Beastly Nvidia Lovelace flagship AD102 GPU leak with 18,176 CUDA cores, 24 Gbps 48 GB VRAM, and 800 W TBP hints at possible Titan resurrection

So far, we have known that the Nvidia AD102 RTX 4090 GPU is likely to be equipped with 16,384 CUDA cores, 24 GB GDDR6X VRAM, and a 384-bit 21 Gbps bus. The RTX 4090 is expected to run at a 450 W TGP envelope. However, it looks like the RTX 4090 may not be the lone spotlight-grabber this time.

Known leaker kopite7kimi on Twitter recently hinted that an SKU by the name AD102-450-A1 does exist and referred to it as the "beast". Now, he has managed to source the specs of this monstrosity of a GPU. If such a SKU indeed sees the light of the day, we are looking at a possible revival of the Titan branding in the Lovelace generation.

According to the leaker, the "beast" Nvidia Ada card uses a new PG137 board design compared to the PG139 design for the mainstream stack. The flagship Lovelace card's Founders Edition is also expected to sport a triple-fan cooler design for the first time.

AD102-450 will sport a massive 18,176 CUDA cores or 142 streaming multiprocessors (SMs). This is still a slightly cut-down version given that full AD102 is known to feature 18,432 CUDA cores or 144 SMs. The card is rumored to be equipped with 48 GB of 24 Gbps GDDR6X VRAM with a likely 1.15 TB/s memory bandwidth. The RTX 4090, on the other hand, is speculated to feature 21 Gbps 24 GB GDDR6X VRAM. The purported Lovelace Titan is expected to run at a whopping 800 W total board power (TBP).

Kopite has not indicated any possible name for this top-of-the-line Nvidia Ada RTX 40 card so far. With Ampere, the full GA102 die was enabled only in the RTX 3090 Ti BFGPU and the RTX A6000 workstation card. Nvidia chose not to offer a Titan-class card with Ampere, which leaves the Turing-based Titan RTX in 2018 as the last Titan. The Titan RTX featured 4,608 CUDA cores, a 1,770 MHz boost, 24 GB GDDR6 VRAM, and a 280 W TGP.

That being said, it is important to note that AD102-450 may not even be released to public or can even be deferred to a mid-cycle launch, but the fact remains that such a GPU is indeed in the works.

It is not uncommon for chipmakers to design one major SKU and cut down or bin them down to lower SKUs to maximize yields. In fact, it is possible that the earliest leaks pertaining to the Lovelace cards might have referenced this very SKU.

For instance, one of the first leaks about AD102 indicated that the GPU will feature 18,432 CUDA cores. Later, we came to know about AD102 having an 800 W power limit. The information in these leaks could have very well stemmed from this AD102-450 SKU. 

Kopite predicts that Nvidia will reveal the RTX 4090 soon. The Lovelace cards are expected to have an official announcement in the September-October timeframe. Rumors indicate that the RTX 4090 will be the only card that will go on shelves in 2022, and prospective buyers with the moolah to spare should be able to lap up the RTX 4090 as early as October.

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