Nvidia Blackwell Architecture Speculation

[Albuquerque]

Yeah, the shader count "only" goes up by about 27%, although the clocks drop by around 5%, so the effective CUDA / shading rate seems to only grow by maybe 25% total. The really BIG gain is the memory bandwidth, which is a nearly 80% bump from the 4090. This likely matters less for the typical rasterized scene, but I wager it matters a lot more for FP32 and especially FP64 functions where the loads/stores are significantly larger and will burn through said bandwidth. I wager this extra bandwidth also measurably enhances raytracing performance for the same reasons, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

[trinibwoy]

I think if you already have a 4090 then it's probably not that a big upgrade to 5090 (as always). However, 4090 is quite bandwidth limited in many games @ 4K so the greately increased bandwidth of 5090 may help a lot. Another case is if you like to run path tracing games then 5090 may be a healthy upgrade.

Well Nvidia decided to mask any performance gains in heavy RT titles behind MFG so we’ll get a better sense of the real uplift in a few weeks.

 

[DegustatoR]

Well Nvidia decided to mask any performance gains in heavy RT titles behind MFG so we’ll get a better sense of the real uplift in a few weeks.

In a week actually.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I'm seriously considering a move from the 4070Ti to a 5080. I reckon I'll get at least 40% more performance there in non VRAM limited scenarios, maybe more in titles with heavy RT or that take advantage of the new Blackwell features. Amd in those titles that hit VRAM limits I'm hoping I'll no longer have to compromise on texture settings.

Plus the 3x FG should allow me to hit my monitors 144hz limit in most games where its available.

 

[homerdog]

I'm seriously considering a move from the 4070Ti to a 5080. I reckon I'll get at least 40% more performance there in non VRAM limited scenarios, maybe more in titles with heavy RT or that take advantage of the new Blackwell features. Amd in those titles that hit VRAM limits I'm hoping I'll no longer have to compromise on texture settings.

Plus the 3x FG should allow me to hit my monitors 144hz limit in most games where its available.

That would be a solid upgrade and get you out of the VRAM concerns. I'm slightly tempted to go from my 4070 to a 5070Ti. 4070Ti Super is the card I would've gotten this generation had it existed at the time. I've found 12GB to be a limiting factor even on my 4070 in some games.

TBH at this point I'll wait for the 3GB modules and see what happens, whether it's a Super refresh or RTX6000. But I promise I won't sit on the 4070 as long as I sat on the 970. Now 970 to 4070 was a hell of an upgrade

 

[Broopster]

If those die sizes are accurate then Nvidia somehow managed to cram fatter SMs and 4 more of them into the same area. I would be surprised if they didn’t sacrifice L2 to make room and lean more heavily on GDDR7.

I have been keen to find out the L2 cache for months, and I agree it’s a bit odd to leave it out. They would have had to shrink the relative size of the cache footprint to keep the same ratio on GB202 (ie 128MB) - not impossible (AMD did it with Zen 5) but once we knew the chip was 22% bigger it never seemed likely. My guess is it’s still 96MB (maybe a bit smaller even) and they don’t want silly stories about less cache for more money or some such nonsense. Worth noting that unless they needlessly disable cache on the 5090 again, it’ll probably end up with more overall than the 4090 (even if the SM/L2 ratio is a bit smaller).

Edit: Replied before seeing the post on the next page, no surprises there.