Nvidia Kepler Rumors Options

[tunksy]

I'm looking at upgrading GPU at the moment and was deciding between the 7970 and GTX580 3GB, but if Nvidia are bringing out new cards in Feb/March, I think I'll hold off. What do you guys reckon?

7970 vs gtx580 is a easy choice imo especially once it drops nearer to its rrp
as for what nvidia is bringing out next or when it will be who knows but i guess it depends how happy you are with what you have for now

My GTX260 will do me for another couple of moths, so that's no problem. As for 580 vs 7970, the current price on PC Case Gear makes the 580 much better bang for buck (ironic, but true), but the 7970 is the better card... So I was a bit unsure there.

It looks like waiting is the way to go though.

yep wait a little longer, GTX260 will still play games for you for a fe wmore months

[nobody813]

GeForce Kepler 104 (GK104) Packs 256-bit GDDR5 Memory Bus, 225W TDP

"Midrange" GPU taking on AMD?

[nesquick]

apparently Nvidia has already won http://semiaccurate.com/2012/01/19/nvidia-...a-clear-winner/ dunno wether to beleive it or not but quite a few things he says have turned out to be true.

[nobody813]

Looking at it, this is a huge step forward for AMD, technologically. It'd be quite hard to also move forward in performance heaps too

It's their first effort with a new architecture, so I guess it makes sense for Nvidia to be able to get ahead

[mark84]

I can't imagine the mid range card beating the HD7970. Surely not. Compute wise I guess I could understand it getting close but I doubt beat it.
Nvidias high end version though for sure will beat it.

[philo-sofa]

As much as I agree you with that that seems weird Mark (and think the midrange won't beath the 7970)... I dunno, we've been pretty much able to tell about the relative strengths of each vendro's card at this point in time over the last, what five generations? I think yeah, Nvidia will win. Put it down to a hungriness/complacency cycle or AMD having to move to a more compute-based approach, but the specs really do scream 'over 9000?!??!?' on Nvidia's part. Perhaps they won't be much above in performance per $ or per watt, but I do believe they'll handily have the fastest cards this gen.

EDIT: sorry came home from Big Day Out drunk, just re-read and realise we essentially agree completely lawl :D

This post has been edited by philo-sofa: Jan 20 2012, 11:24 PM

[mark84]

haha read your 1st paragraph and was like 'so what are we disagreeing on?' lol

The question I think will be whether the GTX 660 or what ever it's called can beat the HD7950.

[nesquick]

I doubt it will beat it, probably come within ~95% of it at ~70% of its price or something like that

[nesquick]

GK104 pricing leaked out $299

We hear that Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) has sent out Kepler pricing to AIBs in the far east, or will once the New Year party dies down. A few green-tinged moles, we think it’s the New Year’s celebratory hair dye, tell SemiAccurate that the initial Kepler/GK104 cards will be priced around the $299 mark. This should tell you quite a bit about how large the silicon is, but not necessarily what it will be marketed as.

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/01/23/exclusi...gk104-price-is/

hope this is true, if it performs around a HD7950 it will give the kick in the teeth it deserves for pricing the HD79x0 so high.

This post has been edited by nesquick: Jan 24 2012, 12:03 PM

[Dasa]

pre overclcoked gtx560 ti were able to beat gtx580 in a select few game benchmarks then in a select few others gtx580 was twice as quick
i wouldnt be surprised if this card was a little hit and miss like the 560ti perhaps beating gtx580 in a few more tests than a 560ti oc and not falling so far behind in others
but at $300 that is a good deal cheaper than the rrp of 7950 ~$400 which looks like it will perform around gtx580 so it will be interesting to see what we get and what improvements nvidia has made to efficiency

This post has been edited by Dasa: Jan 24 2012, 12:01 PM

[unco_tomato]

The difference here is still that the 7950 is out on the market very soon, while no one even knows anything about the GTX 660 for certain, let alone a launch date. After we find out the launch date, add a month for Australian stock in any real sort of numbers, then add two months for prices to drop. I still see AMD 7970/50 being the card of choice in Australia, their prices will normalise faster than Nvidia.

[nesquick]

The difference here is still that the 7950 is out on the market very soon, while no one even knows anything about the GTX 660 for certain, let alone a launch date. After we find out the launch date, add a month for Australian stock in any real sort of numbers, then add two months for prices to drop. I still see AMD 7970/50 being the card of choice in Australia, their prices will normalise faster than Nvidia.

No one knows anything because Nvidia is doing a hard launch, AMD did a paper launch, all well and good to release a product but if no one can buy it...

[Dasa]

The difference here is still that the 7950 is out on the market very soon, while no one even knows anything about the GTX 660 for certain, let alone a launch date. After we find out the launch date, add a month for Australian stock in any real sort of numbers, then add two months for prices to drop. I still see AMD 7970/50 being the card of choice in Australia, their prices will normalise faster than Nvidia.

No one knows anything because Nvidia is doing a hard launch, AMD did a paper launch, all well and good to release a product but if no one can buy it...

people can buy it
although some countries importers are running a very high profit margin due to limited stock this is fairly normal for a new gpu on a new process from either brand

nvidia hard launches often run out of stock soon after launch as well
the paper launch just meant that we got to see reviews a little sooner imo the only thing wrong with that is they get maybe a month less time to tweak drivers before the reviews are done

before the gtx480 there was rumours from right after the 5870 launch that it was only a month away and a month turned into 6
luckily it turned out gtx480 was worth the wait :)

This post has been edited by Dasa: Jan 24 2012, 03:12 PM

[bushi]

Maybe I'll buy a lower AMD to tie me over for a year or so and get a mid range when the next nVidias release.

[nesquick]

The difference here is still that the 7950 is out on the market very soon, while no one even knows anything about the GTX 660 for certain, let alone a launch date. After we find out the launch date, add a month for Australian stock in any real sort of numbers, then add two months for prices to drop. I still see AMD 7970/50 being the card of choice in Australia, their prices will normalise faster than Nvidia.

No one knows anything because Nvidia is doing a hard launch, AMD did a paper launch, all well and good to release a product but if no one can buy it...

people can buy it

I never said they couldn't

not atm at least, there was like 4 weeks of nothing.

[Slackboy72]

apparently Nvidia has already won http://semiaccurate.com/2012/01/19/nvidia-...a-clear-winner/ dunno wether to beleive it or not but quite a few things he says have turned out to be true.

He also happens to be a massive AMD/ATI fanboy so I'm a bit confused about what to make of what he's saying.

[Dasa]

I never said they couldn't

not atm at least, there was like 4 weeks of nothing.

i thought they made it fairly clear that they were going to release reviews december and that stock would be available in jan which is what happened i dont see anything wrong with this

but then maybe i read to much into what you were saying and all you said is that we wont know what nvidia is up to until we have the card whether thats next month or 6 months from now :)

[p0is0n]

The difference here is still that the 7950 is out on the market very soon, while no one even knows anything about the GTX 660 for certain, let alone a launch date. After we find out the launch date, add a month for Australian stock in any real sort of numbers, then add two months for prices to drop. I still see AMD 7970/50 being the card of choice in Australia, their prices will normalise faster than Nvidia.

No one knows anything because Nvidia is doing a hard launch, AMD did a paper launch, all well and good to release a product but if no one can buy it...

Would much rather a paper launch that lets people know what the product is and what is is capable of while the stock becomes available, than not sharing any details at all.

I assume the above $299 is USD pricing? If ATI prices are anything to go by, add $100-150 for Aus pricing then, despite our stronger dollar :(

This post has been edited by p0is(+)n: Jan 24 2012, 04:35 PM

[nesquick]

I never said they couldn't

not atm at least, there was like 4 weeks of nothing.

i thought they made it fairly clear that they were going to release reviews december and that stock would be available in jan which is what happened i dont see anything wrong with this

but then maybe i read to much into what you were saying and all you said is that we wont know what nvidia is up to until we have the card whether thats next month or 6 months from now :)

yea I just remember reading they want to launch with massive availability and so the delay although apparently minor could be warranted.

[mark84]

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/25844-fu...lineup-revealed

Three cores, seven cards

Nvidia Kepler specs are finally out, thanks to a leak dug up by Lenzfire. We already spoke about some upcoming cards, but the leaked chards now paint a more or less full picture of Nvidia’s upcoming architecture.

The Kepler series will consist of three cores, which will be the building blocks for seven cards, including a dual-GPU card.

The GK106 is a mainstream part and it will power the GTX 640 and GTX 650. The GTX 640 packs 192 stream processors, 16 ROPs, 128-bit memory bus and a memory bandwidth of 88GB/s. The GTX 650 promises to deliver quite a bit more performance, as it has 256 cores and a 192-bit memory bus, enough for 132GB/s worth of memory bandwidth. Interestingly, the GTX 640 will feature 2GB of memory, while the GTX 650 will end up with 1.5GB. The clocks are 850MHz and 900MHz respectively. In terms of performance, Nvidia reckons the new cards will be on par with GTX 550Ti and GTX 560 cards. The price points for GK106 series cards are $139 for the 640 and $179 for the GTX 650

The GK104 will probably be the card of choice for most consumers. This mid range part will also come in two flavours, the GTX 560Ti with a 224-bit bus and the GTX 660 with a 256-bit bus. The GTX 560Ti ends up with 448 cores, 850MHz clock and 154GB/s of bandwidth. It will pack a rather awkward 1.75GB of memory and the price stands at $249. The GTX 660 will feature 2GB of memory and a 900MHz clock, but it will also be significantly pricier at $319. However, Nvidia expects the latter to match the GTX 580 in the performance department, so the price looks pretty good. The GTX 560Ti should be neck and neck with the GTX 570, which sounds pretty good for $249.

As for the big guns, the GK110 will end up in four cards, including the dual-GPU GTX 690. It will cost a whopping $999 and it will launch in Q3, so let’s focus on single GPU cards for the time being. The GTX 660Ti is said to feature an 850MHz clock, 768 stream processors, 1.5GB of memory and a 384-bit bus. It should cost €399 when it launches in Q2/Q3 and Nvidia claims it will be about 10 percent faster than the HD 7950. The GTX 670 ends up with 1.75GB of memory, 896 cores and a 448-bit bus, all for $499. Nvidia pits this one against the HD 7970 and it claims it is about 20 percent faster. The flagship GTX 680 packs 2GB of memory, 1024 cores and a 512-bit bus. Nvidia wants $649 for it, but then again it claims the GTX 680 should beat the GTX 7970 by 45 percent.

Too optimistic? Well only time will tell. The GTX 670 and GTX 680, along with the GTX 660 should launch on April 12, giving AMD a comfortable lead in the meantime. Of course, in-house performance projections should always be taken with a grain of salt, but at this point it seems AMD will lose the performance crown come April. However, with some price cuts AMD should be able to compete with Kepler in terms of value for money. Also, bear in mind that AMD will also introduce its dual-GPU card in early Q2.

Original sauce





For comparison.

HD7970:
die size = 352mm2 (or 365, not sure what source is correct)
transistors = 4.313 billion

This post has been edited by mark84: Feb 7 2012, 01:43 PM