Nvidia reveals the GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs – and they’ve beastly power levels

It’s time for a new graphics update — two years after the last major generational leap, graphics giant Nvidia launched today GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs – The market leader’s vision for the next generation of PC graphics technology.

From gaming graphics to using Nvidia AI to improve self-driving cars, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang details the company’s vision for the future in a lengthy video featuring the new Ada Lovelace architecture named after the famous mathematician Backing him is often referred to as the first ever computer programmer.

The new Lovelace architecture offers a significant power jump, which means big gains for the new 40-series GPUs – three of which will initially be available.

The RTX 4090 is the new flagship and says it has four times the performance of its immediate predecessor, along with 24GB of RAM. When it launches on October 12, it will be the most powerful consumer GPU on the market. However, all these features don’t come cheap – it will set you back $1599.

A month later, it will join two variants of the RTX 4080. Memory is the main difference between the two iterations, with both a 16gb version and a 12gb version released. Presumably, that’s on par with the power of the RTX 3080 Ti, but also gets some new 40-series-exclusive features. The 16gb version costs $1199, while the 12gb version costs $899.

Overall, the 40-series GPUs feature several improvements over the previous generation, including a new generation of RT cores and tensor cores, doubling the throughput of streaming multiprocessors, and more.

Our friends at DigitalFoundry already had a chance to check out the 4090 – we’ve embedded their coverage teaser video at the beginning of this article. We’ll also be doing our official VG247 testing in due course – so stay tuned.

Aside from the new hardware, the biggest piece of news for gamers is the release of DLSS 3.0, an improved version of an impressive technology that allows players to achieve higher frame rates in games, without significantly reducing visual fidelity. DLSS, aka Deep Learning Super Sampling, has been around for a while – but this new version is exclusive to the 40-series – a move that may be frustrating to those who have been using 20-series cards for a few years or newer.

Like previous releases, DLSS 3 will require developers to update their games to support it – but more than 35 games and apps already support it from launch. During the broadcast, Nvidia highlighted the improvements and performance boosts the feature unlocks in several games, and gave examples of what gamers can expect.

An example showing Cyberpunk running with ray tracing maxed out. With DLSS turned off, it manages 22 fps – flick DLSS 2 on and you’ll get 62 fps. Meanwhile, DLSS 3 hit the 100fps mark. In Microsoft Flight Simulator, DLSS 3 increases the frame rate from around 60fps with DLSS off to over 120fps with DLSS on.

All in all, this seems pretty impressive — even though the cost of this hardware is high, both in terms of initial outlay and running costs when energy prices soar. However, it’s exciting to see a new generation of graphics hardware – we can’t wait to test it out. Putting it here – we’ll be back as soon as we can get our hands on it.