Board partners have confirmed that NVIDIA has informed them of new SKU variants for the GeForce RTX 4080 and RTX 4070. A post from HKEPC (via VideoCardz) shows that there are two variants for each card and some manufacturers have already confirmed that they have already begun to receive the new AD103-301 SKU (previously AD103-300) for the GeForce RTX 4080.
AD104-250 / 251 = GeForce RTX 4070
— HKEPC (@hkepcmedia) January 9, 2023
AD104-250 requires an comparator circuit , AD104-251 no need , GeForce RTX 4080 will change to AD103-301 soon. @VideoCardz
The difference with the new SKUs is that something called a “kicker” or “comparator circuit” is no longer needed. It has been estimated that by longer having this on the PCB that the BOM cost could be reduced by as much as $1 and in turn potentially mean lower manufacturing costs for both cards. Many are hoping that if the profit margins for AIBs improve that it could mean a drop in price for consumers since the $1,199 MSRP for GeForce RTX 4080 has been widely criticized as being too high and led many potential buyers to opt for the higher priced GeForce RTX 4090 instead. When asked what the comparator circuit is HKEPC replied that they were told it was for GPU voltage.
someone told me for GPU voltage
— HKEPC (@hkepcmedia) January 9, 2023
AD103, AD104, and Beyond
Both variants are expected to perform identically. Gainward and Galax are the first two companies known to already have the AD103-301 silicon in use with their GeForce RTX 4080 cards. The GeForce RTX 4070 is expected to ship with the AD104-250 SKU initially, presumably because partners already have it in hand, and then the AD104-251 is expected to enter mass production a few weeks after.
Since NVIDIA has informed partners of these new variants some are wondering if a similar revision for the GeForce RTX 4090 that uses an AD102-300 GPU is in the works. So far there has been no word of any forthcoming changes for the current $1,599 flagship card but that could be due to this new design getting incorporated into whatever is planned to succeed the GeForce RTX 4090. However, it is also common for NVIDIA to do product refreshes down the road as newer and more efficient technology becomes available so an alternate SKU is possible.