NVIDIA Are Launching Even MORE Graphics Cards… Kinda

Let’s start off by saying, NVIDIA has released a LOT of graphics cards recently. Not only have they now fulfilled the stack by releasing new SUPER variants of their cards, like the 4070 SUPER, 4070 Ti SUPER and 4080 SUPER, but they’ve also ditched some models where the SUPER series have superseded them, unlike the 4070 and 4070 SUPER which still co-exist.

Nvidia

There is one issue when a new GPU hits the market, and a lot of that comes down to yields, and how many of each product they’re able to actually bring to market. We all remember the times during the mining boom and of course, the global pandemic, when we saw GPU stock dwindling, and therefore price rising, and while a lot of blame went around, it was an amalgamation of things that collectively brought trouble to the market.

Graphics Cards

When it comes to producing a GPU, there’s also going to be a process, and part of that is to make sure that each individual GPU hits the targets set out in the spec, by NVIDIA, and if those targets of boost speeds, temperatures and power delivery aren’t hit for the sustained amount of time, essentially missing the market, the core is thrown away or used for other purposes, which brings us onto today.

While the likes of the RTX 4070 which utilises the AD104 GPU core has been a success, it seems that they’re able to utilise the AD103 core, used in the 4080 and 4080 SUPER to essentially disable cores and lower the spec to turn it into an RTX 4070.

It’s also the same for the 4060 Ti, moving from AD106 to AD104, and the RTX 4060, moving from AD107 to AD106 and apparently these are due to hit anytime between now and April.

Leaked Information

This news comes by way of a leak, so take from it what you will, but reliable hardware leaker MEGAsizeGPU on Twitter put up a small image detailing the specs and what’s going on with the caption “The new version of 4070/4060Ti/4060.”

What does this actually mean though? Well it could mean that NVIDIA are pushing all 4060, 4060 Ti and 4070 cards to use different cores, or they could co-exist between the existing AD cores and it really could be luck of the draw when you buy one as to what you actually get. You could buy an RTX 4070 and get an RTX 4070, or you could buy one and get a cut-down 4080 SUPER, at least in theory. What we do know is that the latest official drivers from NVIDIA have already added support for these new somewhat Frankenstein graphics cards, so that further cements the rumour/leak as being true.

This could also be a region-specific thing, so it wouldn’t surprise me if you only see this happening in certain parts of the world but I guess with something like that, time will tell as to what happens..

Also, as we’ve seen in the past, modders and enthusiasts have seen this before and circumnavigated around it to unlock potential performance, depending on how its locked down, but if the core hasn’t made the grade in the first place, even though this is a possibility, it doesn’t mean that it will be 100% perfectly stable either.

Anything Official?

What I will say is that NVIDIA hasn’t made any official announcements on this and I doubt they will, as it’s not something that really needs to be announced, and there’s no trade-off for the end consumer because you’re still getting the product you paid for, it may just be manufactured ever so slightly differently.

What do you think? Would you be happy, disappointed, or neutral if you bought one of these GPUs and it had a different Ada Lovelace GPU core inside? Personally, as long as it meets the criteria set out by NVIDIA and runs as it should, I don’t see any issue whatsoever.