News

NVIDIA Announces New Flagship RTX 4090 & RTX 4080 GPUs

The powerful new graphics cards will feature NVIDIA’s new architecture, with the flagship RTX 4090 sporting 24GB of RAM.

Published

4 years ago

September 21, 2022

Nour Nasir

NVIDIA

Yesterday, NVIDIA announced its latest RTX 40-series graphics cards, the GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 4080. Rumors have been circulating for months about the release of the flagship GPUs, which feature NVIDIA’s new “Ada Lovelace” architecture, named after the mathematician who worked on Charles Babbage’s early computer, named the Analytical Engine.

History lessons aside, the new cards use the third-generation DLSS, with the RTX 4090 packed with 24GB of G6X RAM, which NVIDIA claims will make it two to four times faster than the outgoing RTX 3090 Ti — though you’ll have to pay $1,599 to experience the flagship’s raw power when it launches on October 12th.

The RTX 4080 was announced simultaneously, with two separate memory configurations of 12GB and 16GB. The RTX 4080 is also claimed to be two to four times faster than the outgoing RTX 3080 Ti model. No release date has been given for the RTX 4080 GPUs, though NVIDIA says the cards will be released in November, with a retail price of $899 for the 12GB model and $1,199 for the 16GB variant.

nvidia ada lovelace

The RTX launch also showed off NVIDIA’s Founders Edition graphics cards, which are limited edition in-house models released before hardware partners such as Asus, Colorful, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, INNO3D, MSI, Palit, PNY, and Zotac use the technology in their own models.

“For our new GeForce RTX 40 Series Founders Edition graphics cards, we’ve further optimized the Dual Axial Flow Through system, increasing fan sizes and fin volume by 10%, and upgrading to a 23-phase power supply. Memory temperatures are reduced, and the new, substantially more powerful Ada GPUs are kept cool in ventilated cases, giving gamers excellent overclocking headroom,” says Andrew Burnes, technical marketer at NVIDIA.

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Although the 40-series cards are now official and about to launch, RTX 30-series GPUs are likely to be around for some time. Earlier this year, NVIDIA was forced to adjust pricing on many of its cards due to excess stock, leading to RTX 30-series cards appearing at their correct retail prices, despite several years of price hikes by traders.

The launch of RTX 40-series GPUs comes at a tough time for NVIDIA and the graphics card market in general. Demand has fallen since the recent crypto crash, and the Ethereum merge. Combine this with soaring electricity prices, and the future looks uncertain for the market as a whole, despite the considerable power boost that cards like the RTX 4090 promise.

News

Microsoft Plans $10 Billion-Plus Gulf Expansion Despite Iran Conflict

Security is shaping Microsoft’s approach, from resilience work with governments to what it will say about how the money splits by country.

Published

4 days ago

September 24, 2026

Nour Nasir

Microsoft

Microsoft is planning more than $10 billion of investment across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait through 2030, Vice Chair and President Brad Smith told Reuters, calling the spending schedule aggressive. The Iranian conflict that began on February 28 has not persuaded the company to scale back.

“We’re sustaining all the investments we planned to make before this conflict started, and we are in fact adding to them,” Smith said. The $10 billion-plus total does not, however, show how large those additions are.

The investment, which Smith described as part of Microsoft’s continued infrastructure expansion, is aimed at cloud and AI infrastructure and at the company’s growing regional operations. Microsoft also intends to put more than $400 million into subsea and terrestrial connectivity across the Middle East by 2030.

The spending fits the region’s own ambitions too. Gulf governments have been investing heavily in AI infrastructure as part of a push to diversify their economies beyond oil and gas and turn themselves into global technology hubs. Major cloud and AI providers have been drawn in part by the land and relatively low-cost energy on offer.

Microsoft is widening its partnerships with regional AI companies, though not on identical terms. In 2024, it invested $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi-based G42 for a minority stake, and Smith currently sits on G42’s board. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and Qatar’s Qai are working with Microsoft on selected priority areas, but Smith said the company does not plan to make capital investments in either.

Also Read: Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

The conflict has added another strand to Microsoft’s work in the region. Since it began, Smith said, the company has supported regional partners with digital resilience assessments, and it is now working with Gulf countries through a digital resilience initiative focused on preparedness and the protection of critical data.

So far, the company has given no country-by-country breakdown of the investment, citing security among other factors. So while the headline figure is public, how Microsoft divides the spending among the four countries is not.