As GPU households enter the later a part of their lifecycles, we regularly see chip producers begin to offload stockpiles of salvaged chips that, for one purpose or one other, did not make the grade for the tier of playing cards they usually are utilized in. These recovered chips are pretty unremarkable general, however they’re unsold silicon that also works and has financial worth, resulting in them being utilized in lower-tier playing cards in order that they are often bought. And, judging by the looks of a brand new video card design from MSI, it seems to be like NVIDIA’s Ada Lovelace era of chips has reached that stage, because the Taiwanese video card maker has put out a brand new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous card primarily based on a salvaged AD102 GPU.
Usually primarily based on NVIDIA’s AD103 GPU, NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous sequence sits a step under the corporate’s flagship RTX 4080/4090 playing cards, each of that are primarily based on the larger and badder AD102 chip. However with some variety of AD102 chips inevitably failing to reside as much as RTX 4080 specs, somewhat than being thrown out, these chips can as an alternative be used to make RTX 4070 playing cards. Which is strictly what MSI has achieved with their new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous Ventus 3X Black OC graphics card.
The cardboard itself is comparatively unremarkable – utilizing a binned AD102 chip would not include any benefits, and it ought to carry out identical to common AD103 playing cards – and for that purpose, video card distributors not often publicly observe after they’re doing a run of playing cards with a binned-down model of an even bigger chip. Nevertheless, these bigger chips have a tell-tale PCB footprint that often makes it apparent what is going on on. Which, as first observed by @wxnod, is strictly what is going on on with MSI’s card.
Ada Lovelace Lineup: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 TiS (AD103), RTX 4070 TiS (AD102), & RTX 4090 (AD102)
The inform, on this case, is the rear board shot offered by MSI. The bigger AD102 GPU makes use of an equally bigger mounting bracket, and is paired with a barely extra complicated array of filtering capacitors on the again aspect of the board PCB. Finally, since these are seen in MSI’s pictures of their GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous Ventus 3X Black OC, it is simple to match it to different video playing cards and see that it has precisely the identical capacitor structure as MSI’s GeForce RTX 4090, thus confirming the usage of an AD102 GPU.
Chip curiosities apart, all of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous graphics playing cards – regardless of whether or not they’re primarily based on the AD102 or AD103 GPU – include a GPU with 8,448 lively CUDA cores and 16 GB of GDDR6X reminiscence, so it would not (sometimes) matter which chip they carry. In any other case, in comparison with a fully-enabled AD102 chip, the RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous specs are comparatively modest, with fewer than half as many CUDA cores, underscoring how the AD102 chip being utilized in MSI’s card is a reasonably heavy salvage bin.
As for the remainder of the cardboard, MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous Ventus 3X Black OC is a comparatively hefty card general, with a cooling system to match. Being overclocked, the Ventus additionally has a barely increased TDP than regular GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous playing cards, weighing in at 295 Watts, or 10 Watts above baseline playing cards.
In the meantime, MSI is seemingly not the one video card producer utilizing salvaged AD102 chips for GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous, both. @wxnod has additionally posted a screenshot obtained on an Inno3D GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous primarily based on an AD102 GPU.
Sources: MSI, @wxnod
