Nvidia Debuts GK110-based 7.1 Billion Transistor Super GPU

[nieur]

so its good to hear that moores law is not dying soon

 

[Markusx64]

will i get at least 30 fps on bf3 with this lol

 

[blazorthon]

so its good to hear that moores law is not dying soon

Moore's law has been slowing down ever since Moore noticed it. When it first started, affordable transistor density doubled roughly every year. Now, it's down to every two years. And yes, it's about transistor density, not performance, so the GK110 does not prove anything about it that the lower end Kepler GPUs did not prove.

 

[TheBigTroll]

then nividia releases the gtx 685 and the 695

 

[leongrado]

Stuff like this makes me want to just wait forever and not buy a new graphics card.....

 

[Maximus_Delta]

Is this what they call "Big Kepler" ?

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Maximus_Delta[/nom]Is this what they call "Big Kepler" ?[/citation]

Yes.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]leongrado[/nom]Stuff like this makes me want to just wait forever and not buy a new graphics card.....[/citation]

Stuff like new compute cards makes you want to never upgrade your system? Your logic is a little odd there.

 

[tomfreak]

[citation][nom]sykozis[/nom]If the rumors are true, it's TDP is 300watts.....which would go against nVidia's "performance per watt" claims..... It would in fact be the single most power hungry consumer graphics card ever produced. Due to the complexity of the processor, it's likely to be more expensive to produce a graphics card than what it cost to produce GTX690.[/citation]I beg differ, it is more likely to going to follow the 250w TDP. Remember GK104 is 170w, but clocking it down 100MHz allow it to drop the TDP to 140w like in GTX670. GK110 is like 180-185% the size of GK104 that makes a 180%-185% 140w TDP = 260w TDP. So with the far more matured 28nm process at the end of the year, Nvidia GK110 is more likely to have lesser leakage, + low clock rates like 800-900MHz to fit within the 250w TDP. Just like previously GF110 are @ 772MHz, while GTX560/GF114 are hitting 800-1GHz.

Low clock rates also produce higher yield, which is important for a tank size chip like GK110.

 

[CaedenV]

Clarification:
GeForce is a gaming line, and some previous high end game cards had some extensions for doing compute work as they had the same die as their big-brother Quadros but simply with a different driver and lacking ECC and other redundancies (Specifically the 8800/9800/2?0, 470, 570, and 580 were popular for this use), but the focus is towards game performance.
Quadro is a professional graphics production line, this is specifically for video and photo use, but many have found other more general compute loads for it as well, even though it is not what it is designed for. While their specs are great, the core clocks are relatively low compared to GeForce, and due to the driver being written for a different load they tend not to game as well as a comparable (and much cheaper) GeForce card.
Tesla is a compute card line, very similar to Quadro but much bigger. This is for computing mass amounts of complex numbers, but more generalized than Quadro, and not specifically designed for video related tasks. These are support cards; They do not game, and they do not even have display outputs. While the article says they will not have enough ram, they will still likely have 4-16GB of ram and possibly more. When those amounts of graphics ram are not enough then you can begin to understand the types of people these cards are aimed at, and why the entry level price begins ~$2000, and goes up from there.

 

[Marcus52]

[citation][nom]sykozis[/nom]If the rumors are true, it's TDP is 300watts.....which would go against nVidia's "performance per watt" claims..... It would in fact be the single most power hungry consumer graphics card ever produced. Due to the complexity of the processor, it's likely to be more expensive to produce a graphics card than what it cost to produce GTX690....Tesla isn't a workstation card... It's a compute card. It doesn't do graphics.[/citation]

You are assuming the performance/watt issue won't be as good as GK104, and you are assuming they won't put out a big-boy card that breaks the guideline. While this particular card isn't made for gaming graphics it will most certainly do other types of graphics quite well. Gaming graphics is indeed largely a driver issue, and past business related cards (Quadros) have been hacked and turned into gaming cards.

Prices for business solutions - workstations and high end computers - don't scale with consumer products, so judging the price of a potential graphics card based on this first release of the GK110 isn't realistic. Still, if the GTX 680 stays at $500, you can bet Big Kepler graphics cards would be - expensive.

 

[atikkur]

this is must be perfect for dedicated physx card.. anyone wants to buy it?

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]atikkur[/nom]this is must be perfect for dedicated physx card.. anyone wants to buy it?[/citation]

Even assuming that it could be used as a PysX card, it would have more performance for PhysX than even quad SLI GTX 680s could use in supporting games.

 

[kartu]

In other news, nvidia rebrands 440 as 630 to trick clueless consumers.

 

[zaznet]

[citation][nom]tipoo[/nom]You guys are aware this $2000+ card would not play any of your games at all, right? Nor would it even work in a PC. I'd buy you one if you gave me 4000 dollars though[/citation]

Well I thought the fact that it has no video output on the board at all was a dead giveaway that this was not for home use (even just for bragging rights).

 

[hannibal]

The good news is that they actually are getting some chips out with GT110 architecture! It means that consumer versions are possible when production technology matures! Over 7 billion transistors! This is beast! Interesting so see how many SMX units they actually can use from this chip. Well we will see near the christmast... Allso 8970 is rumoured to be bigger that 7970 is so big chips next year! (not so big than this, but still!)

 

[bin1127]

[citation][nom]Hellbound[/nom]Oil is everywhere in our lives.. From fuel, to paints, to cosmetics, clothing, skin treatments, lubrication, waxes, asphalt, sulfur.. Not to mention the many practical purposes for petrochemicals..Our very livelihood depends on oil...[/citation]


It doesn't mean we can't switch to something better.

 

[bardacuda]

[citation][nom]Hellbound[/nom]Oil is everywhere in our lives.. From fuel, to paints, to cosmetics, clothing, skin treatments, lubrication, waxes, asphalt, sulfur.. Not to mention the many practical purposes for petrochemicals..Our very livelihood depends on oil...[/citation]

[citation][nom]bin1127[/nom]It doesn't mean we can't switch to something better.[/citation]

Hemp FTW!

 

[Zingam_Duo]

But can it play Angry Birds?

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]bin1127[/nom]It doesn't mean we can't switch to something better.[/citation]

True, but finding alternatives to oil that are better would probably not be too easy for some applications of oil and implementing such alternatives would probably be even more difficult. Beyond that, we'd then have to deal with the rich people who's profits rely on oil.

[citation][nom]bardacuda[/nom]Hemp FTW![/citation]

It can be used for many other things, but I don't think that replacing oil is within hemp's capabilities.

 

[eddieroolz]

That's an insane number of transistors. Time to see if GK110 will ever be released as a $2000 GTX 695.

 

[dennisburke]

Considering that Nvidia will probably make ton's of money off of the GK110, and with Nvidia's other ventures into high end graphics, smart phones, tablets and such, I'm grateful Nvidia still bothers to make graphics cards for us pc gamers.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]dennisburke[/nom]Considering that Nvidia will probably make ton's of money off of the GK110, and with Nvidia's other ventures into high end graphics, smart phones, tablets and such, I'm grateful Nvidia still bothers to make graphics cards for us pc gamers.[/citation]

We're still profitable for Nvidia, so they'll still make graphics cards that we buy. With Kepler, it seems that Nvidia was trying to improve the profits margins for their next generation of cards because a lot of it just seems cheap to make. The PCBs all seem to be tiny compared to older cards, Nvidia's finally using small, gaming oriented GPUs, small amounts of VRAM per GPU, and inferior overclocking compared to GCN cards that suggests either clocking the GPUs pretty high for what they can do and/or using cheaper, inferior quality components that can't handle high overclocking (it's either one of the two or both, I'm not going to claim that I know for sure which it is). Kepler cards could end up having some very high profit margins relative to Nvidia's previous generations of consumer graphics cards.

 

[dennisburke]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]We're still profitable for Nvidia, so they'll still make graphics cards that we buy. With Kepler, it seems that Nvidia was trying to improve the profits margins for their next generation of cards because a lot of it just seems cheap to make. The PCBs all seem to be tiny compared to older cards, Nvidia's finally using small, gaming oriented GPUs, small amounts of VRAM per GPU, and inferior overclocking compared to GCN cards that suggests either clocking the GPUs pretty high for what they can do and/or using cheaper, inferior quality components that can't handle high overclocking (it's either one of the two or both, I'm not going to claim that I know for sure which it is). Kepler cards could end up having some very high profit margins relative to Nvidia's previous generations of consumer graphics cards.[/citation]

I agree, it does seem Nvidia will be making some decent money off of the current lineup of Kepler cards for the rest of us. I suspect the current high price has more to do with the limited production of 28nm fab, and TSMC's mark up due to working out the process and high demand. If anything I'm hoping we'll see a drastic price reduction in the future.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]dennisburke[/nom]I agree, it does seem Nvidia will be making some decent money off of the current lineup of Kepler cards for the rest of us. I suspect the current high price has more to do with the limited production of 28nm fab, and TSMC's mark up due to working out the process and high demand. If anything I'm hoping we'll see a drastic price reduction in the future.[/citation]

What do you mean by that? Kepler's prices (excluding the GTX 690) are record-breaking performance for the money, especially the GTX 670.