In the range of graphics chips Nvidia Ampere recently unveiled a new GPU called GA103developed by the engineers of the American company for the GeForce RTX 3080Ti aimed at the world of laptops, a solution announced at CES 2022 and debuting from February on laptops with 12th generation Intel Core processors.
NVIDIA has never spoken publicly about this GPU in depth, but the release of early Alder Lake laptop reviews gives us a chance to both see it and complete the tech spec puzzle. Chinese youtuber Geekerwan has posted a video in which he shows the chip, labeled “GN20-E8-A1“, and evokes its technical characteristics.
The GA103 GPU would seem to occupy an area of 496mm2 approximately, which means that is 26.5% larger than GA104 (392 mm2) than the mobile 3070 Ti, but at the same time smaller (-21%) than the GA102 (628 mm2) used by NVIDIA for desktop GPUs. The chip should offer up to 7680 CUDA cores, i.e. +25% compared to the 6144 cores of the GA104. However, as is also the case for other models, in the case of the RTX 3080 Ti, the chip sees a lower number of active CUDA cores, equal to 7424.
Not only the CUDA cores, but in the case of NVIDIA’s new mobile top of the range, the memory controllers would also have been disabled: the GA103 chip should in fact have 10 32-bit controllers for a 320-bit maximum bus, but the mobile GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has a 256-bit interface.
It is not known if NVIDIA plans to use the GA103 also in the desktop environment. There have been rumors about the possible arrival on the market of a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti based on this GPU, perhaps as a way to improve its availability, certainly not to modify its performance significantly.
If so, the RTX 3060 Ti with its 4864 CUDA cores would run the GA103 at just over 60%. Other sources, however, speak of use on the RTX 3070 Ti (6144 CUDA cores). We just have to wait, only time will tell if the GA103 will turn out to be a “mobile only” graphics chip like (for the moment) the GA107 of the RTX 3050/3050 Ti mobiles or if it will also do the jump to dedicated video cards.