NVIDIA GK104 PCB Drawings, Unusual Power Connector Designs Surface

[btarunr]

Here is the first x-ray drawing of NVIDIA's GeForce Kepler 104 (GK104) reference board, outlining the VRM area. The GPU and memory areas are blanked out for some very obvious reasons. Nevertheless, there's plenty of fascinating stuff going on in these pictures. To begin with, the picture confirms that the board will have 5 NVVDD phases, and up to three miscellaneous power domains. The PCB has provisions for two 6-pin and one 8-pin connector.

The funny part here is a strange new plug that has two 6-pin (or 8-pin+6-pin) stacked, while one of the two 6-pin connector leads are blanked. Some of our sources also report having seen a similar connector with 8-pin and 6-pin on samples of this card (refer to the last picture below). It's not just this, that makes the card incapable of single-slot operation, the DVI connectors over at the display IO also are stacked like on previous-generation AMD Radeon cards. Other connectors on the card are HDMI and DisplayPort. There are two SLI bridge connectors, giving it 3-way and 4-way SLI support.



Sources: Expreview, ChipHell, PHK, etc.

[Crap Daddy]

Originally Posted by btarunr

The funny part here is a strange new plug that has two 6-pin (or 8-pin 6-pin) stacked

The monster shows its ugly head...

[badtaylorx]

3-way sli support on a "4" series gpu....this is great.....

could you imagine what could have been with a tri-gtx 460/ 560 ti setup???

[erixx]

Aha! Now it makes all more sense, thanks Btarunr

[DarkOCean]

So... with this new power conector you could put 4x8 pins on one card.

[Tensa Zangetsu]

Stacked 8pin+6pin So how are we supposed to stack these into 4-way SLI on water again?

[Finners]

So it can do 8+6 pin side by side or 8+6 pin stacked, or are they talking about the top end cards needing 8+6+6 pin connectors?

[Aquinus]

I like how there is room on the PCB to add more power connectors. I have a feeling Kepler is going to be another power thirsty space heater for lack of a better phrase.

[kenkickr]

Title makes me think of Simon Can't wait to see a working card cause a "drawing" does nothing for me.

[punani]

[chaotic_uk]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

I have a feeling Kepler is going to be another power thirsty space heater for lack of a better phrase.

good i will save on the heating bills then

[timmyisme22]

1.21 gigawatts indeed, punani.


I just hope that if it does use a large amount of power, it at least backs it up with proper performance. It's all we can ever ask for... and possibly a new surge protector, some new outlets, maybe even a larger breaker. All-in-all, still waiting to see what comes of it.

[Duckula]

[NorthEndJon]

So AMD went for a minor overall increase in speed but with great efficency, and it looks like NVIDIA is going balls out performance if the PCB needs that much juice.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Duckula

My god, that's a lot of VRMs and FETs...

Edit: Power efficiency typically results in better scalability.

[Iceni]

just throwing an idea out here, But those power connectors could be so you can link cards in the same circuit. So you can link cards 1 and 2 on a single rail, and cards 3 and 4 on your second sli rail.

The odd connection type could be Nvidias way of clearing up cables that they thought were unsightly.

The reason i say this is because of the green pcb layout. The 6/8 pin block stacks into the same connections on the pcb. If Nvidia were drawing that much power on these cards surely the connections would be independent, so as not to cross PSU rails.

[hhumas]

something strange is going on

[krisna159]

OMG... it will need nuclear reactor to power it in 4 way SLI

[newtekie1]

Yeah, if I'm seeing this correctly the PCB is setup for 6+6+8, though they are only using 6+6 at the moment(from the other thread). This leaves a lot of room for more powerful GPUs on this same PCB.

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

Another power hungry and inneficient card from nVidia.

[HalfAHertz]

Maybe they have decided to switch to a modular pcb design that can accommodate different setups mish-masing GPUsVRMs/RAMs etc...You know faster execution of new products and reduced Q&A/R&D at the cost of a few extra pennies per board.

[HossHuge]

Could this be the design for a possible dual GPU card that would need more power?

[sanadanosa]

There is room for another 6 pin power connector

[m1dg3t]

I dunno, the more i see this board the less i like it

Originally Posted by Bjorn_Of_Iceland

Another power hungry and inneficient card from nVidia.

That is the main reason i have never went Nvidia in any of my build's. No one can say for certain just how efficient or inefficient this series will be but judging from Nvidia's history this will be more of the same

[radrok]

Who cares about efficiency on high end cards? Buy midrange if you want good perf/watt.
High end should bring loads of performance and IF possible efficiency, not necessarily anyway.