NVIDIA GeForce RTX 60 Series May Tap Rubin GPU Architecture But When?
Remember back in September when NVIDIA announced the existence of the Rubin CPX processor at the AI Technology Conference? We theorized at that time that Rubin CPX could be the chip destined to eventually appear in next-generation GeForce cards. The theory made sense, but apparently it's incorrect, at least according to long-time NVIDIA leaker kopite7kimi.
Quote-tweeting a post from High Yield—another well-known enthusiast—he said "It's NOT a giant for gaming. It is GR212. As you see, GR100 is based on two GR102, looks the same as GB100." Based on NVIDIA's model names, that would suggest that the Rubin CPX chip is not only a second-generation Rubin chip, but in fact a specialized revision of that chip; the first digit usually refers to major architectural revisions, while the second digit typically refers to a specialized variant intended for compute usage.
We say that, but the last chip to actually use a 1 in the second place was the famous GK110 used in the original GeForce GTX TITAN card, among other accelerators. That chip indeed featured special enhancements to accelerate FP64 compute versus the standard Kepler architecture. We haven't seen anything with a 1 in the tens position in a long time, but given that Rubin CPX is stated to have absolutely massive compute throughput, it would make sense.
According to the leaker, while the GR212 chip for Rubin CPX isn't coming to GeForce, it's a very close relative of the parts that are. Responding to a question from yet another well-known enthusiast, 포시포시 (@harukaze5719), he says that the GR20x family of processors will form the basis of NVIDIA's next GeForce family. That's not exactly surprising; NVIDIA is famously a "one-architecture company", meaning that it has historically rolled out a single architecture at a time for its business and gaming products. Given that, RTX 60 series will naturally be Rubin-based.
But when? Well, it's too early to say with any authority, but that hasn't stopped kopite7kimi from claiming that NVIDIA's release window target is the second half of 2027. If he's correct, then that means you've got at least 18 months, give or take, before new NVIDIA GPUs will be available, and that's if timelines don't slip as they are wont to do, especially during market anomalies like the current DRAM shortage.
In other words, if you're eyeing a GPU upgrade, given that the memory shortage isn't expected to ease up this whole year, you might want to go ahead and jump on that as soon as possible. Prices are already rising, so you're not likely to find a better deal for the rest of the year.
