NVIDIA's next-gen AD106, AD107 GPUs both using PCIe x8, could be Gen5

NVIDIA will be unleashing its new monster GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card next month, but the other Ada Lovelace GPU releases in the GeForce RTX 4060 will use 8 PCIe lanes.

The news of AD106 and AD107 GPUs will have 8 PCIe lanes is coming from leaker "kopite7kimi" with a new tweet which said AD106 "is not very strong" and that its 3DMark TimeSpy Extreme score is under 7000. The leaker also noted that AD106 and AD107 "are using PCIe x8".

NVIDIA could roll out its fleet of GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs with PCIe 5.0 support, giving the higher-end GeForce RTX 4090, GeForce RTX 4080, and GeForce RTX 4070 all the same PCIe 5.0 x16 lanes. These cards will be powered by AD102, AD103, and AD104: AD106 and AD107 -- if these rumors are true -- won't need 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0, so 8 lanes of PCIe 5.0 will be enough (which has the same bandwidth as PCIe 4.0 x16 for current-gen motherboards).

NVIDIA's current-gen Ampere-based GA107 GPU is limited to 8 lanes, so AD106 and AD107 are limited to 8 lanes on PCIe 5.0 make sense. The details on Ada Lovelace GPUs and its AD106 and AD107 were revealed during the NVIDIA hack earlier this year, but we didn't know the PCI Express lane information for the GPUs... until now.

• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series GPU: specs leak thanks to hackers

If you think you'll be suffering performance drops on 8 lanes, don't worry... you won't. 8 lanes of PCIe 5.0 on the GeForce RTX 4060 then you'll have the same bandwidth as the 16 lanes of PCIe 4.0 on the GeForce RTX 3060. But, if NVIDIA sticks with PCIe 5.0 and you, the consumer and gamer do NOT have PCIe 5.0 ports on your motherboard, then those 8 lanes aren't going to be a good sell for consumers.

NVIDIA should be announcing its next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture at its upcoming GTC 2022 event, where the company has announced its new "GeForce Beyond" special broadcast, where we're expecting to see the new GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards announced (at least one: the new GeForce RTX 4090).