A new rumor making the rounds suggests that the GPU chip in the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, which was previously slated for use in the 4080GB RTX 12, will be 30% smaller than the chip found in the previous generation RTX. 3070 Ti and 50% smaller than the AD102 chip used by the RTX 4090.
This comes from MEGAsizeGPU on Twitter, who posted an image of the incredibly small AD104 chip, which has an area of 296mm^2. The RTX 4070 Ti will feature the AD104 chip paired with 12GB of GDDR6X memory and will launch at €899 in early January, replacing the now canceled RTX 4080 12GB.
That price is still pretty high, especially since AMD's flagship RX 7000 cards top out at $999. When we look at the configuration difference between the RTX 4090 (which uses the AD102) and the RTX 4070 Ti (which will reportedly use a chip AD104), there are some pretty big discrepancies in rendering capabilities.
For example, the number of shader units on the RTX 4090 sits at 18432, which is expected for a contemporary high-end graphics card. However, the RTX 4070 Ti has 7680 shader units, less than half that of the RTX 4090, and yet this significant difference is not reflected in GPU pricing.
Analysis: Smaller cards are good, cheaper cards are better
If the rumors are true, the RTX 4070 Ti could be a breath of fresh air for people building smaller PC setups. The RTX 40 series has received a lot of criticism, not only for its high price, but also for the enormous physical size of the GPUs available today, barely fitting into some PC cases.
This forces users to bend the power cable at enormous angles to accommodate the side panels of its case, and is believed to be one of the causes of the current cable meltdown fiasco Nvidia is embroiled in.
The smaller GPU die will likely mean less heat generation overall, meaning cards can be built smaller; we're likely to see dual-fan designs, as opposed to the nearly universal three-fan RTX 4080 and 4090 cards from third-party vendors. It is certainly a step in the right direction; With a claimed maximum power consumption of 300 W, the AD104 consumes much less power than the flagship AD102.
However, all the RTX 4070 Ti "launch" and renaming issues would seem a bit pointless if the performance and price aren't reflected in a user-friendly way. While this new GPU launches at the original MSRP of €899, the most compact sizes won't be enough to earn it our recommendation.