Renowned leaker @KittyYYuko has published the first images of printed circuit board of Nvidia's upcoming GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition graphics card as well as the company's AD103 graphics processor. While PCB of the GeForce RTX 4080 FE resembles PCB of the GeForce RTX 4090 FE, there are significant differences between the two designs.
Just like the designs of Nvidia's Founders Edition graphics cards are similar, so are the designs of the company's printed circuit boards, since they use similar cooling systems. Designs of the GeForce RTX 4080 FE and GeForce RTX 4090 FE PCBs are similar too, and both boards use the same 12VHPWR auxiliary power connector. But since the former board is rated for 320W of graphics power, whereas the RTX 4090 FE has a power consumption of up to 450W, the RTX 4080 FE has fewer power stages as well as fewer capacitors. Also, because the AD103 GPU features a 256-bit memory interface while the AD102 processor has a 384-bit memory bus, the RTX 4080 FE uses fewer of Micron's GDDR6X memory chips.
The AD103 GPU, based on the Ada Lovelace architecture, is considerably smaller compared to the AD102 processor. This is not something particularly surprising as the AD103 packs 45.9 billion transistors and has a die size of 378.6 mm^2, whereas the AD102 comprises of 76.3 billion of transistors and has a die size of 608.5 mm^2. Since the AD103 chip is relatively small, it also does not feature a metallic frame on its sides.
Since Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition is not yet available, officially, @KittyYYuko had to place a CPU and an EKWB sticker on the board in a bid to hide certain details that could identify the source of the card. This of course hides the number of power phases featured by the GeForce RTX 4080 FE, but since the product is set to become available next week, we will learn this information soon enough.
In addition to sharing photos of the GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition and AD103, the leaker also published its 3DMark TimeSpy Extreme benchmark result of 14,100 points, which is in line with other RTX 4080 performance leaks. Such performance numbers are good enough to likely make Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 one of the best graphics cards for gaming set to be available this year, although it will be interesting to see how AMD's new RX 7900 graphics cards compete when they arrive in mid-December.
