Nvidia mostly launches their new lineup of cards in the fall every couple of years. But, the launch of the RTX 40 series might not follow that rule due to two reasons. These reasons are Intel and AMD, respectively. While Intel’s upcoming Arc Alchemist GPUs look very promising and are a direct competitor to both Nvidia and AMD, the latter is also coming up with a rather more powerful Radeon RX 7000 series which can pose a serious threat to Nvidia’s sales. Thus, Nvidia might want to be early in the market to crush its competitors.
The upcoming RTX 40 series GPUs are codenamed Ada Lovelace by Nvidia, and it is also going to be the first time that the company designed completely different dies for the different offerings in the lineup. To date, we have seen turned-down versions of the highest-end die in lower-tier GPUs. But, the AD102, the AD103, and the AD104 which will power the RTX 4090, the RTX 4080, and the RTX 4070, respectively, will be completely different dies with no relation to each other.
Although an early Quarter 3 launch seems logical, it will be difficult for the company to line up such a big event in this troubled release window. Since the pandemic resided, most companies have turned to in-person events. The most recent example is the first in-person Google I/O in quite some time.
Looking at the big in-person events timeline, we see Computex 2022 is scheduled for May 24-27. It is very unlikely Nvidia will launch their RTX 40 series so early this year. Gamescom 2022 is scheduled for August 24, but that pushes the release window to fall 2022. Early Q3, or the month of July, almost does not have any big events. The only sizeable events to consider in the time gap are RX Japan (VR) and MWC in Shanghai, which are scheduled for June 22 and June 29, respectively.
But, we do not need big events all of the time as just like the RTX 30 series launch, they can come from CEO Jensen Huang’s house itself.
Now is the most interesting time of the year as several rumors have started to line up for the upcoming launch. Recently, news leaked that the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 cards are supposed to come with serious VRAM bumps, while the RTX 4090 will come with the same but slightly faster 24GB GDDR6X memory. Overall, 2022 seems to be a great year for graphics card fans!
