Next-gen Nvidia RTX 5000 GPU rumored to use GDDR7 memory on a 384-bit bus

Rumor mill: Recent developments in the DRAM industry suggest GDDR7 will likely be ready for primetime when the next generation of enthusiast-class graphics cards come to market. However, the amount of memory the upcoming flagships will feature remains uncertain, and the information available to trusted leakers keeps on changing.

Well-known leaker Kopite7kimi recently retracted an earlier claim about the memory for the top-end model of Nvidia’s upcoming Blackwell lineup, likely to be named GeForce RTX 5090. The latest information suggests it will still be among the first products to shift to GDDR7 VRAM, but it will probably feature the same amount of memory as the current model.

A September leak suggested Blackwell’s flagship GPU, the GB202, would feature a 512-bit memory bus, indicating a product with 32GB of VRAM. Kopite7kimi now admits he probably miscalculated the number based on the specifications of the Ada Lovelace architecture. The revised prediction equals the RTX 4090’s 384-bit bus, meaning 24GB of video memory.

ðÂ¥¹ðÂ¥¹ðÂ¥¹And GDDR7.

– kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) November 15, 2023

However, Kopite7kimi maintains that VRAM will be GDDR7, which should provide a significant speed boost compared to the GDDR6X memory that Nvidia’s high-end GPUs currently use. Information regarding RAM speeds hasn’t emerged yet, but early GDDR7 products could reach 32 Gb/s, a significant boost over GDDR6X’s 22-23Gb/s. Further revisions could eventually push GDDR7 to 36 Gb/s – a 50 percent leap over GDDR6.

Prior information on GB202 suggested the RTX 5090 would have 50 percent more cores, 52 percent more memory bandwidth, 78 percent more L2 cache, and a 15 percent higher frequency than the RTX 4090 for a 1.7x performance improvement. This would indicate roughly 24,000 CUDA cores, a 2.9 GHz boost clock, and 128MB of L2 cache.

Kopite7kimi believes GB203 will likely appear in some high-end Blackwell cards and will use a 256-bit memory bus, the same as the 16GB RTX 4080. It’s yet unclear if it will be GDDR7, GDDR6X, or possibly the upcoming GDDR6W, which could be another option for next-gen GPUs. Current rumors don’t say whether all Blackwell cards will keep the same amount of memory as their Lovelace counterparts, which would be disappointing for the mainstream tiers.

The first GeForce RTX 5000 GPUs are expected to launch sometime in 2024 at the earliest, alongside the first products to arrive with GDDR7. However, we’ve also seen rumors and a leaked Nvidia roadmap that points to a possible delay into 2025.