Graphics card prices are steadily declining, but you might want to resist buying one if you can hold out for just a bit longer. That’s because Nvidia’s next-gen GPUs are only months away, according to a tipster with a strong track record.
Twitter user kopite7kimi posted today that the Nvidia RTX 4090 would arrive in mid-July, after initially telling his followers that the Ada Lovelace-based cards could launch in “Q3.” This is earlier than we anticipated, given that most signs pointed to RTX 40-series cards arriving in September or October. Frankly, I’m skeptical that anything chip-related could be on schedule, no less ahead of it.
We should, as always, also caution our readers to be skeptical of these sorts of claims. While this particular leaker has been accurate in the past, we don’t know the source of this “leak,” and Nvidia hasn’t provided us with a firm timeline for its RTX 40-series. We’ve reached out to the company and will update this article if we hear back.
It’s not clear which event Nvidia would target if this mid-June window is accurate. Computex, an annual computer expo in Taiwan, starts on May 24, while Gamescom is on August 24. There isn’t too much going on between those events unless Nvidia hosts its own virtual reveal. Nvidia is confirmed to have a keynote at Computex, and Jeff Fisher, the senior vice president of GeForce, will make an appearance.
“Nvidia and our partners will be announcing new developments and products on both the enterprise and consumer fronts at the show,” said Fisher about Computex, suggesting we could get a teaser of the upcoming graphics cards as early as next week.
What do we know about these upcoming RTX 40-series cards today? Not much. At least, not officially. The cards are based on the Ada Lovelace architecture, and the flagship RTX 4090 is rumored to feature 16,128 CUDA cores and 24GB of GDDR6X memory at 21Gbps. It is said to run at 450 watts, and Kopite7kimi suggests it is 2x more powerful than the RTX 3090 (we have strong doubts about this one), which has a 350W TDP. We’ve also read that an RTX 4090 Ti could go up to a 600W TDP and that the flagship card entered its testing stage in April.
We can say with confidence that Nvidia will follow previous releases by starting at the top, releasing its most powerful cards (RTX 4090, 4080, and 4070) before trickling down to more budget-friendly options. The first batch will be expensive and supply shortages seem inevitable, but it might be worth the wait, if only to help you snag a last-gen card at a (hopefully) lower price.
For its part, AMD is set to launch its RDNA 3-based graphics cards later this year, putting it on a collision course with its long-running adversary.