Tech Talk

Nvidia has been busy posting further teasers for its ‘GeForce Beyond’ event at GTC, where we’re expecting to see the launch of its next-gen Lovelace graphics cards.

As spotted by Tom’s Hardware, the latest two short (12 second) teaser clips on Twitter show a dual monitor setup on a desk, with the displays showing GeForce wallpaper on the desktop. In the first, a phone number on a sticky note is zoomed in on, and in the most recent video, the tagline is “the future has a past”, with another item on the desk getting a close-up – a document.

That paper reads at the top: “Diagram for the computation by the engine of the Numbers of Bernoulli.”

And what was one of Ada Lovelace’s many achievements? Doing exactly that, working out instructions to calculate the Bernoulli Numbers, in what’s regarded as the first computer program ever implemented.

This is pretty effectively confirmation of the Lovelace reveal, and we already know that one of the firmest rumors out there is that the first next-gen GPU we’ll see from Nvidia is the RTX 4090.

Also, the aforementioned phone number appears to correspond to some Lovelace leaks, namely the ‘629’ which could be the size of the die for the AD102 chip, the one that powers the flagship RTX 4090 (rumors have pointed to 628mm squared, but perhaps that speculation is just very slightly out).

And funnily enough, elsewhere on Twitter as VideoCardz spotted, graphics card maker Galax has posted a teaser that supposedly pertains to its ‘Serious Gaming’ RTX 4090. VideoCardz has tapped sources to find out that the card will have three fans on the front, one on the rear, and will be a four-slot design – a seriously chunky affair (add your own salt here).

Analysis: Lovelace reveal must surely be coming – but which GPUs will debut?

This is as close to a confirmation as you can get, really, without Nvidia explicitly saying that it’s about to launch next-gen Lovelace GPUs. The Bernoulli Numbers reference is a pretty crystal clear sign that we will see RTX 4000 revealed during the ‘GeForce Beyond’ stream on September 20.

And with pics of the RTX 4090 popping up all over – plus that new teaser from Galax – and the insistence of the rumor mill that the flagship will be the first Lovelace graphics card out of the gate, it’d be a real shock at this point if we don’t see it at GTC.

The on-sale date for the 4090 has long been thought to be set for October, so it shouldn’t be long before you can buy the GPU, too – if your bank balance can stand the pain. The price is one aspect which will be very keenly watched, and recent rumors on this front are ominous.

We can also expect the RTX 4090 to be bulky, as noted above, and chug a considerable amount of power – 450W if the grapevine is to be believed. It’ll also purportedly be around twice as fast as the RTX 3090, so there’s that, too.

The main question we have left about Nvidia’s big reveal is whether we’ll hear about the RTX 4080 – or any other Lovelace GPUs – as well as the flagship.

The latest speculation indicates that Team Green may be taking a rather strange route with this generation of GPUs, and theoretically could launch two quite different models of RTX 4080 right out of the gate. That would be quite the eye-opener, if true, and again, something of a concern about where Nvidia may be headed with pricing, particularly considering the chatter around excess RTX 3000 stock which still has to be shifted (so must still look attractive, price-wise).