Rumors surrounding the upcoming RTX 40 series cards have been building up as the targeted release date draws close. Nvidia is supposed to reveal the cards in Q3 2022, probably in August as leaks suggest.
Twitter is currently getting flooded with information on these upcoming graphics cards. Some of these leaks are vague and cryptic, while some others are specific and target specific graphics cards. The most prominent of these leaks include the fact that the upcoming RTX 4090, which will presumably be a replacement for the current-gen RTX 3090, will be twice as fast as the latter. This leak is very hard to believe.
A 100% performance gain has never been seen in the video card industry. The closest we got to was back in 2016, with the introduction of the Pascal-based GTX 10 series. The GTX 980 completely fell out of fashion as the newer GTX 1080 turned out to be 50% faster than the previous-gen flagship. That is half of what leakers expect the RTX 4090 to deliver.
However, provided the current state of the video card hardware tech, a 100% gain in performance might be possible if Nvidia decides to go all in. The current-gen Ampere cards are based on Samsung’s 8nm hardware. With Ada Lovelace, Nvidia is opting for a much more efficient and powerful Samsung 5nm node, which may also be called Nvidia optimized N4 node.
According to the leaks, the card is also supposed to contain 18,432 CUDA cores. Each of these cores is going to be slightly improved as compared to the last-gen. Alongside this, keep in mind that the current-gen flagship, the RTX 3090 Ti, contains only 10,752 CUDA cores. That makes more for more than a 70% bump right away.
Also, the newer cards will come with a significantly higher power limit than the current-gen cards. While the RTX 3090 Ti tops out at around 450W, the RTX 4090 will presumably push the TDP to 600W. This, coupled with the fact that Nvidia can push the boost clock speeds to insanely high 2.5GHz, could translate to great gaming performance.
Overall, all of these improvements can account for a 100% gain in gaming performance.