NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER has more L2 cache after all
In its official launch presentation, the company made a mistake.
Not 36 MB but 48 MB of L2 cache will be available on RTX 4070 SUPER. NVIDIA has made a mistake with the official specs, which were shared as part of the official launch presentation. The error has only been corrected now.
Four new cards have been announced at CES 2024 for gamers on desktop PCs. AMD has presented its Radeon RX 7600 XT GPU for $329 mid-range segment, while NVIDIA is focusing on at least twice as expensive models, with RTX 4070 SUPER launching at $599. This model is replacing the existing RTX 4070 card, which is now being discounted to $549.
The official specs listed in the review guide show 36 MB for the size of L2 cache for RTX 4070 SUPER model. This information was also present in official marketing slides. However, NVIDIA has now updated the specs to confirm this model is actually using 48 MB of L2 cache. No other change was reported.
NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER Specs, Source: NVIDIA
The L2 cache size plays a crucial role in the Ada Lovelace GPU architecture memory subsystem. This factor can limit the VRAM pool queries, particularly significant for cards with a constrained 128-bit memory bus on RTX 4060 series. For RTX 40 series, NVIDIA has updated the sizes of L2 cache for across all its consumer GPUs, providing up to 96 MB of L2 cache on AD102 and 32 MB on AD107/106.
The AD104, on which the RTX 4070 series is based on, features 48 MB of total L2 cache. Since RTX 4070 SUPER is using the AD104 GPU with more SMs enabled (56 out of 60), it made no sense for NVIDIA to limit that to 36 MB, which was also the specification of the original RTX 4070.
With that in mind, RTX 4070 SUPER with 20% more cores and 33% more L2 cache will no doubt show a visible improvement in gaming. However, the reference spec’ed models may be limited by the 220W default TDP, which is only 20W more than RTX 4070.
The RTX 4070 SUPER is set to hit the market on January 17, with early reviews arriving one day sooner.
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VideoCardz.com | SMs | CUDA Cores | Memory Bus Width | L2 Cache |
| AD102 | ||||
| AD103 | ||||
| AD104 | ||||
| AD106 | ||||
| AD107 | ||||
Michael Johnson is a tech enthusiast with a passion for all things digital. His articles cover the latest technological innovations, from artificial intelligence to consumer gadgets, providing readers with a glimpse into the future of technology.
