Both Nvidia and AMD have been battling it out for the top of the GPU dog pile for years.
The recent launches of the 6000 and 3000 series respectively were little more than ‘paper launches’ with the GPU chip shortages that began back in 2020 with the pandemic. With the pandemic slowing down and manufacturing processes spinning back up, both Nvidia and AMD have announced their next generations of GPUs.
From Nvidia we will be getting the RTX 4000 series code named Lovelace. These cards are expected to be a major uplift in performance over the RTX 3000 series that many users were unable to get their hands on due to scalpers and miners. The flagship of this series will be the RTX 4090, and will require a special power supply unit in order to even be able to power on. The expected power draw of this card alone is expected to be around 600W or even more!
To put that into perspective, a current top of the line system(not just the GPU but the whole computer) pulls an average of around 500W. Yes, a single component will be pulling 90% of the power that a current generation full system build pulls when in use. With that massive power draw will come massive heat generation. Meaning that you will not only need a new PSU but a very good airflow focused case(like the Fractal Torrent) to make sure you’re expelling as much heat as possible from the system.
AMD’s offering is much more reasonable in the power draw section at only 250W average across their new RX 7000 series. Not only will this card be more power efficient, early speculation based on available information puts the RX 7900(AMD’s flagship) beating Nvidia’s flagship 4090 in performance as well. Even if the RX 7000 series doesn’t beat Nvidia’s RTX 4000 series in performance, the performance per watt ratio will make the RX 7000 series a very compelling card for those wanting to build an efficient low power small form factor system.
Please note that this information is bound to change as we get closer and closer to their expected launches. With Nvidia planning to launch the RTX 4000 series Q2 or Q3 of 2022, while AMD’s RX 7000 series has been pushed to Q4 of 2022 or even Q1 of 2023.
We’ll be keeping an eye on these launches as many of us here have systems that could use a new or upgraded GPU. Time will tell if these will be paper launches similar to the RTX 3000 and RX 6000 series cards, or if they will actually put out product into the market. If all else fails, we have Intel’s new Arc GPUs launching soon as well, end of Q1 or early Q2, to hopefully relieve some of the stress on the GPU demand.
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