NVIDIA Announces New GPUs & Max-Q 4th-gen At CES 2022

At CES 2022, NVIDIA’s Jeff Fisher kicked off the company’s annual keynote by highlighting the fact that gaming is unbelievably strong – which shouldn’t surprise anyone reading this. There were days in the past where some thought the days of PC gaming (or gaming in general) were numbered, but today’s market proves just how off-the-mark they were. There exist 3 billion gamers in the world today, and the market is worth $300 billion. And… it’s still growing.

Because stats are fun, let’s tackle a couple of others. PC gaming today is so huge, that there exist 10 million Twitch channels that garner 750 million viewers. There are also now 45 million creators using GPUs, and similarly, VR is something that is seeing huge growth momentum, especially thanks to the likes of budget headsets that provide more people with the opportunity to play, create, or learn in virtual reality.

Another fun fact? To date, NVIDIA has shipped almost 1.5 billion GPUs total, which encapsulates a huge number of architectures catering to the PC, server, console, and even automotive. That’s a huge number, yet funny enough still falls far short of the number of transistors in NVIDIA’s current GPUs – 13 billion in a card like the RTX 3050, and 28 billion in the big gun RTX 3090. Not to take away the shine from 1.5 billion GPUs shipped, of course!

“RTX 3050, you say?” That’s right – NVIDIA took advantage of the ongoing CES to release the newest current-gen bottom GeForce GPU based around the Ampere architecture. It’s priced at $249 SRP, includes 8GB of GDDR6, and sports a rather modest TDP of 130W. With that card now announced, here’s NVIDIA’s updated desktop GeForce lineup:

In typical NVIDIA fashion, another little treat was left until the rest of the desktop GPU news was released. It’s been rumored for months, and it turns out to be real: the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is coming. Specs were not unveiled during the live stream, but this card will have some additional cores over the non-Ti, and faster memory, to boot. Here’s NVIDIA’s Jeff Fisher holding the beaut:

Similar to what we saw from AMD earlier, NVIDIA didn’t just leave the GPU announcements tied to the desktop, but also unveiled some new notebook goodies. That includes the introduction of 4th-gen Max-Q technologies. For starters, that includes a CPU optimizer framework to improve gaming performance by shifting some of the CPU’s power potential – when it’s not entirely needed – over to the GPU, which will deliver higher frame rates.

Another new Max-Q feature is Rapid Core Boost, which will reduce the number of GPU cores active for a specific process, where using full cores wouldn’t make a difference. This is primarily targeted towards creative workloads, where many GPU-related tasks won’t require the effort of every core on offer. Reducing the number of cores used, while also increasing their individual performance, could actually lead to certain processes executing quicker (think effects in a Premiere Pro timeline).

The third Max-Q feature is Battery Boost, which pretty much explains itself, but now utilizes artificial intelligence to spread resources around smartly to deliver strong performance along with the best possible battery-life (but let’s be real, you’ll want to be plugged in if you can be for the best possible performance.)

With the introduction of the fourth-gen Max-Q is a new GPU announcement: RTX 3080 Ti. As you can see from the slide above, NVIDIA claims that this GPU is more powerful than the desktop-based TITAN RTX, and funny enough – notebooks will start out at the TITAN RTX’s price of $2,499. That TITAN is still seriously powerful, so to imagine that much power inside of a notebook is really quite drool-worthy.

Don’t fret: if you don’t want to spend so much on a notebook, NVIDIA has also announced a new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, which will be found inside of $1,499+ notebooks. With that GPU, you can expect better performance than the RTX 2070 SUPER desktop card from the Turing generation.

In other NVIDIA gaming news, the company talked about the growth of its GeForce NOW streaming service, which now features over 1,100 titles, and is growing all of the time. One of the most intriguing things about this service is that it’s available on practically any computer you own, whether it be a desktop, notebook, phone, or even smart TV.

NVIDIA is so keen on more people being able to take advantage of GeForce NOW, that it’s teamed up with AT&T to deliver smooth gameplay to mobile devices that are connected to the company’s 5G network. An example of a game played over 5G is Destiny 2, so it appears like even fast-paced games should be possible while on-the-go.

Since last CES, NVIDIA says that it’s added over 150 RTX games and applications, bolstering that ecosystem quite significantly. It’s interesting that “applications” was explicitly mentioned, since on the creator front, we’ve found in our own testing that RTX features can dramatically improve workflows – especially with the likes of Blender. Upcoming game titles that will feature RTX support include MMO The Day Before, shooter Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction, and FPS aRPG Escape From Tarkov.

NVIDIA Reflex in God of War

NVIDIA also talked about Reflex, its feature that reduces input latency, helping you react to an in-game predicament quicker. To date, this feature has largely revolved around seriously competitive online shooters, like Siege and Apex Legends, but interestingly, the company talked about offline potential with the help of God of War. The company claims that Reflex will help you dodge your enemy better, because you will be quicker. That said, if you prefer to blame the game when you are too slow to take an action, maybe Reflex should be avoided!

As you can tell, NVIDIA had one hell of a showing at CES, and we haven’t even covered it all yet. Stay tuned as we will have more to talk about over the course of the week, as we climb on top of the CES pile.