Teardown: PCB layout and components
Even at first glance, the board is clearly different from the board of a GeForce RTX 4090 FE, and not only at second glance. I will discuss the changes in load cycling and power consumption later, but let’s start with the board itself. NVVDD is still the most important voltage and MSVDD was finally buried this time as well. This also results in the voltage transformer design with a total of 13 phases and the resulting 13 control loops for NVVDD (only one per phase). The GeForce RTX 4090 FE still relied on 10 phases and a total of 20 voltage converters, thus two per phase in parallel.
It makes sense to use a solid single circuit instead of doubling, because with the now also higher switching frequencies the double number of phases would only be a hindrance due to the inertia of the coils and caps. Cheaper cards will probably go back to 8-phase, because the better PWM controllers and also the DrMOS cost hard cash. But NVIDIA has really let it rip on the FE and has only installed everything of the finest here as well.
The joint PWM controller for NVVDD (GPU core) and FBVDDQ (memory) in the form of Monolith’s MP2891 is currently one of the top models among PWM controllers. It is a digital, multi-phase dual-rail controller that primarily provides power to the NVIDIA PWM VID core and is also compatible with the AVSBus interface. The MP2891 can (and should) also work with MPS’ Intelli-PhaseTM products to complete the multi-phase voltage regulator (VR) solution with a minimum of external components.
The MP2891 is even underpowered with the 13 phases on rail 1, because it could directly control up to 16. Track 2 is then used to control the three phases for the memory (up to eight would be possible there). It is located on the back of the board. Just to the left is another uPI uS5650Q for monitoring the four 12V rails (3x Aux and 1x PEG).
All power stages used, including those for the memory, are also Monolith products. The MP86957 is a monolithic half bridge capable of driving up to 70A per phase. The integration of drivers and MOSFETs (DrMOS) results in high efficiency due to optimal dead time and reduction of parasitic inductance. This small, 5 mm x 6 mm LGA device can operate at frequencies from 100 kHz to 3 MHz, making it a perfect match for the MP2891.
The two 12V rails on the 12+4 12VHPWR connector are combined into one rail after the two shunts (one per rail), another is connected to the PEG but is not used for NVVDD. The single BIOS is at the usual place and also the generation of the remaining extra-low voltages is as usual. So there are no more special features. The two ribbon cables of the fans are self-explanatory.
Teardown: The cooler
There is a big innovation here, as they have decided to use a massive vapor chamber instead of a simple copper heatsink, as they did with the RTX 4090. That really pays off in the end, as we’ll see later with the temperatures. The memory chips are directly thermally connected to the bottom of the vapor chamber, which is a good choice. Furthermore, all relevant voltage transformers are cooled via the massive support frame.
The memory again relies on Ziitek’s thick “crumb” pads for cooling, and they even go so far as to dovetail the contact surface to achieve a larger area. This has not yet been seen on graphics cards in this form. But it works, as we will see later.
The two 11.5 cm fans each have seven steeply pitched, very large rotor blades and are still relatively tolerable up to about 1500 rpm, and even downright quiet up to about 1000 rpm. The card occupies three slots and most of the weight is at the expense of the actual cooling design. The swipe principle has been written about often enough, so I’ll spare myself the redundancy at this point.
- 1 - Introduction, technical data and technology
- 2 - Test system and the igor'sLAB MIFCOM-PC
- 3 - Teardown: PCB, components and cooler
- 4 - Gaming performance WQHD (2560 x 1440 Pixels)
- 5 - Gaming performance UHD (3840 x 2160 Pixels)
- 6 - Gaming performance UHD + DLSS/FSR/XeSS (3840 x 2160 Pixels)
- 7 - DLSS 3.0 and the longest benchmark bars
- 8 - NVIDIA Reflex and latencies
- 9 - Workstation performance
- 10 - Power consumption, load levels and standards
- 11 - Transients and PSU recommendation
- 12 - Temperatures, clock rates, OC, fans and noise
- 13 - Summary and conclusion
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