NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 To Get AD103 GPU Flavor With The Same Specs

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs Now Featuring Massively Cut-Down AD103 Chips 1

NVIDIA is reportedly going to offer its GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs in AD103 GPU flavors which will adopt the same specifications.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card was initially launched with the AD104 Ada Lovelace GPU. But as per the latest reports, it looks like we might be getting a variant that utilizes the AD103 GPU.

The information comes from Kopite7kimi who states that NVIDIA might possibly be working on a version of its GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card that features the AD103 GPU. The AD103 GPU has only appeared within the RTX 4080 desktop graphics card and you might be wondering why is the GeForce RTX 4070 getting the same chip.

RTX 4070 can have a version based on AD103.

— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) May 9, 2023

The answer is in yields. The NVIDIA AD103 GPU is a large GPU that is being fabricated on the TSMC 4N process node. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Desktop and RTX 4090 Laptop have the same spec as far as core configurations are concerned but both chips are different SKUs in the sense that they need to conform to the clocks/power limits set for each platform. As such, there are bound to be a series of defective dies that don't meet the specifications of these two GPUs, and rather than going to waste, NVIDIA might have decided to salvage them for the RTX 4070 desktop graphics card.

Using these dies on the GeForce RTX 4070 would suggest that they don't even meet the RTX 4070 Ti's requirements. But in the end, end-users will see no difference between the two variants such as performance, clocks, temps, and power.

Both should operate within the margin of error and it's not the first time that NVIDIA has used defective dies from higher-end GPUs for lower-end cards. The RTX 30 and RTX 20 series are filled with GPUs where the RTX 3070 Ti used the GA102 GPU and the RTX 3060 used the GA104 GPU. This is thanks to pin compatibility between high-end and low-end GPU dies which AIBs work ahead of on their new PCBs.

AIBs such as GALAX and others do mention the codenames for the GPUs on the web pages & spec sheet, making it clear to buyers which specific chip they are getting under the hood of their cards.