New leaks suggest that Nvidia could be making a cut-down GDDR6 VRAM version of GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card instead of currently used GDDR6X.
Nvidia launched the GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card more than a year ago. At launch, the reviews found it to be performing similarly to the RTX 3080 and AMD Radeon RX 6080 XT graphics cards.
It was later rumored that RTX 4070 wasn’t selling that much after the launch and Nvidia had cut its GPU’s supply to the board partners.
Later, Nvidia was working on the RTX 4070 Super version, along with Super versions of other graphics cards. These Super versions have improved performance over their non-super variants. They also have better value and seem to selling better.
Interestingly, Nvidia used GDDR6X memory chips in all the graphics cards from RTX 4070 and above in the RTX 4000 series. But it looks like that’s likely to change.
RTX 4070 Cut To GDDR6
Well known Twitter (now X) based leaker MEGAsizeGPU has revealed (via VideoCardz and Tom’s Hardware) that Nvidia is working on another variant of the RTX 4070 with GDDR6 VRAM instead of GDDR6X one.
In the tweet, MEGAsizeGPU has revealed that the GDDR6 VRAM model will be running at 20Gbps, without any memory overclocking. Which is very similar to the GDDR6X model, which runs at 21Gbps. The other specs like the CUDA core count and GPU seems to be the same.
The overall memory bandwidth will likely decrease from 504 GB/s to 480 GB/s. Which is just 5% decrease. Though, we feel the power usage might go down further.
Why is Nvidia doing this, though. The likely explanation seems to be the shortage of GDDR6X memory. Several days ago, Tom’s Hardware reported that GDDR6X memory is in short supply. But that issue is just temporary. So it’s unlikely that Nvidia would be making a new model just for that temporary shortage.
Another possibility is that Nvidia is trying to save some costs. The GDDR6X is a VRAM that Micron specially designed in collaboration with Nvidia for its graphics cards. At the time of its launch, it was faster than the GDDR6 VRAM and still likely costs more than it. The pricing of this model isn’t available yet though.
Interestingly, MEGAsizeGPU had predicted way back in October 2023 that Nvidia would be making a GDDR6 version of RTX 4070. That tweet had also predicted the launch of the RTX 4070 Super variant and that turned out to be true.
Whatever the reason. If Nvidia does launch the GDDR6 variant of RTX 4070, we are hoping that Nvidia labels it correctly, so that the buyers are not misguided by it.
