Popular YouTubers such as JayzTwoCents, Gamers Nexus, and Linus Tech Tips have released their benchmarks for the 4090. The results are staggering with generational performance uplifts of up to 70% against the 3090Ti. But, as it turns out, Nvidia is still sitting on an ace in the hole. It’s believed that an even faster GPU, the RTX 4090Ti or Lovelace Titan, will come out. This would be the first Titan card after the 20-series. According to tech leaker @XpeaGPU, the “best dies are already saved for a 2.75Ghz boost” by Nvidia for the 4090Ti. The leak also mentions that the unreleased model will have a significant 10% to 20% performance improvement from the 4090.
— AGF (@XpeaGPU) October 12, 2022 The performance boost from the 4090 to the 4090Ti is somewhat expected as the mid-generation cards offer better performance than base models. It is, however, amazing to see that Nvidia can squeeze out even more power with the 4090Ti when the 4090 is already destroying the benchmarks.
Performance tradeoffs
Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait to see the 4090Ti as the GPU is reportedly melting power supply units due to the power draw. The leak comes from reliable Youtuber Moore’s Law is Dead. The 4090Ti (or Titan) card reportedly draws 600W to 700W of power from the PSU. The card is rumored to trip breakers, melt power supplies, and sometimes melt itself. The leak also revealed that the Titan card takes up four motherboard slots and uses two 16-pin power connectors. The card was so large and heavy that the motherboard had to be mounted to the card instead of the other way around. It’s safe to say that the standard motherboard and PCI slot can’t hold the weight of the GPU. The 4090Ti has reportedly been shelved until Nvidia finds a solution to the melting issue.
Will we see a 4090Ti in the future?
According to the leaks, we might see the new card in 12 or 18 months’ time depending on the performance of the RDNA3 GPUs from AMD. It’s worth noting that Nvidia released the 3090Ti in response to the performance of AMD’s 6900XT being close to the 3090. The leaks suggest that Nvidia may also be waiting on faster memory modules for the 4090Ti. The 4090Ti could be equipped with a newer 27Gbit/s GDDR6X or GDDR7. We will likely see the release of lower-end 40-series cards such as the 4070 and 4060 before we get mid-generation updates such as the 4090Ti. We will have to wait for AMD to launch its new generation of GPUs next month. How the RDNA3 cards perform will dictate the direction that Nvidia will be going with their own GPUs.