Nvidia announces next-gen RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 GPUs

Nvidia officially announces RTX 40 series GPUs today. After months of rumors and recent teases from Nvidia, the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 are now both official. The RTX 4090 arrives on October 12th for $1,599, with the RTX 4080 starting at $899 and available in November. Both are powered by Nvidia’s next-generation Ada Lovelace architecture.

The RTX 4090 is the top card of the Ada Lovelace generation. It will ship with a massive 24GB of GDDR6X memory. Nvidia claims it’s 2-4x faster than the RTX 3090 Ti, and will consume the same amount of power as the same card from the previous generation. Nvidia recommends a power supply of at least 850 watts based on a computer with a Ryzen 5900X processor.

Inside the massive RTX 4090, there are 16,384 CUDA cores, a 2.23GHz base clock that boosts up to 2.52GHz, 1,321 Tensor-TFLOPs, 191 RT-TFLOPs and 83 Shader-TFLOps.

Nvidia actually offers the RTX 4080 in two models, one with 12GB of GDDR6X memory and another with 16GB of GDDR6X memory, and Nvidia claims it’s 2-4x faster than the existing RTX 3080 Ti. The 12GB model will start at $899 and feature 7,680 CUDA cores, 7,680 CUDA cores, a 2.31GHz base clock that boosts up to 2.61GHz, 639 Tensor-TFLOPs, 92 RT-TFLOPs and 40 Shader-TFLOPs.

However, the 16GB RTX 4080 model isn’t just a memory hit. Starting at $1,199, it’s more powerful, with 9,728 CUDA cores, a 2.21GHz base clock that boosts up to 2.51GHz, 780 Tensor-TFLOPs, 113 RT-TFLOPs, and 49 Shader-TFLOPs of power. The 12GB RTX 4080 model will require a 700 watt power supply, with the 16GB model needing at least 750 watts. Both RTX 4080 models will launch in November.

It wouldn’t be a new RTX launch without Nvidia’s own Founders Edition graphics cards. Nvidia will sell GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 (16GB) graphics cards with its own internal design. It’s a design that the company has upgraded again.

“For our new GeForce RTX 40 Founders Edition graphics cards, we’ve further optimized the axial dual-flow system, increased fan sizes and fin volume by 10%, and upgraded to a 23-phase power supply,” explains Andrew Burns, technical marketer at Nvidia. “Memory temperatures are reduced, and the new, more powerful Ada processors are kept cool in ventilated cases, giving gamers excellent headroom for overclocking.”

Nvidia supports the 16-pin PCIe Gen-5 connector with its own RTX 40 series cards instead of the custom solution it created for its own RTX 30 Founders Edition GPUs. Like the previous connector, this is a single cable that will power a 40-series card, or you can use the adapter included in the box to connect three 8-pin power connectors. Nvidia says you might even want to plug in a fourth one for “more overclocking headroom.”

ATX 3.0 power supplies that will natively support PCIe Gen-5 16-pin connectors are coming in October from Asus, Cooler Master, FSP, Gigabyte, iBuyPower, MSI and ThermalTake. Additional models from other manufacturers are also expected soon.

Ada Lovelace, named after the English mathematician and author, is the third generation of RTX powering both the RTX 4080 and RTX 3090. It is designed to greatly improve ray tracing and support Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 3.

Nvidia today introduced its third-generation Ada Lovelace RTX architecture with a demo of Racer RTX – an off-road kart racing game simulation. The Racer RTX demo was powered by a single Ada Lovelace GPU, featuring 76 billion transistors and built on TSMC’s 4nm process.

Ada Lovelace also includes third generation RT cores designed to greatly improve ray tracing. Some of the improvements come down to a new DLSS 3 AI that processes the new frame and the previous frame to understand how game scenes change. Nvidia sampled Microsoft Flight Simulator Frame rates more than double with DLSS 3. This new generation of frames should mean that DLSS 3 can boost frame rates even when a game is CPU bottlenecked.

Nvidia says DLSS 3 is coming to more than 35 games and apps, starting with the first games in October. Naturally we’ll have to test all of Nvidia’s claims in the coming months as it launches the RTX 4090 and two RTX 4080 models.

The launch of RTX 40 series cards comes at a challenging time for Nvidia and the GPU market as a whole. Demand for GPUs has weakened following the crypto crash, and more recently, the prevalence of GPU-based crypto mining has plummeted thanks to Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake. Nvidia’s gaming revenue fell by a staggering $1 billion in its most recent earnings.

Nvidia’s launch focuses on its first-party Founders Edition graphics cards, but these will be sold alongside additional GPUs from hardware partners such as Asus, Colorful, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, INNO3D, MSI, Palit, PNY and Zotac. These third-party GPU models use the same Nvidia processors but may be configured differently and have different coolers. But don’t expect to see RTX 40-series GPUs from EVGA, which recently announced it will no longer make Nvidia graphics cards, citing misbehavior by the chipmaker.

Although its successor is now official, it’s likely that previous RTX 30-series GPUs will be available for some time to come. Earlier this year, Nvidia admitted that it built too many GPUs and had to adjust retail pricing due to excess inventory. This resulted in RTX 30 series cards hitting MSRP after years of reseller price hikes, a welcome sight for cash-strapped PC gamers.