NVIDIA appears to be preparing a new variant of the RTX 5070, this time built on the bigger GB203 die instead of the GB205 chip the card has shipped with since launch. The information comes from leaker hongxing2020, who also mentioned a new driver arriving on September 9, though it's not clear if that's tied to this specific SKU. This wouldn't be the first time NVIDIA has done this. The GeForce RTX 5060 normally runs on the GB206 die, but some retail units turned up with GB205 silicon instead, cut down to match the same specs. The jump to GB203 is a much bigger one for the RTX 5070, though. It's the same chip used in the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080, measuring 378 mm² against the GB205's 263 mm².
To match the RTX 5070's 6,144 CUDA cores and 12 GB of GDDR7 on a 192-bit bus, NVIDIA would need to disable nearly 43% of the GB203's cores and shut off two of its eight memory channels. The likely explanation for this change is binning. GB203 dies that fall short of RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 5080 requirements probably still work fine at RTX 5070 specs, so NVIDIA gets to use them instead of scrapping them. There's no indication the GB203 variant will actually perform any better than the current GB205-based RTX 5070, since the specs are expected to stay the same either way. Board partners haven't said anything yet, so it's still worth treating this as a rumor until a retail card or driver listing actually confirms it.