What just happened? We may never know for certain if Nvidia’s rumored Titan Ada actually exists behind closed doors, but we do have an idea of what it might look like if it did. Moore’s Law is Dead recently hired an artist to produce renders of the rumored GPU that is reportedly based on actual pictures of a real Titan engineering sample.
Tom only showed a single, heavily edited version of one of the real photos to conceal its origin but the renders illustrate just how large a retail Titan could be.
The cooler features the same gold finish as earlier Titans as well as the same overall design, just larger. The channel claims the card had dual 16-pin connectors but power consumption in a retail version would probably have been limited to around 650W with overclocking pushing that a little above 700W. As for performance, anywhere from 10-20 percent faster than the 4090 would likely have been the target. The Titan Ada also necessitated four slots, so smallish cases would have been a no-go.
Ultimately, Tom believes the Titan Ada is real albeit more of a skunkworks project within Nvidia. Perhaps Nvidia just wanted to see what was possible with Lovelace when pulling out all the stops, or maybe they were preparing for a worst-case scenario in which AMD was able to challenge the 4090 with RDNA 3. So far, that has not been the case.
What seems more likely at this point, Tom notes, is a 4090 Ti that utilizes the existing three-slot cooler design and a minor power bump. The bigger four-slot cooler will likely stay in the lab “in case something crazy happens with AMD fixing RDNA 3.”
Related reading: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Review
Would you be interested in seeing Nvidia release a hulking Titan based on Lovelace? Pricing would no doubt be through the roof and it is anyone’s guess as to what availability would look like in the current climate with shortages, supply chain issues, bots and resellers, but maybe it’d be fun to see?