NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series Reportedly Launching Early Q3 2022

[Tsing]

NVIDIA will be launching its first GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards in the early third quarter of this year, according to new rumors shared by recurring leaker kopite7kimi, who prefaced a tweet today suggesting that green team's new Lovelace-based GPUs are expected to surface earlier than what enthusiasts might have expected.

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[Niner51]

Either way I believe I'm holding off this round. I will be curious of the power draw though and if it is indeed more power hungry than a 3090 Ti.

 

[Brian_B]

There's a difference between "Launch" and "Announce", so we will see.

I think it's conceivable that it could be a hard launch - we are something like 18 months out from the launch of Ampere, and a Q3 launch puts it at about 2 years, so that's about the right cadence for a generational bump.

I managed to get a 3080 a bit ago (thanks to some help from this forum!), I don't feel the need to upgrade anything right now, but I do hope to see a general trend returning to sanity with respect to computer components - if nothing else than to preserve my hobby.

 

[DrezKill]

nVidia or AMD's RTG, someone just please give me an affordable graphics card to replace my 1080 Ti that I paid $430 for brand-new.

Will I skip the upcoming generation of GPUs? Not if the availability is there, and there are actually decent MSRPs. But we know there won't be.

 

[Brian_B]

I've been doing a bit of thinking about the state of GPU markets.

I think I'm making my peace with top tier cards costing in excess of $1,000. The cards in that range don't really apply to me, so for those that want to chase that: more power to you.

@DrezKill makes my point very well - the top end doesn't matter so much. What really matters is can you get an upgrade that's worth while in your budget. The Top Tier card can cost $2,500, and I'm sure it's fast. But If I'm rocking a 1080, and my budget is $400 - can I get a good upgrade for that?

I would expect, that for a given budget, every generation should present somewhere around 20% increase in performance. My usual metric (I stole this from someone a lot smarter than me on another forum) is I look to roughly double my GPU performance when you upgrade. That would mean, for the same price, you should see your performance double about every 3 generations (a bit faster than the 20% may indicate - there are other factors that play into that as well, like PCI revisions, CPU upgrades, faster RAM, etc). A generation takes about 1.5 years, so I look at a upgrade every 5 +/- years.

That, pretty much, has been the cadence I've been on for a good while. Since my SLI GTX 260's. Going from my 980, I should have upgraded with a Pascal 1080Ti or 2080 Turing, but had held out wanting to do a complete computer rebuild, then the crap with the pandemic hit, and so I ended up with a big jump. Now, I know TFlops don't paint the entire picture, but for my point here, it's illustrative.

GTX 260 (SLI) ~1 TFlop
6970 - 2.7 TFlop
980 - 5 TFlop
3080 - 30 TFlop

I don't recall what I paid for all of those though. That would be the interesting note: have I been paying about the same over time, or not. Usually my budget for a GPU is around $500, +/-. The 3080 is obviously an outlier - I paid about $1k for mine, but it also represents a significantly larger jump in performance than I usually shoot for.

Not sure if that falls in line or not - as you can always wait for the performance level to come down in price, or pay more to get it sooner: I guess I'm ok with about the 5 year cadence for a doubling of my performance; that may not be what everyone wants to do though. The 3080 was a case where it was the middle of the pandemic, I missed my usual update window, and I took what I could get when the opportunity arose.

So, I guess so long as this trend holds more or less steady, I'm ok with whatever they put out on the top end. So long as the middle and lower ends don't get dropped or forgotten.

 

[DrezKill]

I think I'm making my peace with top tier cards costing in excess of $1,000.

I still haven't made peace with flagship cards being priced $600+. However I think am slowly, accidentally, becoming more accepting of midrange cards getting closer to those prices. When the RTX 3070 came out with an MSRP of $500 I was like "well I guess that's kinda fair, all things considered." The old me would have never said something like that. The 2070 Super had also been $500 (so there was no price increase), and the 3070 outperformed the 2080 Ti, so I guess that seemed sorta okay with me. Sorta. At least it did what I usually expect: the midrange card from a new generation beats the flagship from the previous generation.

I look to roughly double my GPU performance when you upgrade.

I also used to look to triple my vRAM amount when I upgraded (or get close to triple). I don't think I'm gonna be able to keep doing that though. Going from the GTX 970 to the 1080 Ti may have been the last time I was able to nearly triple the vRAM. It's hard to imagine that my next graphics card will actually have, or need, 36GB of vRAM. Honestly a lot of the time I don't even push the full 11GB my current card has.

Also going from Maxwell v2 to Pascal was the first time in my life I did not skip generations.

...so I look at a upgrade every 5 +/- years.

That's usually what works for me. It was 5 years between my 970 and 1080 Ti purchases. When I got the 1080 Ti I was looking at the RTX 2070 Super and the Radeon 5700 XT. That's when a guy popped up on [H] selling a brand-new 1080 Ti for barely more than the 5700 XT cost (and a lot less than the 2070 Super). Since the 1080 Ti had roughly the same base performance as those other two cards, and more vRAM, I decided to go with that. Been working out great since. Yeah I did get the 1080 Ti about 2 years late, but eh. At least the price was more agreeable by that point.

Usually my budget for a GPU is around $500, +/-.

I had never paid more than $400 (or even close to $400) for a GPU in my entire life before I got the 1080 Ti. Like I said, I was looking at the 5700 XT and 2070 Super, so I guess I was finally willing to pay $400-$500 for a card. I sure as f*ck wasn't happy about it though. The GTX 970 (which I got shortly after launch) turned out to be a helluva deal, especially after I got a partial refund. The card ended up costing me like $270 or some sh1t like that. Probably the best GPU deal I've ever had in my life. Shiat, my GeForce 2 Pro cost a lot more than that (but not my Radeon 9500 Pro).

The 1080 Ti was the first flagship card I ever bought (but not the first one I've owned - I got a hand-me-down Radeon 9800 Pro before the 9800 XT came out. It was a nice upgrade over the 9500 Pro). I always bought the card just under the flagship. I wanted to get most of the flagship card's performance for a considerably cheaper price. Always worked out well in the past. But that midrange segment's price just kept creeping up and up, approaching the prices of older flagships. But yeah, I guess my GPU budget is the same as yours now.

...I guess I'm ok with about the 5 year cadence

I never really decided on that as an official rule, things just kinda worked out like that. It was usually about 5 years before I really started feeling the age in my current card. Usually I'd have 2 cards per PC. I would grab a new card when I built a new PC, and then a few years later get a second card. Then it was time to build a new PC before I got a new GPU again. That's the boat I'm in now. My PC is gonna be 8 years old this coming Fall. It's time to replace the PC before I think about getting another GPU. I've never used a PC this long before. Usually my PCs last about half this amount of time before I replace them. My financial situation hasn't been the best the past few years, but then again it hasn't really mattered, cuz the entire PC market has been hella f*cked. Even if I had the cash I wouldn't have spent money on anything, with the crazy overblown prices we've been seeing over the past couple years. Will things be better next year? I sure hope so. In the meantime, the 1080 Ti is still getting things done, though I don't know for how much longer. By the time the PS5 Pro and "Xbox Series Next" (or whatever they'll end up calling it) come along, I will definitely be needing some new hardware all around.

So, I guess so long as this trend holds more or less steady, I'm ok with whatever they put out on the top end. So long as the middle and lower ends don't get dropped or forgotten.

And their prices don't increase even more. Cuz it's been getting harder and harder to call the midrange cards "midrange." But yeah, I guess you're right, they can do whatever they want with the high-end, so long as the lower tiers don't get f*cked up the same way. Flagship cards were never about value anyways. Kinda reminds me of smartphones. The prices for flagship phones are f*cking insane, but I never buy those anyways (although I guess my Galaxy Note 4 was flagship-class). I just hope the phones in the lower tiers remain affordable, and still offer a good bang-for-the-buck. That's all I'm looking for in the end, with any hardware. If the performance-to-price ratio is good, then it still has value, even if it is expensive. I just want hardware to actually be worth the prices they command. $1200 for a 3080 Ti doesn't fit that description to me.

What really matters is can you get an upgrade that's worth while in your budget.

Yeah, exactly.