Nvidia is preparing three new GPUs – the RTX 4080 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super and RTX 4070 Super. We haven’t seen Super cards since Nvidia’s RTX 20-series, but if this leak turns out to be true, they’re coming back. Will they be worthwhile enough to take a high place among the best graphics cards? It’s hard to say, but they could help compete against AMD’s recent GPUs.
The information comes from hongxing2020, which continues to leak in the GPU area. Nvidia already has a good spread of GPUs between the RTX 4080, RTX 4070 Ti, and RTX 4070. However, if a refresh is reportedly coming to the Ada lineup, we could see some notable changes, but only if Nvidia decides to shake things up and use a different chip for at least two of those three GPUs. Do it.
The current RTX 4080 uses almost all of the AD103 GPU, but not quite. It uses only 76 of the 80 streaming multiprocessors (SMs). Is there room for upgrades in the supermodel? It’s possible, and we’ve already heard rumors, that such a graphics card is on the way. The thing is, adding four additional SMs is barely an upgrade, so unless the card costs as low as the RTX 4080, which it currently sells for ($1,050-$1,150), it’ll be nearly gone upon arrival. No one will pay $1,200 or more for a 5% upgrade when the RTX 4090 is an option.
One way to make the RTX 4080 Super a more attractive option would be for Nvidia to switch to the AD102 silicon. Even the RTX 4090 doesn’t max it out, using 128 SMs out of 144, so there’s plenty of room for a nice performance boost that bridges the huge gap between the 4080 and 4090. The 384- is also widespread in that chip. The bit memory bus allows more VRAM and bandwidth.
The so-called RTX 4070 Ti Super deviates from Nvidia’s usual naming conventions, so if it’s real, it’s going to be mouth-watering. In any case, the RTX 4070 Ti already uses a full AD104 GPU, so any upgrade would mean moving to AD103 (which the RTX 4080 uses). Right now, the 4070 Ti has a 192-bit bus and 60 SMs, so Nvidia has a little wiggle room between 60 and 76 SMs, not to mention the 256-bit bus on the AD103.
The RTX 4070 Super could stick to its existing AD104 chip and make more use of it, but it’s probably the GPU that matters least here, so it’ll have to be priced correctly to make an impact. Between 60 SM on the 4070 Ti and 46 SM on the 4070, the increase will be visible, but if it’s too close to the 4070 Ti’s price, everyone will choose that GPU instead.
After AMD launched the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT, Nvidia’s competition at the upper midrange became more fierce. The 7800 XT is an excellent alternative to Nvidia’s RTX 4070, although it is $100 cheaper. Then RX 7900 but only if those GPUs are better value than their non-Super counterparts.