GeForce RTX 40 series

Lore & Background

The GeForce RTX 40 series was announced on September 20, 2022, at the GPU Technology Conference and launched on October 12, 2022, starting with the RTX 4090 at $1,599 US. The 16GB RTX 4080 followed on November 16, 2022, for $1,199 US. An originally announced RTX 4080 12GB at $899 US was 'unlaunched' after media controversy, then released as the RTX 4070 Ti on January 5, 2023, at $799 US. The RTX 4070 launched April 13, 2023, at $599 US MSRP, followed by the RTX 4060 Ti on May 24, 2023, at $399 US, and the RTX 4060 on June 29, 2023, at $299 US. An RTX 4060 Ti 16GB arrived July 18, 2023, at $499 US. On January 8, 2024, Nvidia released the RTX 4070 Super at $599, RTX 4070 Ti Super at $799, and RTX 4080 Super at $999, with higher specs and lower prices than original counterparts, leading to discontinuation of the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti. In August 2024, a variant of the RTX 4070 with GDDR6 at 20Gbps was introduced. The architecture includes CUDA Compute Capability 8.9, fourth-generation Tensor Cores with FP8, FP16, bfloat16, TF32 and sparsity acceleration, third-generation Ray Tracing Cores with concurrent ray tracing, shading and compute, Shader Execution Reordering, dual NVENC with 8K 10-bit 120FPS AV1 encoding, a new Optical Flow Accelerator for DLSS 3.0 frame generation, no NVLink support, DisplayPort 1.4a and HDMI 2.1, and FP64 performance at 1/64 of FP32.

Reader's Guide

The RTX 4090 received praise for its performance, with reviewers noting it as among the best graphics cards and capable of native 4K gaming with ray tracing. Its 24GB VRAM and AV1 encoding were highlighted for content creators. However, it faced criticism for its $1,599 price, power consumption at 450W TDP, and massive cooler sizes on aftermarket models, with some being 4 PCIe slots tall and comparable in size to a PlayStation 5. The RTX 4080 received mixed reviews; while it outperformed the RTX 3090 Ti and showed power efficiency with an average draw of 271W, its $1,199 price was criticized as a dramatic increase from the RTX 3080, and sales were weak amid a global cost of living crisis. The RTX 4070 Ti received mixed reviews, praised for thermal and 1440p performance but criticized for weak 4K performance and high price. The RTX 4070 was praised for efficiency and 1440p/4K performance, though later compared unfavorably to AMD's Radeon RX 7800 XT in rasterization and VRAM. The series' significance lies in its introduction of Ada Lovelace architecture features including DLSS 3 frame generation and AV1 encoding, while its pricing and value drew scrutiny against AMD's RDNA 3 competitors.

Did You Know?

• The RTX 4090 was the first model released, on October 12, 2022, at $1,599 US.
• An RTX 4080 12GB was announced but 'unlaunched' after controversy, later released as the RTX 4070 Ti.
• The RTX 4090 has a TDP of 450W, compared to 350W for its last-generation equivalent.
• The RTX 4080 Super was released on January 8, 2024, at $999 US.