Nvidia’s RTX 4080 graphics card may be a little more power-hungry than previously indicated, at least according to the latest nugget from the ever-spinning GPU rumor mill.
VideoCardz (opens in new tab) spotted that Kopite7kimi, a prolific leaker on the Nvidia front, aired new specs on Twitter for the RTX 4080 from the next-gen Lovelace range.
Let’s make some updates. RTX 4080PG136/139-SKU360AD103-300-A19728FP3216GB 23Gbps GDDR6Xtotal card power 340WAugust 23, 2022
The purported specs remain the same as those floated the last time we heard from Kopite7kimi, save for a couple of important differences: the assertion that the 16GB of GDDR6X will be 23Gbps video memory, and that the power usage of the graphics card is now set at 340W.
Previously, the power usage (TBP or Total Board Power) was rumored to be 320W, and Kopite7kimi expected Nvidia to use 21Gbps GDDR6X VRAM.
The leaker still believes that the RTX 4080 will run with 9,728 CUDA Cores, exactly as before. Take all of this with the usual bucketful of seasoning, naturally.
Analysis: Nearly there with final tuning?
While the power consumption has supposedly been bumped to 340W rather than 320W as per the leaker’s previous speculation, remember that both figures are way down on earlier rumors which theorized about 420W or so. So, we’ve gone from looking at a seriously power-hungry GPU (for an xx80 model) to a much tamer beast, whichever way you dice it.
Of course, at this point, Nvidia is still actively developing these Lovelace GPUs and putting them through their final testing and paces, likely making small tweaks pretty consistently. So it’s no surprise to see power demands change slightly here, and indeed when the drop to 320W was leaked, we struggled to believe it’d be reduced so heavily (from well over 400W as mentioned).
Perhaps Nvidia is now tuning the RTX 4080 to differentiate it further from the 4070 – they can’t be too close in terms of raw grunt, and remember, the 4070 is apparently shaping up to be a great card – and this power bump is part of ensuring good enough performance with the 4080 versus the 4070 (faster VRAM will obviously help that cause, too).
All of this is just educated guesswork, naturally, but the good thing is regarding the rumors, as the RTX 4000 launch comes closer, those specs are likely to be more dialed in. All of which is to say, it does look more and more like the RTX 4080 won’t go too heavy on the power usage as was originally rumored.
The slight fly in the launch ointment is that while Nvidia’s next-gen graphics cards are set to be sprung on the world in October, we don’t know if the RTX 4080 (and 4070) may not be delayed for some time to allow for current-gen RTX 3000 stock to sell through. This could represent a thorny problem for Nvidia, potentially, but the hope is that we’ll see the RTX 4080 perhaps in November, following the initial Lovelace GPU to be unleashed which will supposedly be the RTX 4090 (in October).
Talking of the Lovelace flagship, if the RTX 4080 is going to use 23Gbps VRAM, then can we presume that the RTX 4090 will do as well? That certainly makes sense, though Kopite7kimi, when asked about this on Twitter, sounded unsure, replying (opens in new tab): “I don’t know. I hope so.”
