The graphics card market is finally returning to normal as the chip shortage eases (and the crypto market suffers), bringing the prices back in line with MSRP for the first time in years. But Nvidia isn’t resting on their laurels, even though they have a massive lead in the market. Nvidia is planning to release the new GeForce RTX 40 series before the end of the year, and the flagship RTX 4090 Ti will have monstrous specs.
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Based on recent leaks, the new card will boast 18,176 CUDA cores and a typical board power (TBP) of 800W. The card will also reportedly offer 48GB of GDDR6X VRAM on a 384-bit bus, delivering 26 Gigatransfers per second (GT/s). For comparison, the current top-end card, the RTX 3090 Ti, boasts 10,752 CUDA cores, 24GB of VRAM and a TBP of 450W.
Some industry players posit that the new RTX 4090 Ti will therefore have about 70 percent more computational power than its predecessor RTX 3090 Ti.
Interestingly, another reason why the graphics card market is returning to normal prices is precisely because the new RTX 90 series cards are around the corner. “People don’t want to buy GPUs knowing they’re potentially going to be obsolete in two quarters,” said Tristan Gerra, an analyst at Robert W Baird & Co.
Several reports are claiming that Nvidia may actually push back the launch of the 40 series in order to get the supply chain right and there won’t be this massive jump in prices on the second-hand market, even if the crypto market recovers and more GPUs are needed in mining operations again.
That could mean excellent news for gamers, who should be able to get cards priced closely to their suggested retail prices at launch. Nvidia is expected to announce the RTX 40 series in the next few months, with shipping of the first cards starting in October.
