Friday, April 19, 2024

Nvidia may have another monster GPU in the works, and the price could be outrageous

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Today, yet another sign of an upcoming Nvidia Titan RTX Ada GPU appeared — the card’s specs were spotted in a shipping manifest. This suggests that engineering samples of the monstrous GPU might be on their way to various development centers around the globe.

Everything points to the Nvidia Titan card making a big comeback in this generation, and the development seems to be farther along than it initially seemed to be. There’s a catch, though — how many people will even be able to afford it?

Volza

Today’s round of proof comes from a shipping manifest found at Volza (and first spotted by Wccftech). The card is not referred to by name, but it’s fairly easy to guess that it might be the rumored Nvidia RTX Titan for the 40-series generation of cards. This is because the listing shows 48GB of GDDR6 memory combined with the PG137 board name.

According to recent leaks, the PG137 PCB belongs to a beastly card that we’ve already seen pictures of before. It’s a quad-slot GPU colored in a mix of black and gold; a telling sign that we’re looking at a new Titan card. The specifications also imply just that. The card is said to deliver 18,176 CUDA cores and 48GB of memory clocked at 24Gbps across a 384-bit bus. The bandwidth is estimated to be at 1.15TB/s.

The estimated total board power (TBP) is the real killer here — rumors point to 800 watts. This implies that the card will be using not one, but two 16-pin power connectors — presumably the same ones that have occasionally been melting when connected to the RTX 4090. In all likelihood, the GPU won’t utilize the full 800W in order to run.

The shipping manifest serves to confirm, at the very least, the memory spec. However, previous leaks talked about 48GB of GDDR6X memory, while this source mentions GDDR6. It’s possible that Nvidia is using a higher-clocked GDDR6 VRAM instead, but it could also be an error. The cards are clearly intended for testing purposes.

Nvidia might hit new levels of ‘expensive’

Moore’s Law Is Dead

It certainly seems like Nvidia may be quite far into the development of the Titan RTX Ada GPU, if that’s what it will be called when it hits the shelves. The name is one thing, but the real question is — how much will it cost?

The current flagship RTX 4090 has a recommended list price of $1,600. In reality, it often sells for more, what with Nvidia’s board partners adding their own premiums to the base price. Nvidia is also supposedly working on an RTX 4090 Ti, which is said to feature the same core count but half the memory of the Titan GPU. It’s not outlandish to assume that the 4090 Ti might cost anywhere between $2,000 to $2,500.

Now, if the Titan RTX Ada is released with the aforementioned specs, the pricing gets tricky. Why? Because Nvidia already has a very similar GPU up for sale, the RTX 6000 Ada. This is a workstation GPU based on the new Ada Lovelace architecture. It comes equipped with the exact same core count as the rumored Titan, a boost clock of  2.5GHz, and 48GB of GDDR6 memory, with a maximum power draw of 300 watts.

The RTX 6000 Ada is very clearly aimed at professionals and not at gamers. It has an MSRP of $6,800 and can often be found at even higher prices. That makes a huge gap between the consumer-level Nvidia GPUs and this workstation model, but the RTX Titan would bridge that gap in terms of specifications. Where would the price land, though?

It would make no sense for Nvidia to charge the same kind of pricing for this GPU. While it will still be favored by content creators and other professionals over pure gamers, it’s a consumer GPU, and no one’s going to pay north of $5,000 for it. However, it won’t surprise me if  Nvidia slaps a $3,000 price tag on the Titan RTX Ada whenever it launches — after all, it will be the absolute best graphics card on the market. We’ll just have to wait and see how expensive it’s going to be if, and when, it appears.

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