Tuesday, January 17th 2012
NVIDIA Rushing in Stopgap HD 7970 Competitor This February?
AMD's Radeon HD 7970 seems to have ruffled a few feathers at NVIDIA and it looks like the green team doesn't want too much market exposure for it. A fairly-reliable source at ChipHell learned that NVIDIA's GeForce "GTX 680" part could be launched some time in February. The source says that this part could be competitive with the HD 7970, though not exactly NVIDIA's fastest next-generation GPU in the works. So it has to be something other than the GeForce Kepler 110, that's reportedly slated for March-April. At least the tiny pieces of specifications trickling out seem to reinforce this theory. Graphics cards based on this part apparently have 2 GB of memory, and its core clock speed is reported to be 780 MHz.
Source:
ChipHell
74 Comments on NVIDIA Rushing in Stopgap HD 7970 Competitor This February?
BTW: Was the poll question suposed to include a joke, because resily-available and HD7970 on the same sentence does look like a joke.
My 6950 plays pretty much anything at 1900x1200 with whatever settings you want. There can't be that many people that play at a higher reolution than this at the moment.
Until consoles get their ass into gear (i hear the new nintendo is based on a crippled R700 design, wow!) then uber high end pc cards are laregely pointless imo
:laugh:
I do not think NV is having any problems, other then they wanted to do a bottom up launch and AMD kinda spoiled it with a top to bottom launch.
Just a couple of points though - I thought GF110 was more pf a manufacturing and optimisation improvement than a computer/graphics compromise closer to graphics. I might be wrong.
Secondly, I do believe that a dual GK104 is planned.
Also, Nvidia, please take this opportunity to have a generation that wins the hearts and minds of enthusiasts with a sensible naming scheme. You can put the letters before the numbers if it makes you happy.
Regarding "Kepler behemoth", show me the proof that is going to release in 2013 and please don't link to that chart that screamed fake (i.e when has Nvidia EVER given dual-GPU cards a codename? Fake. Only AMD does that.), and don't mention Charlie D. and associates who still think that no next gen Nvidia chip has taped out yet and hence say it's 2013 launch (if all goes well!).
As I see it, Kepler performance is going to release in Feb. and Kepler behemoth as you called it, will launch in April, probably later. Show me any evidence that demostrates that Nvidia can't release their behemoth*, namely GK110, in April-June timeframe. And again refrain from using the usual suspects who still think that no Kepler chip exists yet or that for example only 9000 waffers of GF100 were ever made (absurd considering the amount of cards they sold), for example.
There's just simply too much confusion regarding what Kepler is. Some people refer to the high-end chip as Kepler, which will launch in April or later. And hence are calling GK104 a stopgap card, because it's maybe not completely the same architecture as the high-end chip. But that's simply because they have been spoiled by how AMD uses codenames. Some other people rightfully include GK104 and hence report Kepler in Feb.
* How do we know it's going to be a behemoth anyway. I'm talking about ca 500 mm^2 behemoth like Fermi. They don't really need it this time around. First and foremost it will be a 512 bit card, hardly more than that. That's only 33% more transistors devoted to that part of the chip, ROPs and L2, included. MC+ROPs+L2 is almost half of the chip in GF100. They don't need a massive increase for Kepler high-end in that front, especially if they sorted out memory clocks. Then it really depends on how they arrange the SMs. For example and it's just an example, GF104/114 is a 1.9 billion transistor chip, 384 SP, 256 bits, so in theory they could simply mirror it and end up with a 768 SP, 512 bit chip. Any doubts about such a chip decimating the GTX580 and by extension also easily beating Tahiti? Well remember 1.9 billion *2 = 3.8 billion transistor, a fair bit less then Tahiti and hardly a behemoth. Not a fair comparison because GF104 lacks the compute capabilitites that high-end Kepler will certainly need. But between such a card, and another hypothetical 500 mm^2 and 6 billion transistor behemoth, there's a world of a difference and 2 billion transistor budget to play with. Nvidia in theory and if they don't go nuts with compute over what is already sufficient, could release a card with 2x times the arithmetic capabilities while staying well below the 500 mm^2 mark. Will they do it and stay below? I don't know it was just pure speculation.
I think it was here at tpu i read a newspost that the 585 was in the works...havent heard anything since then though.
www.nordichardware.com/news/71-graphics/41570-the-geforce-gtx-580-mystery-is-clearing.html
specifically: It fares well in compute however as it remains cooler, therefore power doesn't become a limiting factor and it clocks faster (infers the article anyway). They did optimise the design and tweak it very well but they did also cut it down.
Whatever nvidia release, ill still be going red team this time around. So hurry up and release your stuff nvidia so there can be a price war.
I am curious what Nvidia is up to... other than the usual please wait to purchase our cards.
They really can't afford to make it* extremely power hungry unless its much faster and priced competitively.
* your guess is as good as mine...
Unlike M$, Nvidia will release their new line-up eventually fearmongering rumors or not, and this "eventually" is going to be later than AMD's release of 7xxx series.
If you need a more powerful graphics card now, there is only one product to buy. If you can afford to wait, then wait ... and wait forever as there is always something better just around the next corner ;)
Need to upgrade GPU at some point but can't afford one at the moment.
I just hope no matter how good this new Nvidia GPU is it makes the HD7950 more affordable when the price is annouced or pushes down the prices of the HD6950/6970 since about 3gens odd behind now :P
Chris