Nvidia's RTX 4000 Series Cards Could Launch Sooner Than You'd Think


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Gamers within the last year or so have been hungry to experience the power of ray-tracing on their PCs and have been flocking to buy Nvidia's much-lauded RTX 3000 series of cards which it's fair to say have been in pretty short supply.

Well, it now looks like those who want the latest taste of Team Green's upcoming graphics cards may not have to wait as long as initially anticipated.

What Is The Release Date Of The Nvidia RTX 4000 Cards?

The recent news comes courtesy of well known leaker 'kopite7kimi' on Twitter who stated that "If nothing else, we will see 4090, 4080 and 4070 in 2022Q3.", suggesting that the new Nvidia graphics card could launch as early as July 2022.

Earlier leaks pointed to a release date later on in 2022, with leakers like Greymon55 suggesting we could anticipate the new cards in October 2022.

Of course, these are all leaks and there's been no official confirmation from Nvidia on the release date of the 'Lovelace' cards, but as and when things are made official, we'll be sure to let you know.

What Are The Specs Of The RTX 4000 Cards?

When it comes to numbers, earlier specs from Greymon55 also indicated that Nvidia's AD102 SKU (presumed to be the flagship GPU of the Lovelace lineup) will offer up a clock speed as high as 2.2GHz as a base clock. This would translate to 81 TFLOPs of power, all on a 5nm process node.

Image Credit: Gigabyte - the RTX 4000 cards should constitute a serious upgrade over options like this RTX 3080 Ti
click to enlarge
Image Credit: Gigabyte - the RTX 4000 cards should constitute a serious upgrade over options like this RTX 3080 Ti

For context, the RTX 3090 offers up 36 TFLOPs of power with a base clock speed of 1.4GHz, and the current flagship next-gen games consoles offer 12.1 TFLOPs in the case of the Xbox Series X and 10.3 TFLOPs with the PS5.

This could lead to immense levels of performance, which may lead to users looking for future upgrades, such as using some of the best PC fans to keep their new rig cool or opting for a super-powerful PC gaming monitor that can cope with all that extra grunt.

How Much Power Will The RTX 4000 Cards Draw?

Understandably, official details on Nvidia's RTX 4000 series card (codenamed 'Lovelace) will be pretty scant. However, there have been some leaks within the last few months that can provide some indication on power figures.

The most recent of these comes from Greymon55 on Twitter who has touted that the new Nvidia cards will end up offering double the performance of current offerings, and therefore require double the power.

Information gathered by 3DCenter at the back end of July suggested that the new cards from both Nvidia and AMD may be able to draw between 400 and 500W of power.

Greymon55 also offered up the suggestion that the RTX 4090 may require a 1200W PSU, which would provide some serious power and performance.

Analysis - A Potential End To The Scalping Crisis?

The last couple of years have been difficult for gamers to get their hands on new cards, partially thanks to both the chip shortage and the sudden boom of miners which led to Nvidia limiting the hash rate of their cards in a bid to limit their usage.

The end of 2022 may see an end to the chip shortage according to the ARM CEO which does suggest that Nvidia could hold off releasing their new cards in early Q3 and instead move more towards Q4.

The general consensus in the rumour mill has actually pointed to a September release date, but the advent of a possibility of July does suggest otherwise.

If the RTX 4000 series cards are around in July next year and more readily available than the last crop, then it may signal the beginning of the end of the GPU crisis, but that all depends on the point of scalping.

In essence, as long as supply is low and demand is high, then the act will pretty much always exist. Hopefully, by the back end of 2022 though, things will have improved somewhat and cards will be more available.

There have been some efforts to combat scalping in other, arguably more well-known instances. A key example is our own PS5 stock tracker that gets updated whenever stock is anticipated to drop but usually sells out instantly due to that combination of high demand and relatively slow supply.

To combat this, Sony is looking to sell PS5s directly to consumers by them registering interest. Microsoft tested their own Console Purchase Pilot back in May, giving Xbox and Windows insiders the chance to get a console without scalpers getting in the way.

As both manufacturers then have the ability to control stock flows and distribution directly, then there is a hope that it could quash scalping somewhat.

For GPUs though, things are a little different as whilst it is possible to buy directly from Nvidia, most of the cards available are likely to be third-party offerings from the likes of Asus, MSI, Zotac and so on, who will be stocked by normal retailers like Amazon, Scan and others.

The hope remains that 2022 may be a better year for the graphics card and there is anticipation that the landscape should look somewhat clearer once Nvidia's new cards do drop, whenever that may be.

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