NVIDIA AD106 Is Not Very Strong, Ships With Just 8 PCIe Lanes
The RTX 4090 showed up yesterday where we got our initial TSE results. To put it shortly, the RTX 4090 is almost 3x faster than the RTX 3080. Today, Kopite on Twitter claims that the AD106 GPU set to be used on the RTX 4060 is not very strong at just 35% faster than last-Gen’s RTX 3060. That number is not small, however, the other GPUs have a massive lead over their Ampere countparts.
Lovelace Doesn’t Scale?
The RTX 4060 Ti was leaked to score 8600 points in TSE, so the AD106 must be used on the RTX 4060 as Kopite states it scores <7000 points.
AD106 is not very strong. The typical TSE score is < 7000.
And both AD106 and AD107 are using PCIE x8.— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) September 10, 2022
The TSE score for the RTX 4000 vs RTX 3000 lineup is shown below (In order of -80, -70, -60, -60 Ti GPUs). The difference closes in at the end. However, as we go higher and higher in the spectrum, the difference increases by a huge amount. In short, you’re not gaining much upgrading from an RTX 3060 to an RTX 4060.
AD106 & AD107 Handicapped?
Kopite then mentions that AD106 (RTX 4060) and AD107 (RTX 4050 Possibly) are limited to just x8 PCIe lanes. Of course, as is the tradition, Lovelace supports Gen 5.0, so Gen5 x8 does seem slightly low because the RTX 3060 was powered by 16 lanes.
PCIe Gen5 x 16 provides a bandwidth of 64GB/s. Whereas, a x8 lane support (AD106 & AD107) decreases that number to just 32GB/s (Equal to Gen4 x 16). So, that puts the 4060 on par with 3060 in terms of PCIe bandwidth. Additionally, the FPS difference is not visibile to the naked eye when bottlenecked by a thin PCIe lane count (Unless if you’re using an RX 6500XT).
| PCIe Bandwith | Transfer Rate | Bandwidth x1 (per lane) | x4 | x8 | x16 |
| PCIe 1.0 | 2.5GT/s | 250 MB/s | 1.00 GB/s | 2.00 GB/s | 4.00 GB/s |
| PCIe 2.0 | 5GT/s | 500 MB/s | 2.00 GB/s | 4.00 GB/s | 8.00 GB/s |
| PCIe 3.0 | 8GT/s | 984.6 MB/s | 3.94 GB/s | 7.88 GB/s | 15.75 GB/s |
| PCIe 4.0 | 16GT/s | 1969 MB/s | 7.88 GB/s | 15.75 GB/s | 31.51 GB/s |
| PCIe 5.0 | 32GT/s | 3938 MB/s | 15.76 GB/s | 31.51 GB/s | 64GB/s |
(Data for PCIe Gen 1-4 by cgdirector)
Conclusion
All in all, we should take these leaks with a grain of salt because the RTX 4060 will surely provide massive increments over the RTX 3060 (>35%). Are you excited for Lovelace? Don’t miss out the GTC Keynote set to take place on the 20th of September. Appuals will keep you updated live as each detail unveils.
