The latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 graphics cards, based on Ada Lovelace architecture, have introduced the 16-pin power connector (12VHPWR) in mainstream products. However, it seems that the Californian company could make a change with the arrival of the RTX 4070. According to a recent article by Igor Wallossek, in fact, only some variants of the product will adopt the connector.
The launch of the RTX 4070 is scheduled for the month of April and, according to the information collected by Wallossek, the card will be available in two variants. The first category includes premium or factory overclocked models with a total board power (TBP) of 225W, which could use the 16-pin connector or two standard 8-pin PCIe connectors. The second category, however, includes the standard models with a TBP of 200W, which should employ a single 8-pin PCIe connector. We recall that, from a technical point of view, the RTX 4070 will mount the same AD104 GPU as the RTX 4070 Ti, but in a reduced version with 5,888 CUDA cores and an operating frequency range between 1,920 and 2,475 MHz, accompanied by 12 GB of memory GDDR6X on a 192-bit interface.
--> Photo Credit: Moore's Law Is Dead Information obtained by Wallossek also confirms that the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060 will adopt a single 8-pin PCIe connector. The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, in particular, could have a TDP of only 115W, thus resulting in little energy consumption. It is important to underline that in the past, especially on the top of the range RTX 4090, the 12VHPWR connector has caused several problems, including the same merging on different graphics cards, leading to consider a possible redesign of the component.
For As far as AMD is concerned, the chipmaker was initially hesitant to implement the 16-pin connector on its Radeon RX 7000 graphics cards, which are based on the RDNA 3 architecture. However, graphics cards are becoming progressively more energy demanding, the which could also lead to its introduction on a future graphics card from the Sunnyvale giant.