Nvidia's RTX 40 series may be many months away from release

pcgamer.com:

There’s been a lot of chatter on the web regarding Nvidia's next-gen RTX 40 series. Some rumours suggested that the cards were in testing(opens in new tab) and that a launch was set for September, if not sooner(opens in new tab). However, German tech site Igor's Lab is indicating there's actually a lot of work still to be done, suggesting that the previously rumoured September launch window is highly optimistic.

Igor has produced a speculative timeline(opens in new tab) that estimates the steps Nvidia needs to undertake before the cards are actually available. Perhaps the key takeaway is that the first GPU to launch hasn't yet made it out of the engineering and design phase. If that's the case, then AIB partners have yet to receive GPUs, not to mention a BIOS or driver. In fact, Igor believes that currently there are no working prototypes.

Of course, the true story is known only to Nvidia and its trusted partners. It has a good track record of keeping its pre-release secrets in house—hacks notwithstanding(opens in new tab). However, if this information is accurate, then there's a lot of time to go before we'll be seeing them in our rigs.

There are a multitude of steps to be taken before they reach store shelves. Firstly, prototypes need to be built and tested. That alone will take a significant amount of time. The firmware needs to be finalized and clocks and power levels need to be decided upon based on TSMC yields. Driver work is surely underway and will require extensive validation and testing. Then there's the need to provide sample GPUs to AIB’s for their own development and testing. Add in regional compliance testing and certification, mass production, logistics and further driver polishing, and it's very hard to