[3dcenter] GK104 specs

[blackened23]

We shall soon see then if you're








Predictions are at all accurate.

My main question is whether nvidia will name their high end "GK104" the GTX 680. I think they will because GK110 isn't ready yet according to many sources, so i'm thinking that NV will make multiple SKUs based on the GK104. I just don't think nvidia will release a "670" GK104 and then save the GK110 for the 680 in sep/october.

There's really nothing to be disappointed about, if GK104 is around a GTX 580 for 350$? Nothing at all bad about that. I'm just speculating of course, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a killer GPU from specs alone...thats what GK110 will be for. Its kind of similar to the GTX 480 but without the heat/thermal issues if you think about it, and then GK110 in Q3 will be the monster that will really blow everyone away

 

[Lonyo]

My main question is whether nvidia will name their high end "GK104" the GTX 680. I think they will because GK110 isn't ready yet according to many sources, so i'm thinking that NV will make multiple SKUs based on the GK104. I just don't think nvidia will release a "670" GK104 and then save the GK110 for the 680 in sep/october.

There's really nothing to be disappointed about, if GK104 is around a GTX 580 for 350$? Nothing at all bad about that. I'm just speculating of course, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a killer GPU from specs alone...thats what GK110 will be for. Its kind of similar to the GTX 480 but without the heat/thermal issues if you think about it, and then GK110 in Q3 will be the monster that will really blow everyone away

They can always release a 780 based on GK110.
NV don't have any issue with skipping numbers or doing half-series, for example the 300 series was low end only, the high end skipped from 2 to 4.

I don't even see why anyone CARES about the product names, they are meaningless.
Remember when AMD use x9xx for high end? Then x8xx for high end. Then x9xx for high end?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

My question is if this is the 680, what is the 670/660?

There isn't much room to do much here, you already have a low bit bus, you can't really go much lower on a mid range product...

No, I don't think this will take the x80 name, but then again AMD did basically refresh everything after the 7950 this gen and increase the price for it.

 

[notty22]

Maybe it will be GTX 660 with a special GTX 666, Number of the Beast edition ! clocked at 1100mhz

 

[lavaheadache]

My question is if this is the 680, what is the 670/660?

There isn't much room to do much here, you already have a low bit bus, you can't really go much lower on a mid range product...

No, I don't think this will take the x80 name, but then again AMD did basically refresh everything after the 7950 this gen and increase the price for it.

Nvidia's G92 was just about the most rebadged chip there ever was. You could get one that spanned 3 or 4 generations.

Heck, even my lappy with a GTX 260m is a 112 shader G92 (cough 8800GT cough)

 

[Crap Daddy]

They can always release a 780 based on GK110.
NV don't have any issue with skipping numbers or doing half-series, for example the 300 series was low end only, the high end skipped from 2 to 4.

I don't even see why anyone CARES about the product names, they are meaningless.
Remember when AMD use x9xx for high end? Then x8xx for high end. Then x9xx for high end?

No, we don't care but in this situation it might indicate the performance of the card in question. I don't think they will name this card GTX680 if will not be faster than the 7970. It doesn't make sense from a marketing point of view and it was never the case that the 280, 480 and 580 to be slower than AMD's top card.

 

[bryanW1995]

Performance. Mainstream is GTX/GTS 550.

And GK110 will be here by summer as the very, very earliest. It's more probable that cards with it will be on the market on Q3 or Q4 2012.

That actually isn't a bad idea for NV. It would have been hard for them to do it during the 40nm ramp-up b/c everybody and his dog was expecting miracles But since we saw how well they ended up dealing with 40nm move (after geting their manufacturing issues sorted out of course) then I don't think anybody would panic if the "performance" or "midrange" came out before the high end.

 

[Arzachel]

List of things that make this seem fake:

Memory clock has gone up 250 mhz, which is a huge leap in a single gen. While it's possible that they've totally overhauled the mem controller, it's still somewhat suspect.

Nvidia has stated that they'll bring 2x fp performance per W. You don't really expect Nvidia's midrange to performance level card to suck as much power as the GTX580, do you? What's more, the specs seem tailor made to get that 2x GTX580 flops number.

Hotclocking costs far less die space than doubling the shader count, but faster transistors are more leaky, and so is a tradeoff between decreasing die size and heat/powerdraw. According to these specs, Nvidia has managed to cram 3x the cores in a much smaller die size while keeping them 2 ops per clock which, baring some dark acts of magic, is firmly in the realm of "not likely".

Now back to the scheduled program of randomly guessing how this would stack up to currently avalible card x, and calling each other shills (j/k)

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Nvidia's G92 was just about the most rebadged chip there ever was. You could get one that spanned 3 or 4 generations.

Heck, even my lappy with a GTX 260m is a 112 shader G92 (cough 8800GT cough)

That's not what I'm talking about.

 

[bryanW1995]

Like NV set the stage for pricing with the GTX280/260 and then AMD released their cards at prices according to them?
Oh wait, AMD undercut them significantly and cause NV to give rebates to people who purchased the GTX280s on release.

Just because one card is priced at X on launch doesn't mean that sets the market.
The HD5800 series INCREASED in price after launch (although only slightly).

There is no reason to assume that prices will stay static. Even if NV did decide to price according to AMD rather than being aggressive, that doesn't mean AMD wouldn't respond by dropping prices themselves.

The prices are what the prices are NOW. That doesn't mean that in the future everything will revolve around these prices. Never has and probably never will.

Um, actually, that is typically the case. It wasn't the case in the gtx 280/4870 days because AMD stupidly chased market share at the expense of much greater profits. Read has been very upfront and honest about this, he's going to focus on making money instead of friends. And jhh has always had that philosophy. So barring another major recession or some sort of clear long-term performance advantage (clear enough that even the fanobys from the other camp will admit that they're hosed) for one camp or the other, it's reasonable to expect that the avg mid-high end gpu price will trend upwards over the next few years.

 

[blackened23]

My question is if this is the 680, what is the 670/660?

There isn't much room to do much here, you already have a low bit bus, you can't really go much lower on a mid range product...

No, I don't think this will take the x80 name, but then again AMD did basically refresh everything after the 7950 this gen and increase the price for it.

NV is already making 2 SKUs based on the GK104. Already, they have a GK104 part with some CUs disabled per Charlie at SA... So it is plausible that they will at least make GTX 670/680 out of GK104, and save the GK110 for late this year as the 700 series. This will mimic almost exactly what nvidia did with the Fermi from GTX 480 to 580. Now GTX 480 was incredibly fast but didn't blow everyone away, while the GTX 580 was all that and then some.

I'm itching for more info here, should be an exiting time in a few months.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Yeah, but 1500 to 2300 not even including the bus width difference is drastic.

The 470 was 448, the 480 480, the 580 512, there isn't a huge difference between the three. this is a huge huge difference, and more than likely a massive gap in performance.

How are they going to fit any sku's between this, and the top card? It's bad news for people like me who like to under cut the top card and save a ton, then replicate that performance through overclocking.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Balla, you were right. On paper the bandwidth maybe doubles, but in reality running half the memory speed but with SLI on kills performance completely.

 

[bryanW1995]

In short you're comparing AMD graphics cards per/nm to graphics cards that were much more versatile and did far more than their AMD counterparts.

Compute power doesn't mean anything in that case because AMD had no real programming language to use their cards in a real GPGPU compute program. AMD has been designing for half the market, 7xxx changed that but still has no support afaik.

NV has always had better support. AMD/ATI have, over the years, generally subsribed to the "we'll build it and let others figure out how to use it" philosophy. I think that they're finally coming around, but NV definitely still has a major edge in this department.

 

[bryanW1995]

Maybe it will be GTX 660 with a special GTX 666, Number of the Beast edition ! clocked at 1100mhz

I'd buy 6 of those...

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

That actually isn't a bad idea for NV. It would have been hard for them to do it during the 40nm ramp-up b/c everybody and his dog was expecting miracles But since we saw how well they ended up dealing with 40nm move (after geting their manufacturing issues sorted out of course) then I don't think anybody would panic if the "performance" or "midrange" came out before the high end.

This will go down simple, really.

NVIDIA has GK104 almost ready and they release it in April or May. Because GK110 will only be ready by the end of the year, the highest-end and fully-featured die will be used for the fastest card, which they'll call the GTX 680. The 700 series' top-end cards will feature GK110.

Performance for this card [GTX 680] is still relatively unknown, but given it's using GK104 it'll be pretty hard for it to beat the HD 7970. I wouldn't be surprised if it was overall slower. BUT, they can compete on price/performance, and AMD would lower prices for their cards. If that's the case, then the HD 7950 could become a very good value proposition.

For now, we play the waiting game.

 

[AtenRa]

So, what you all proposing is that NV will not launch a faster card than AMDs HD7970 until Q3-Q4 ??

Then GK104 at almost the same performance as HD79xx will be priced at $450-550 and not $299. Until the faster card arrives, i don't see any reason for NV or AMD to lower the GCN and Kepler prices. We will be stack with 28nm Middle End performance cards but with 28nm High End pricing

If true, this will be the worst GPU launch of the last two-three years. :thumbsdown:

 

[boxleitnerb]

Lol, where do you get that GK110 will come at the end of the year? This is funny.
Tape out for GF100 was supposedly in November 2009, release was end of March 2010. That would mean even in the worst of cases 5 months between tape out and launch. GK110 has taped out either in January or in December. That makes a May/June launch possible.

 

[AtenRa]

Lol, where do you get that GK110 will come at the end of the year? This is funny.
Tape out for GF100 was supposedly in November 2009, release was end of March 2010. That would mean even in the worst of cases 5 months between tape out and launch. GK110 has taped out either in January or in December. That makes a May/June launch possible.

That was not my evaluation, Charlie (including some AT forum members) have suggested that.

IMO GK100 will be launch first, then GK104.

 

[blackened23]

Lol, where do you get that GK110 will come at the end of the year? This is funny.
Tape out for GF100 was supposedly in November 2009, release was end of March 2010. That would mean even in the worst of cases 5 months between tape out and launch. GK110 has taped out either in January or in December. That makes a May/June launch possible.

Well, it generally does take 6-8 months after tapeout for a product to be released IF there are no hiccups during the engineering sample/validation phase. May/June is just unrealistic if it taped out 2 weeks ago as rumored.....but August / September possibly? Just guessing. AtenRa: As far as GK100 goes, it was scrapped becuase of interconnect problems. This isn't "verified" but comes from a few reliable sources, Charlie being one of them.

Also, I should add that Fermi taped out on July 29, 2009, not in December. What happened was Fermi had to go through many engineering samples because of a myriad of problems, which resulted in nvidia releasing the GF100 with part of the core disabled.

This is all guessing on my part but I honestly think they'll save the GK100 for the 700 series. We don't even know if it has passed verification yet, so that will buy nvidia time -- meanwhile, all they (nvidia) have to do is come close to the 7970 and they can use the GTX 680 monkier for the 600 series. Then the real beast will be released with the GK100 and 700 series. I have no doubt that it will be worth the wait, the specs alone are monstrous.

 

[Crap Daddy]

That was not my evaluation, Charlie (including some AT forum members) have suggested that.

IMO GK100 will be launch first, then GK104.

I thought everybody knows by now that GK104 will be launched first and that's in a matter of weeks. AIB partners already have the goods.

 

[boxleitnerb]

That was not my evaluation, Charlie (including some AT forum members) have suggested that.

IMO GK100 will be launch first, then GK104.

I was replying to lolwut.

Well, it generally does take 6-8 months after tapeout for a product to be released IF there are no hiccups during the engineering sample/validation phase. May/June is just unrealistic if it taped out 2 weeks ago as rumored.....but August / September possibly? Just guessing. AtenRa: As far as GK100 goes, it was scrapped becuase of interconnect problems. This isn't "verified" but comes from a few reliable sources, Charlie being one of them.

Where did Charlie say "2 weeks"? He said a couple of weeks. From someone with good connections I heard that this may have been in 2011. Maybe the last week of last year, who knows. Also look at GF100 - it can be faster, doesn't have to be 8 months. Too much variance here to exclude a May/June launch.

GK100 being scraped makes no sense at all. They had interconnect problems with GF100, not with GF110, again with GK100...sounds silly, doesn't it? It makes much more sense that the large chip was always supposed to come after the smaller chip.
Two reasons:
1. maturity of the 28nm process
2. fullfilment of mobile contracts for Ivy launch. All capacity and resources are needed for that

Please name the few reliable independent sources.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

So, what you all proposing is that NV will not launch a faster card than AMDs HD7970 until Q3-Q4 ??

Then GK104 at almost the same performance as HD79xx will be priced at $450-550 and not $299. Until the faster card arrives, i don't see any reason for NV or AMD to lower the GCN and Kepler prices. We will be stack with 28nm Middle End performance cards but with 28nm High End pricing

If true, this will be the worst GPU launch of the last two-three years. :thumbsdown:

It depends on how you look at it.

For now, the HD 7970, 7950, GTX 680, and maybe GTX 670 will be Enthusiast. HD 7870, 7850, GTX 670 (maybe; we're not sure where it slots in), and GTX 660 will be Performance and then everything below is Mainstream/Mid-Range and then Essential/Low-End. The next series will push the cards with the same or similar performance as the 7970/7950/680/(maybe) 670 to a Performance tier and cards the performance of 7870/7850/(maybe) 670/660 to the Mainstream/Mid-Range tier.

That's the best estimate right now.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

It's a bad lineup if you are already rocking last gen mid ranged because this gens mid range offers little more performance at the same price or higher.

We have a $450 card now where there was none.

The 7950 performs like a 580, the 7870 will probably perform close to the 570, priced around $300... there are three 570s going for $310 right now on Newegg.

I pretty much screwed myself with my cards, it's going to take an act of god for me to get a decent upgrade path with similar pricing.

Perhaps now more than ever I understand why people skip one or more generations before upgrading.

 

[AtenRa]

I thought everybody knows by now that GK104 will be launched first and that's in a matter of weeks. AIB partners already have the goods.

That is a rumor and if im not mistaken it comes from Charlie. Also, we haven't seen a card from any AIB yet nor an official leaked presentation slide.

As far as im concern, we could have a Kepler launch in coming Wednesday or in June. Nothing is official yet.