price tag of $899 in early January, replacing thenow-canceledRTX 4080 12GB.
AD104 pic.twitter.com/D8uwwNgWAyNovember 30, 2022
This price tag is still quite steep - especially considering thatAMD’s flagshipRX 7000 cardstop out at $999. When we look at the difference in configurations between the RTX 4090 (which uses the AD102) and the RTX 4070 Ti (which will supposedly be using an AD104 chip) there are some pretty big discrepancies in renderer capabilities.
For example, the shader unit count on the RTX 4090 sits at 18432, expected for a contemporary high-end graphics card. The RTX 4070 Ti, however, has 7680 shader units, less than half that of the RTX 4090, and yet this significant difference is not reflected in the prices of the GPUs.
Analysis: Smaller cards good, cheaper cards better
If rumors are true, the RTX 4070 Ti could be a breath of fresh air for people building smaller PC setups. The RTX 40-series has met a lot of just criticism not just for its high price but the enormous physical size of the currently-available GPUs, which barely fit inside some PC cases.
This forces users to bend the power cable at egregious angles to make it fit against their cases’ side panels, and is suspected to be one cause of thecurrent cable-melting fiascoNvidiafinds itself embroiled in.
The smaller GPU die will presumably mean less overall heat generation, which means cards can be built smaller - we’re likely to see some twin-fan models, unlike the almost universally triple-fan RTX 4080 and 4090 cards from third-party vendors. This is certainly a step in the right direction; with a purported maximum power draw of 300W, the AD104 is a lot less power-hungry than the flagship AD102.
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However, all the trouble that came with‘unlaunching’ and renamingthe RTX 4070 Ti would seem a little pointless if the performance and price are not reflected in a consumer-friendly way. If this new GPU launches at the original $899 MSRP, more compact sizes won’t be enough to make it worthy of our recommendation.
Muskaan is TechRadar’s UK-based Computing writer. She has always been a passionate writer and has had her creative work published in several literary journals and magazines. Her debut into the writing world was a poem published in The Times of Zambia, on the subject of sunflowers and the insignificance of human existence in comparison.
Growing up in Zambia, Muskaan was fascinated with technology, especially computers, and she’s joined TechRadar to write about the latest GPUs, laptops and recently anything AI related. If you’ve got questions, moral concerns or just an interest in anything ChatGPT or general AI, you’re in the right place.
Muskaan also somehow managed to install a game on her work MacBook’s Touch Bar, without the IT department finding out (yet).
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