GeForce RTX 4090: Finally, you may not need to change your PC’s power supply

News hardware GeForce RTX 4090: Finally, you may not need to change your PC’s power supply

While we are still struggling to find GeForce RTX 30s at decent prices (even if the situation is slowly improving), Nvidia is preparing to launch the GeForce RTX 40s. for the 4070, 4080 and 4090 models, i.e. high-end and very high-end.

RTX 4090: a lower TGP than expected?

The information is to be taken with tweezers and comes from the generally well-informed @kopite7kim Twitter account. He was the one who, yesterday, announced an earlier than expected launch for the RTX 40s.

So far, the talk has been this: these new cards would be powerhouses, offering twice the performance of the RTX 30s… But at the cost of a very high TGP. Remember that the “Total Graphic Power” represents the consumption of the graphics card in watts within the PC and it therefore requires a power supply accordingly. The GeForce RTX 3090, for example, has a TGP of 350 watts, which is already one of the highest on the market (the 3080 goes up to 320W and the 3070 to 220W).

The info we had so far suggested a TGP of 600 watts for the RTX 4090, almost double the 3090. A huge number and not necessarily very reassuring, both for the planet and for your wallet.

But the conclusion could ultimately be more optimistic: still according to @kopite7kim, the GeForce 4090 would ultimately have a much lower TGP than expected. The leaker indeed claims that the next high-end card from Nvidia would have a TGP of 450W. 100W more than the 3090, for twice the performance: if this is true at the time of release, the feat would be frankly impressive.

A finesse of engraving that could make the difference

For this new generation of RTX 4000 graphics card, Nvidia is changing its engraving method: the RTX 30s were engraved in 8 nm by Samsung, the RTX 40s will be engraved in 5 nm by TSMC. A change of supplier and a fineness of engraving almost twice lower which, logically, can lead to a sharp increase in performance without blowing up the energy envelope. Nvidia must therefore find the right balance between raw performance gain and reasonable power consumption.

GeForce RTX 40: an announcement during the summer?

If it is certain that the GeForce RTX 40 will be released in the coming months, the timing of the announcement is still unclear. Nvidia has often taken advantage of Gamescom, around August 20, to present its new GPUs. But a presentation at the end of August does not go in the direction of yesterday’s information, which evokes a launch in July.

We could therefore imagine a presentation during Computex 2022, which takes place in Taipei from May 24 to 27. This show dedicated to hardware would be the ideal place for such an announcement and Nvidia has also announced a conference on May 23 at 8 p.m. (4 a.m. in France). But there is little chance that the new cards will be announced, for the good and simple reason that Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia, will not be present.

And it is hard to see an announcement of a new generation of GeForce being made without the one who is used to being on stage at each launch of this kind. There is therefore a good chance that Nvidia will hold a dedicated event during the summer, decorrelated from any trade show.

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