Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super Rumored to Feature 20GB VRAM

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Might have special appeal in China where the RTX 4090 is about to be sanctioned.

Inno3D GeForce RTX 4080
(Image credit: Inno3D)

More rumors regarding the addition of some GeForce RTX 40 Super SKUs to Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace consumer graphics card portfolio have surfaced in recent days. The biggest potential news is that Chinese tech testing site Benchlife has seen signs of a GeForce RTX 4080 Super with 20GB VRAM on the way. Some may see this upgrade as a worthwhile improvement on the existing RTX 4080 with 16GB, especially if more CUDA cores are activated, too. Other key details about Super editions are even thinner on the ground, but we will try and distill the state of RTX 40 Super rumors below. Bring some salt.

Earlier this month, we mulled over the first worthwhile set of RTX 40 Super rumors which came via MEGAsizeGPU. The key morsels from that Tweet/X were that the purported GeForce RTX 4080 Super (maybe Ti) would arrive in early 2024. Moreover, it would be based on the AD102 GPU, have a TGP of under 450W, yet be priced similarly to the existing RTX 4080.

This week the same tipster followed up by asserting that Nvidia and partners were also preparing to release an RTX 4070 Super “based on AD103, has a 256bit bandwidth and 16G VRAM.” In addition, MEGAsizeGPU reckons there will be an RX 4070 D6 model with GDDR6. Benchlife actually embedded this tweet in its news section, before adding data from its own sources suggesting the GeForce RTX 4080 Super with 20GB is being prepared.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

GeForce

GDDR6X VRAM

GPU

RTX 4090

24GB

AD102

RTX 4080 Super

20GB

AD102

RTX 4080

16GB

AD103

RTX 4070 Super

16GB

AD103

RTX 4070 Ti

12GB

AD104

RTX 4070

12GB

AD104

RTX 4070 D6

12GB (GDDR6)

AD104

Table: Italics = rumor, Super model CUDA core counts unknown

With the rumored additions added to the Ada Lovelace series, we should end up with something like the above (ignoring lower-tier cards). GPU Rumorville has no idea about the CUDA core count for the new Super series GPUs. It was only asserted that the RTX 4060 D6 would be identical apart from the move from GDDR6X to GDDR6.

If the RTX 4080 Super does indeed come with the same price as the existing RTX 4080, that will probably precipitate a drop in the price of the non-Super card to help Nvidia products compete in this area of the market where AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX flagship roams. Meanwhile the RTX 4070 Super and RTX 4070 D6 fill some more price / performance gaps that are wide enough to be targeted.

In light of the recent US / China sanction news, the RTX 4080 Super might also find it will have a special appeal in China. Perhaps the new AD102-based RTX 4080 Super card will have its specs tuned to come in just under the bandwidth / compute export red lines that come into force starting from Nov 16.

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Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

46 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Papusan
    Nice. So the sanctions against China will determine how much performance you'll get from next gen graphics cards forwards. Great news.
    Reply
  • digitalgriffin
    Papusan said:
    Nice. So the sanctions against China will determine how much performance you'll get from next gen graphics cards forwards. Great news.
    No.

    I don't understand why 4090 prices are shooting through the roof. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

    Let's say 50k Nvidia 4090s were sold to China pre sanctions. That demand is still 50k/month. So why do scalpers and 3rd party resellers shell companies circumventing sanctions think they are going to get rich when the demand is the same? Even if sanctions are worthless and China gets 50k/month then Supply doesn't change. If sanctions work then that's more Supply for the world market. Supply and demand is the same or becomes better.
    Reply
  • usertests
    Makes sense, having less than the 7900 XT would be cringe.
    Reply
  • Geezer760
    Rumored, rumored? Shouldn't 20gb vram been from the get go, ngreedia has always skimmed (scamming) out on vram, AMD has pretty much always added more vram, even back when I bought my R9 390 (still running today) it had 8gb of vram compared to ngreedia's 6gb vram.
    Reply
  • thisisaname
    digitalgriffin said:
    No.

    I don't understand why 4090 prices are shooting through the roof. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

    Let's say 50k Nvidia 4090s were sold to China pre sanctions. That demand is still 50k/month. So why do scalpers and 3rd party resellers shell companies circumventing sanctions think they are going to get rich when the demand is the same? Even if sanctions are worthless and China gets 50k/month then Supply doesn't change. If sanctions work then that's more Supply for the world market. Supply and demand is the same or becomes better.
    China buying now rather than later would push up demand and thus the price. Nvidia is not going to increase supply of the 4090 and it can sell Ai cards to a massively lot more.

    As for scalpers I do not think they are thinking long term, as long as it sell for more than they paid for they do not care.
    Reply
  • ingtar33
    the pprice of the 4090 is going up because nvidia stopped production on them a month or two ago. combined with these sanctions.

    and the super lineup being contemplated just to get around US export restrictions would be so in line with ngreedia's SOP that I wouldn't be surprised if it's priced identically to the 4090, and released only in china.
    Reply
  • palladin9479
    Geezer760 said:
    Rumored, rumored? Shouldn't 20gb vram been from the get go, ngreedia has always skimmed (scamming) out on vram, AMD has pretty much always added more vram, even back when I bought my R9 390 (still running today) it had 8gb of vram compared to ngreedia's 6gb vram.

    VRAM isn't something you can magically add more of, not without redesigning the chip or creating an asymmetrical memory architecture which is extremely bad for performance.

    The only way they could "Add" another 4GB would be if they were also adding another 32-bit memory channel. Currently the 4080 has a 256-bit memory interface, which breaks down into 8 32-bit memory channels. Each memory channel has a single 2GB (16Gb) memory chip. 8 * 2GB = 16GB. The 12GB models all have 192-bit memory bus's with 6 32-bit memory channels. The lowly 8GB model that everyone freaked out about, that's because it has an anemic 128-bit memory interface, four 32-bit memory channels with a 2GB chip on each one. To "Add" 4GB without increasing memory channels would mean one channel had more then the rest causing extremely unpredictable performance problems. The 16GB 4060 also has only 4 32-bit memory channels but use's 4GB (32Gb) memory chips instead, and gets the same performance as the 8GB in almost all tests. You upgrade all the memory chips or none of the memory chips.

    Also memory size isn't very important once your past the point of holding all data of the existing scene, memory bandwidth on the other hand is absolutely crucial. What most people think is a memory size issue is actually a memory bandwidth issue, and nVidia deliberately hamstrung their entire product line to upsell people to the 4090.
    Reply
  • williamcll
    digitalgriffin said:
    No.

    I don't understand why 4090 prices are shooting through the roof. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

    Let's say 50k Nvidia 4090s were sold to China pre sanctions. That demand is still 50k/month. So why do scalpers and 3rd party resellers shell companies circumventing sanctions think they are going to get rich when the demand is the same? Even if sanctions are worthless and China gets 50k/month then Supply doesn't change. If sanctions work then that's more Supply for the world market. Supply and demand is the same or becomes better.
    Because AIBs would have a hard time manufacturing them under sanctions. There are very little factories out there that can assemble 4090s for cheap and it's not EVGA.
    Reply
  • watzupken
    I am apprehensive here. Looking at RTX 2080 vs 2080 Super, there is no change in the VRAM configuration. I am comparing with the RTX 2080 because it is clear to me that Nvidia decided to go back to this way to segregate their products. RTX 3090/80, made it very difficult to upsell their customers, and they likely don't want to end up in the same situation.
    There is also no reason to create a new and more powerful SKU because there is no way they can predict when the product will get sanctioned as well.
    Reply
  • lumineZ
    Simple. At the pricing level that is going on overall in the GPU market. I vote with my wallet and I will not buy an 40xx card. Period. And if this keeps up with the next generation. I will most likely be done with PC gaming. Shame since it has been a great and fun hobby since the Commandore64 era.
    Reply