Unreleased NVIDIA Titan Ada on video: two 12VHPWR connectors with an adapter for six 8-pin connectors

A few months ago, a well-known enthusiast der8auer showed off an RTX Titan Ada video card. This is a model of the Ada Lovelace line, which was supposed to fully utilize the potential of GPU AD102but NVIDIA never released it.

It was expected that the RTX Titan Ada will receive 18432 cores and 48 GB of video memory. Although this version never appeared on the market, a working prototype with dual 12VHPWR connectors does exist. And now you can see the unique adapter that came with it. It allowed the card to be compatible with older power supplies without ATX 3.0/3.1 support.

The Titan series has always offered NVIDIA’s most powerful graphics accelerators for mainstream users. Starting with the 2018 RTX Titan, the company abandoned the separate Titan line and focused on the 90-class series — RTX 3090and now RTX 5090. It was the RTX Titan Ada that was supposed to become the new flagship of the Ada Lovelace family, surpassing even RTX 4090. It was the largest NVIDIA reference graphics card ever, but unfortunately, it was never released.

All this power required a huge power supply, and Titan Ada was ready for it. Instead of a single power connector, it received two 12VHPWRs, which theoretically allows it to supply up to 1200 watts of power. However, due to driver and BIOS limitations, der8auer was only able to squeeze a maximum of 600W out of the card in overclocking mode during his tests. In his latest video, he takes a closer look at the Titan Ada power supply system and focuses on a rather interesting element — a mysterious adapter from two 12VHPWRs to six 8-pin PCIe.

This adapter is capable of taking power from six standard 8-pin connectors, i.e. up to 900W, and delivering it to two 12VHPWR connectors. It is noteworthy that it does not have a load balancing system or sensor pins, so the video card works regardless of how many 8-pin cables are actually connected. Der8auer clearly demonstrated this by disconnecting the connectors one by one while the card was running — it did not shut down even when only two remained.

By design, the Titan Ada adapter is noticeably more rigid than the modern 12V-2×6 → 4×8-pin adapter that comes with the RTX 5090. Although there are no smart electronics there either, the RTX 5090 adapter at least has an additional wire that tracks the connection of all connectors — which the Titan Ada does not. This can be explained by its prototype status. In addition, the cables of the Titan adapter were longer and did not have a braid.

Nevertheless, der8auer noted the adapter’s high-quality build. It is made as a single plastic part, not from several connected elements. This indicates that NVIDIA has advanced quite far in the development and finalization process. This is also confirmed by the marking on the board — “20220121”, i.e. January 21, 2022. This means that the adapter existed about nine months before the release of the RTX 4090, and NVIDIA was seriously considering it for the mass market. Why the company ultimately decided against it remains a mystery.

What remains clear is that sooner or later, a video card will appear that will require more than 600 watts of power. Then NVIDIA may return to dual 16-pin connectors, but in an improved 12V-2×6 format.

Source: tomshardware