Nvidia RTX 4090 leaks sound promising, and GPU could arrive with plenty of stock
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Nvidia’s RTX 4090 graphics card is about to go on sale, and the latest splurge around the GPU makes it impressive on a number of fronts, including the volume of launch stock.
This is all from the well-known YouTube-based leaker Moore’s law is dead (opens in new tab) (MLID), which primarily claims to have heard from a number of sources about how much stock of the flagship GPU will hit shelves next Wednesday (October 12). As always, apply liberal spice to what is essentially informed speculation here.
In any case, the summary of the sentiment conveyed is that there will be plenty of units of the Lovelace flagship graphics card, at least at major retailers (in the US), and even medium to smaller outlets will receive a fair amount of stock within the first week. Apparently the RTX 4090 is going to be a ‘very big’ launch and compared to Ampere, Nvidia will have about four to five times the volume of the first flagship GPUs. Yes, so much.
MLID also shared the grapevine’s word on the RTX 4090’s performance, gathered through chats with reviewers, though the leaker clearly doesn’t go into details. What he does let us know is that the RTX 4090 is generally about 80% faster than the RTX 3090, but in some scenarios it is faster than that; these are raster performance, meaning standard (not ray-traced) images. For ray tracing, expect bigger gains, generally more than twice as fast as the RTX 3090.
The other main part of positive wastage here is on the power front, arguing that the RTX 4090 is much more stable and less prone to the sometimes hefty power spikes that top-end Ampere GPUs exhibit. The theory is that an RTX 4090 at standard levels (no overclocking) can probably be swapped straight into a PC with an RTX 3090 Ti, or even many RTX 3090 systems without any problems (take this with an extra spoonful of skepticism).
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This is all pretty exciting news for people who have enough cash to buy an RTX 4090. Talking about much better performance per watt will be fine, bearing in mind that this is relative to Ampere. Let’s not kid ourselves that the RTX 4090 won’t be very power-hungry, as we know for sure it is, as a 450W TGP graphics card – before considering where it might peak when pressed (but that will have less extreme current spikes than Ampere, according to MLID sources).
The shared performance figures underscore an earlier leak, although they are slightly more positive. Earlier we heard that the RTX 4090 was almost, but not quite, 80% faster than its predecessor. So it looks like the GPU will definitely be 80% faster, which, let’s face it, is still a big gain, and faster than that in some cases, probably close to doubling the performance, a feat that Nvidia promised with rasterization – but only with certain games. Of course, it’s not uncommon for a company to present a new product in the most positive light; that’s just the way marketing works.
As for stock levels, it’s interesting to hear that in theory such a large number of units will be available right away. The RTX 4090 may not sell out on day one, apparently that’s the inbound volume, and that’s definitely unusual for a GPU launch these days (the flagship’s huge cost will of course limit the target audience).
Now, that’s the US market, so other regions like Europe may not be the same, and MLID notes that, as is usually the case, it could take about a week after launch for RTX 4090 stock to arrive outside of the United States. . MLID makes another point that because third-party RTX 4090 cards are so big and thick in general, the Founders Edition is more likely to fit in a particular PC case, which could mean more demand for Nvidia’s own card. – so that might sell out on day one.
We’ll see, but it’s certainly interesting that such a niche card – given the RTX 4090’s price tag – will come out in such quantities, if this rumor is true of course. If that’s true, it remains to be seen what kind of demand Nvidia will attract in what is becoming a rougher climate for consumers as the weeks go by.