NVIDIA’s AD102 GPU Pops Up in MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous Playing cards
As GPU households enter the later a part of their lifecycles, we frequently see chip producers begin to offload stockpiles of salvaged chips that, for one purpose or one other, did not make the grade for the tier of playing cards they usually are utilized in. These recovered chips are pretty unremarkable general, however they’re unsold silicon that also works and has financial worth, resulting in them being utilized in lower-tier playing cards in order that they are often bought. And, judging by the looks of a brand new video card design from MSI, it seems like NVIDIA’s Ada Lovelace era of chips has reached that stage, because the Taiwanese video card maker has put out a brand new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous card based mostly on a salvaged AD102 GPU.
Sometimes based mostly on NVIDIA’s AD103 GPU, NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous collection sits a step beneath the corporate’s flagship RTX 4080/4090 playing cards, each of that are based mostly on the larger and badder AD102 chip. However with some variety of AD102 chips inevitably failing to stay as much as RTX 4080 specs, slightly than being thrown out, these chips can as an alternative be used to make RTX 4070 playing cards. Which is strictly what MSI has finished with their new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X Black OC graphics card.
The cardboard itself is comparatively unremarkable – utilizing a binned AD102 chip would not include any benefits, and it ought to carry out similar to common AD103 playing cards – and for that purpose, video card distributors not often publicly be aware after they’re doing a run of playing cards with a binned-down model of an even bigger chip. Nonetheless, these bigger chips have a tell-tale PCB footprint that normally makes it apparent what is going on on. Which, as first seen by @wxnod, is strictly what is going on on with MSI’s card.
Ada Lovelace Lineup: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 TiS (AD103), RTX 4070 TiS (AD102), & RTX 4090 (AD102)
The inform, on this case, is the rear board shot offered by MSI. The bigger AD102 GPU makes use of an equally bigger mounting bracket, and is paired with a barely extra advanced array of filtering capacitors on the again facet of the board PCB. In the end, since these are seen in MSI’s images of their GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous Ventus 3X Black OC, it is simple to match it to different video playing cards and see that it has exactly the same capacitor layout as MSI’s GeForce RTX 4090, thus confirming using an AD102 GPU.
Chip curiosities apart, all of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous graphics playing cards – regardless of whether or not they’re based mostly on the AD102 or AD103 GPU – include a GPU with 8,448 energetic CUDA cores and 16 GB of GDDR6X reminiscence, so it would not (sometimes) matter which chip they carry. In any other case, in comparison with a fully-enabled AD102 chip, the RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous specs are comparatively modest, with fewer than half as many CUDA cores, underscoring how the AD102 chip being utilized in MSI’s card is a reasonably heavy salvage bin.
As for the remainder of the cardboard, MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous Ventus 3X Black OC is a comparatively hefty card general, with a cooling system to match. Being overclocked, the Ventus additionally has a barely greater TDP than regular GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous playing cards, weighing in at 295 Watts, or 10 Watts above baseline playing cards.
In the meantime, MSI is outwardly not the one video card producer utilizing salvaged AD102 chips for GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous, both. @wxnod has additionally posted a screenshot obtained on an Inno3D GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous based mostly on an AD102 GPU.
