nvidia has revealed three new RTX 40-series graphics cards, the latest generation of its popular GeForce GPU lineup, during the company’s GTC 22 event on Tuesday. The first cards in the lineup to be revealed are the RTX 4090, the most powerful card in the lineup, followed by two versions of the RTX 4080: a 16GB version and a cheaper 12GB version.
The first card Nvidia revealed was its new RTX 4090, the most powerful consumer card the company has ever produced, and its flagship card from the RTX 40-series lineup. Nvidia promises twice the performance of the best last-gen card , the RTX 3090 Ti, in games like cyberpunk 2077 Y Microsoft Flight Simulator. The card has 16,384 CUDA cores and 24 GB of memory. Of course, such a powerful card needs a lot of power in return, so the RTX 4090 will require three 8-pin power adapters with an optional fourth for overclocking.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 will launch on October 1. 12, with prices starting at $1,599.
Nvidia also announced two versions of the RTX 4080, and while you might think the only difference between the 16GB and 12GB versions is memory, you’d be wrong. Instead, the two GPUs actually feature quite different specs. Notably, the 16GB version has 9,728 CUDA cores, while the 12GB model only has 7,680. The latest model also has slower memory than the 16GB version. In other words, you might be better off considering this an entry-level RTX 4080 that’s closer to an RTX 4070.5.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 (16GB) will start at $1,199 and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 (12GB) will start at $899. Both RTX 4080 cards are scheduled for release in November.
Finally, Nvidia also introduced a number of new features for its RTX 40-series cards, including DLSS 3. This new generation of Nvidia’s real-time image reconstruction process features huge improvements in visuals and frame rate compared with previous versions, but those frame rate upgrades aren’t exactly solid.
The new process that Nvidia uses employs an interpolation method, which means that the card predicts the next frame and generates its own version, rather than the one that comes directly from the game. This means that while the frame rates will be higher, the game may not feel as smooth as it will not be reading input for each of the interpolated frames.
Along with all the new cards, Nvidia also announced a few games with RTX-enabled ray tracing updates, including Portal.
