The First Batch of NVIDIA’s forthcoming “Blackwell” GPUs is rumored to retain the same memory bus specification as its current flagship card. This rumor aligns with others that state while GDDR7 is on its way and will be used in some next-gen consumer graphics cards, the first iterations are not expected to utilize its maximum frequency potential which could be as high as 36 Gbps vs 24 Gbps of GDDR6X. While GDDR7 could, at some point, be used in 512-bit bus configurations, it would require new memory controllers and if this latest rumor is true, it could mean that NVIDIA has, for now, chosen, to stick with the older spec in order to get the first batch of Blackwell GPUs into production.
Although I still have fantasies about 512 bit, the memory interface configuration of GB20x is not much different from that of AD10x.
— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) March 9, 2024
More rumors and speculation
Folks should expect rumors about the RTX 50 series to begin ramping up now with the Geforce RTX 4090 going into its 2nd year of production since its October 12, 2022 launch. It has been speculated that NVIDIA could be planning an RTX 50-series launch towards the end of 2024 or perhaps the beginning of 2025. If true, we could get an official announcement from NVIDIA towards the end of the summer.
Another rumor is that NVIDIA could be using Samsung GDDR7 memory for the forthcoming line. VideoCardz notes another change that is expected to be related to the latest JEDEC GDDR7 specifications update which could allow manufacturers to use 3 GB memory modules vs the 2 GB modules currently seen with GDDR6X. A similar improvement was seen when NVIDIA began production with the RTX 40-series GPUs that upgraded from 1 GB modules used in its RTX 30-series Ampere graphics cards.
It has also been said that the Blackwell GPU will be based on TSMC’s N3 node and support DisplayPort 2.1. The next iteration of DisplayPort has only just recently begun to be implemented on gaming displays with the GIGABYTE AORUS FO32U2P being the first to support its full UHBR20 bandwidth.