Here's what you need to know about Nvidia's next-gen RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 graphics cards
Anyone following the PC hardware industry knew Nvidia would launch their next Gen flagship graphics card, especially after rumors and leaks had been circulating the internet for months. So it was just a matter of time before the company would announce a launch date, price, and full specification. Now here we are; it's official; Nvidia has just announced its RTX 40-series GPUs, RTX 4090 and RTX 4080.
Before I give information on the launch date and prices, here's everything you need to know about the embedded components in the graphics cards.
Image source: Nvidia
The top-end graphics card, RTX 4090
The top-tier graphics card of the 40 series is the RTX 4090, based on Ada Lovelace's Architecture. Nvidia claims it is 2-4 times faster than the RTX 3090 Ti. The impressive specification numbers quite possibly could justify that claim. You have 16,384 Cuda Cores, a 2.23GHz base clock, a 2.52GHz boost clock, 1,321 Tensor-TFLOPs, 191 RT-TFLOPs, and 83 Shader-TFLOPs. In addition, it has 24GB of GDDR6X memory.
Image source: Nvidia
The RTX 4080 will come in two models.
Nvidia will offer RTX 4080 in two variants, one with 12GB GDDR6X memory and the other with 16GB of GDDR6X memory. Much like the 4090, Nvidia also claims this graphics card is much faster than its predecessor, RTX 3080 Ti. In addition, the spec numbers are almost equally impressive as the top-end model. The 12GB model will have 7,680 Cuda Cores, a 2.31GHz base clock frequency, a 2.61GHz boost clock, 639 Tensor-TFLOs, 92 RT-TFLOPs, and 40 shader- TFLOPs.
The 16GB model has 9728 CUDA cores, 2.21GHz base clock frequency, boost clock frequency measuring 2.51 GHz, 780 Tensor-TFLOs, 113 RT-TFLOPs, and 49 Shader.
Video capturing features
Additionally, all three RTX 40-series graphics card models will include a new technology from Nvidia called Shadow Play support. It will allow users to capture gameplay up to 8K resolution at 60fps in HDR. In addition, Nvidia will include the latest Encoders (NVENC) supporting AVI encoding and improving efficient live streams using AVI.
The power Requirements
Mid-level and top-end graphics will always need extra power to run efficiently. So even though Nvidia claims that the graphics cards won't consume a significant amount of energy, the company is still recommending that you use power supplies over 700 watts.
Explicitly, for the RTX 4090, the power supply recommendation from Nvidia is 850 watts, while both RTX 4080 models require a 750-watt power supply. The power connector needed is PCIe Gen-5 16 pin made specifically from Nvidia for the 40 series graphics cards arriving in October from Asus, Cooler Master, FSP, Gigabyte, MSI and Thermaltake.
Price and availability
So let's talk pricing and market launch date. The RTX 4090 is priced at $1,599, with the RTX 4080 starting at $899 and will be available in November.
