New RTX 4080 Leak Drops Core Count Below 10,000, 40-Series Titan Rumors

GeForce RTX GPU
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

GPU leaker @Kopite7kimi is at it again today with another update on the upcoming RTX 4080 specifications. His latest rumors include a core count reduction for the RTX 4080 from the estimated 10,240 to 10,752 range down to 9728. This translates to a 10% reduction in core count.

Thankfully, this change doesn't appear to change the 4080's estimated Time Spy Extreme score of 15,000, which Kopite lists again in his latest Tweet. Performance appears to remain the same, for now at least. Kopite's other indicated specs for the RTX 4080 also remain intact, including the 420W power limit, 16GB of 21Gbps GDDR6X memory, and AD103 die.

Regardless of the source, apply a healthy dose of skepticism to these rumors and "leaks." Mistakes and incorrect guesses are inevitable, and the hardware specs might not be fully nailed down yet. One critical missing piece of information are the RTX 40-series core clocks. There's speculation, based on the higher power levels, that Nvidia will increase core clocks substantially relative to the existing Ampere line, but there's no hard data as yet.

RTX 40-Series Titan Rumor and L2 Cache Updates

Another Tweet from @kopite7kimi suggests the Titan branding may be coming back to the GeForce lineup in some shape or form. This RTX 40-Series Titan "has a chance" at using the full-fat AD102 chip, but Kopite hasn't confirmed whether or not that will actually happen. More likely is it will be a nearly complete AD102, since 100% functional chip yields on the presumably large GPU will likely be low.

There's an interesting question if we do in fact get a new Titan card. Will Nvidia once again have a Titan "hybrid" SKU that blurs the lines between Nvidia's A-series workstation GPUs and the company's GeForce gaming GPU lineup, with lots of memory and enhanced drivers? Or will we instead get an RTX 4090 Ti that skips the professional driver enhancements? Either way, we can safely guess a card with 48GB of GDDR6X memory won't come cheap. Kopite7kimi appears to have provided an educated guess for now is all.

In the same Tweet, Kopite also shared some L2 cache updates for the AD103 and AD104 40 series dies. The fully unlocked AD103 die will apparently have 64MB of L2 cache, while the AD104 die will have 48MB — that's the same as what the earlier leaks suggested back at the start of the year.

However, Kopite also suggests the RTX 4090 might have a reduced L2 cache size, or perhaps that AD102 won't have proportionately larger caches. Or it might be a move to differentiate the potential RTX 4090 Ti (or Titan) from the "lesser" RTX 4090.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

  • spentshells
    the more that is leaked the less impressive this series becomes
    Reply
  • hannibal
    spentshells said:
    the more that is leaked the less impressive this series becomes

    They are making room for 4000S series!
    Nvidia has a problem. AIB have so much old stuff that they have to sell, so making the "current" 4000 series "weaker" they can sell old 3000 series at higher price. When the situation gets better they will release "upgraded" Super versions and again increase the price somewhat. Also it allows the Gddd7 to come market, so that the super highend versions get that upgrade also in addition of having more cores enabled!
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    hannibal said:
    They are making room for 4000S series!
    Nvidia has a problem. AIB have so much old stuff that they have to sell, so making the "current" 4000 series "weaker" they can sell old 3000 series at higher price. When the situation gets better they will release "upgraded" Super versions and again increase the price somewhat. Also it allows the Gddd7 to come market, so that the super highend versions get that upgrade also in addition of having more cores enabled!
    This is actually a good theory, as they've done it before with Turing.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • jp7189
    -Fran- said:
    This is actually a good theory, as they've done it before with Turing.

    Regards.
    This might work when they are only competing against themselves, but RDNA3 rumors are sounding pretty good.
    Reply
  • hannibal
    jp7189 said:
    This might work when they are only competing against themselves, but RDNA3 rumors are sounding pretty good.

    If RDNA3 is good. AIB will increase the "MSRP" by 300% and problem is solved!
    It has not been price competition between Nvidia and AMD because AIB manufactures price the products based on their liking. If GPU is too good for the price (3060ti) they increase the price more. If the GPU is bad (6400) they reduce price somewhat.
    So the "real" price advantage/disadvantage is somewhat meaningless, when AIB reprice everything, so that the price suits to their portfolio.
    Reply
  • renz496
    jp7189 said:
    This might work when they are only competing against themselves, but RDNA3 rumors are sounding pretty good.
    That's why AMD usually will let nvidia to launch first. If nvidia push the price higher than amd can price their card slightly under that or slightly above it.
    Reply
  • watzupken
    hannibal said:
    They are making room for 4000S series!
    Nvidia has a problem. AIB have so much old stuff that they have to sell, so making the "current" 4000 series "weaker" they can sell old 3000 series at higher price. When the situation gets better they will release "upgraded" Super versions and again increase the price somewhat. Also it allows the Gddd7 to come market, so that the super highend versions get that upgrade also in addition of having more cores enabled!
    This is what Nvidia was doing with the Turing generation. Basically they ring fenced the top end chip only for the flagship. They were forced to change direction when they launched Ampere as it was clear that the planned RX 6800 XT is no slouch and clearly outclassed the GA104 easily. So we got a good deal when they released a slightly cut down GA102 for the RTX 3080. Now the Nvidia learned their lesson that when they use the same chip for both the xx90 and xx80 series, the gap is too small and hard for them to charge a significant premium on the higher end GPU. So there we have it back to Turing strategy with a AD103 just for the RTX 4080, and a cutdown version to give them room to introduce the Super refresh later.
    Reply