The GeForce RTX 4090 is one of the best graphics cards, but it may not be the best of what the Nvidia Ada Lovelace architecture has to offer. According to the YouTube channel Moore’s Law is Dead (opens in new tab) (MLID), Nvidia has an ace up its sleeves: the Titan RTX Ada. This, of course, is just a rumor, so any information or renders should be taken with a healthy heaping of salt — several spoonfuls, at least!
It’s been a while since Nvidia launched a Titan product. The last Titan was the Titan RTX, a monster graphics card from the 2018 Turing days with a $2,499 MSRP. After that, Nvidia seemed to forsake the Titan brand with Ampere, instead offering the RTX 3090 Ti as an alternative, but it might return with Ada Lovelace — if the rumors are true. The YouTuber shared renders of a Titan RTX Ada prototype, which they claim are the product of actual photographs in their possession.
And let’s stop right there for a moment. If someone has photographs of a product, then why are they sharing renders of the product? (Yes, “We must protect our sources!”) Still, renders are far, far easier to fake, and there have already been a few meme renders of future Nvidia GPUs floating around. But if true, the future Titan looks comically huge.
The GeForce RTX 4090 is already pretty big, but the Titan RTX Ada will blow it out of the water based on these renders. The renders show a quad-slot graphics card with the same Founder’s Edition cooler aesthetic as Nvidia’s current RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 offerings. In addition, the PCB might be in a “sandwich,” with a thicker plate on the back of the graphics card to help with cooling. It’s a brilliant idea, as the Titan RTX Ada will most likely have 48GB of GDDR6X in split mode, where Nvidia places memory modules on both sides of the PCB (i.e., similar to the RTX 3090 and previous Titan cards).
The renders also show the Titan RTX Ada proudly flaunting a gold finish, which is characteristic of the previous Titan RTX graphics card. The quad-slot cooling system will probably be necessary if the rumors that claim the Ada Titan could be a 650W graphics card that can hit 700W with manual overclocking.
Nvidia utilizes the AD102 die for different Ada SKUs, including the GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 6000 Ada. AD102, which measures 608mm², houses 144 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs). The GeForce RTX 4090 has 128 enabled SMs, while the RTX 6000 Ada sports 142 SMs. So there seems to be enough room for a GeForce RTX 4090 Ti, a Titan RTX Ada — or even both. The GeForce RTX 4090 Ti is rumored to share the same core configuration as the RTX 6000 Ada, so only the Titan RTX Ada will (allegedly) leverage the full AD102 silicon.
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A complete AD102 die would mean that the Titan RTX Ada could wield 18,432 CUDA cores, 576 Tensor cores, and 144 RT cores. Clock speeds are unknown but would likely land in the 2.5–2.7 GHz range, just like the other 40-series GPUs. It also seems like the GPU will have 48GB of GDDR6X — twice as much as the GeForce RTX 4090. Now that Micron has been mass-producing 24 Gbps GDDR6X modules, the Titan RTX Ada will have double the capacity and probably more bandwidth.
The GeForce RTX 4090 has 21 Gbps GDDR6X memory and a 384-bit interface to deliver a memory bandwidth of 1,008 GB/s. Assuming that the Titan RTX Ada rocks 24 Gbps GDDR6X modules, it would theoretically pump out 1,152 GB/s, 14% more than the GeForce RTX 4090.
The GeForce RTX 4090 is a 450W TDP graphics card that draws what it needs from a single 16-pin power connector (12VHPWR). If the leaked renders are accurate, Nvidia may provision the Titan RTX Ada with two 16-pin power connectors. However, with all the cases of the connector and Nvidia adapter melting on the GeForce RTX 4090, many would think having two of the connectors isn’t a good idea.
The leaker claims Nvidia hasn’t decided on a firm launch date for the Ada Titan, so don’t expect to see it on the market any time soon. However, the chipmaker reportedly has the Titan prototype on standby in its labs. So maybe it’s waiting for AMD to try to make a power move with the RDNA 3 before it unleashes the beast, or perhaps it’s waiting for the Spring GTC (GPU Technology Conference).
Price is also unknown, but given the overpriced GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards, we wouldn’t be surprised if Nvidia slaps a $2,999 price tag on the future Titan Ada — which was also the price of the Titan V. The Titan RTX launched at $2,499, after all, and that was four years ago. Professional RTX 6000 Ada cards are currently in the $7,500–$10,000 range, so as a “prosumer” alternative, three grand wouldn’t be too surprising.
Will we actually see the return of the Titan brand? We remain skeptical, as Nvidia seems to like having more expensive professional cards with a large gap between the GeForce model (RTX 4090 and previously the 3090/3090 Ti) and the equivalent professional card (RTX A6000 and now RTX 6000 Ada). But if Nvidia has taught us anything over the years, it likes to keep its options open. So with consumer cards already selling at over $2,000, why not push out an even faster model that bumps the price up 50 percent? Just don’t pretend it’s for gaming.