Report: Nvidia To Launch GK104-based GTX 660Ti in August

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It makes perfect sense to me that the 660 Ti be the end of the 6xx series. At $200 and up, the 560 was last year's biggest seller outselling all AMD's 69xx and 68xx cards put together. Below $200, AMD ruled the roost. While I can't imagine that nVidia would surrender the budget market completely, the profit margins there can't be that great. OTOH, this ties in nicely with the postulation below

As for the 700 series, many pundits have echo'd my own views that the 700 series "arrived" months ago. As indicated here.....

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-review/26

It was never intended to be the high-end product. For that NVIDIA would have named it GK110, personally I still think the GK110 will see the light at a later stage in time, likely end of the year.....

We certainly like the GeForce GTX 680, it is quite amazing what NVIDIA is able to do with the GK104 which we still think was intended to be the mid-range chip
Click to expand...

.... many think what we know as the 680 was originally intended to be the 660 ..... it follows similarly that the 670 and 660 Ti were originally slated to be the low end 660 and 650. That "fits" with the 660 being the new bottom level card and also suggests that the "original" 670 and 680 to be already sitting waiting in the wings as the "new" 700 series.

Guru3D is not alone in this postulation .... This scenario has been put forth by many industry pundits.

http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/graphics-cards/is-nvidias-geforce-gtx-680-an-imposter-1074235

So, here's the bottom line. The GTX 680 is not a high end GPU. But it's being sold for the price of a high end GPU and that very likely makes it hugely profitable. Somewhere deep inside Nvidia's labs, there's another, much larger and more powerful GeForce 600 Series GPU.
Click to expand...
 
[citation][nom]tukbol7[/nom]with all of this and that, where does it stands in terms of performance? in par with 7850? 7870? or even higher?[/citation]

If I had to guess, somewhere around the Radeon 7870 in performance. It might be somewhat ahead or a little behind, but that's a very approximate performance level that I'd have to guess that it would be placed at.

[citation][nom]JackNaylorPE[/nom]It makes perfect sense to me that the 660 Ti be the end of the 6xx series. At $200 and up, the 560 was last year's biggest seller outselling all AMD's 69xx and 68xx cards put together. Below $200, AMD ruled the roost.[/citation]

It doesn't make much sense based on what you said. The GTX 660 Ti is undoubtedly higher end than the GTX 560 and also more expensive than the GTX 560. This is not a budget card and is most certainly not a $200 card. At best, it will go down to about $300, although it is likely to be more like $320 to $350.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]The GTX 670 has much higher performance per watt than the GTX 680. That puts a hole in your theory since it is more power efficient than the Radeon 7870 which uses a little bit less power, but is significantly slower. Yes, the 7700 and 7800 series are more efficient than the 7900 series and I never denied that. However, they still use the same architecture and are not really as efficient as Kepler can be. If Kepler cards weren't made with such large memory bandwidth bottle-necks, they could be far more efficient than they already are.Also, you're completely wrong about the GTX 660M and the GT 640 GDDR5 being the same. The GT 640 GDDR5 has 80GB/s of VRAM bandwidth and the GTX 660M has only 64GB/s of VRAM bandwidth. The GT 640 GDDR5 has a 950MHz GPU clock frequency. The GTX 660M has a 835MHz clock frequency. The GT 640 GDDR5 has a 14% advantage in GPU frequency and a very important 25% VRAM bandwidth advantage over the GTX 660M. That should amount to a roughly 20-30% performance advantage over the GTX 660M in gaming. It is an excellent contender in performance for the slightly more power hungry Radeon 7770 GHz Edition and has a good chance of slightly beating the 7770, especially if they are at the same memory and GPU clock frequencies for a clock-for-clock comparison where the GT 640 GDDR5 should win by 10-15%.[/citation]I am curious that how can u come up with 20-30% performance advantage over the 660m when the spec gain is
 
[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]I am curious that how can u come up with 20-30% performance advantage over the 660m when the spec gain is[/citation]

14% on the GPU and 25% on the memory bandwidth... The GTX 660M is memory bandwidth-bottle-necked too, so the memory scales performance better than you might expect it too. That 20% to 30% range is accurate.

[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]less than 30%[/citation]

Unless you don't know math well, you should know that 20-30% means that it is probably almost always going to be less than 30%. I also don't see why you didn't just edit this into the previous comment rather than making a new one. Just in case you didn't know, yes, you can do that on all tomshardware.com news articles.

If you really want to get into it, the spec gain is about 40% with both the GPU frequency and the RAM frequency increase over the GTX 660M. However, increasing memory bandwidth linearly usually doesn't scale performance up nearly as well as GPU frequency increases do when they don't have another bottle-neck holding them back, so it is almost certainly not going to see a nearly 40% increase.

[citation][nom]geekapproved[/nom]$300? It's gonna have to be a lot cheaper than that to compete with 78XX series. 7850's going for $209 AR and 7870's going for $279 AR as of NOW.[/citation]

Perhaps $300 is a little high, but I don't think so unless Nvidia somehow screwed the card up. It most certainly won't be cheaper than the Radeon 7870 unless they really screwed something up. I don't think that Nvidia screwed up, at least not so badly that it will need to be priced lower than a 7870 in order to sell well. Keep in mind that the GTX 670, the next card up, is a $400 to almost $500 card that performs right with the $500 GTX 680, a significantly faster card than a Radeon 7870. The GTX 660 TI is, unlike the GTX 670, going to be significantly slower than the next card up if it really has a 192 bit bus. However, will it be to such a point that Nvidia must price it lower than the Radeon 7870? Keep in mind that AMD is also likely to bring down the 7870's and maybe the 7850's prices yet again when the 660 TI launches (or, as AMD seems to prefer it, a while afterward), but still... The 660 TI will not be nearly as cheap as the 560 is. It will be more expensive than the GTX 560's launch price, let alone it's current price now. It is simply a much faster card. Heck, it probably competes well with GTX 560 SLI.
 
[citation][nom]yobobjm[/nom]Wait so they're just giving up on the 650? They're just throwing in the towel to the 7700 series? I mean the 640 is a garbage card that performs much worse than cards like the 7750 and 7770 which are priced only around 10 bucks more, and still worse than their own card priced about 10 bucks more. So they just don't have an entry level card this generation? That seems like a really dumb business plan.[/citation]

Which 640? There are three. Saying the 640 is a very confusing statement because there are three GT 640 cards and they all have different levels of performance. The GT 640 is undoubtedly the model that you're referring too, but what you said would then imply that all of the GT 640 cards are garbage and ignoring pricing, that's simply not true. The GT 640 GDDR5 is undoubtedly a great competitor for the Radeon 7770 in performance and power consumption, although we don't know about pricing and as of yet, we don't know when (or even if) Nvidia is going to actually release it in retail channels any time soon.
 
[citation][nom]Marcus52[/nom]This is only true in a general way, not "all modern games" run as well on i5 as i7. World of Warcraft, for example, takes advantage of Sandy Bridge-E in a way most FPS type games don't. (And, if you are thinking WoW isn't modern, the graphics engine was recently upgraded to DX11.)As I always say, look at your applications and do some research; build to your needs, not what people say you should do.[/citation]

Looking back on what I said, yes, I did make a mistake. I said all modern games instead of almost all modern games and in that sense, yes, I was wrong. I'll fix that now.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]14% on the GPU and 25% on the memory bandwidth... The GTX 660M is memory bandwidth-bottle-necked too, so the memory scales performance better than you might expect it too. That 20% to 30% range is accurate.Unless you don't know math well, you should know that 20-30% means that it is probably almost always going to be less than 30%. I also don't see why you didn't just edit this into the previous comment rather than making a new one. Just in case you didn't know, yes, you can do that on all tomshardware.com news articles.If you really want to get into it, the spec gain is about 40% with both the GPU frequency and the RAM frequency increase over the GTX 660M. However, increasing memory bandwidth linearly usually doesn't scale performance up nearly as well as GPU frequency increases do when they don't have another bottle-neck holding them back, so it is almost certainly not going to see a nearly 40% increase.[/citation]1. u claim that GT640 DDR5 have higher spec than 660m(we all know it will be higher), but u said is 80gb/s GPU clock 950MHz, I'll like to know where u get the source from?

2. You keep saying that GT640 are very awesome, DDR5 version is likely to beat 7770. Various benchmark has showed that GT640 DDR3 does not even beat 6670. Tomshardware/Anandtech/techpowerup has many benchmarks @ 1280x1024, 1280x800, 1366x768 some without AA/low FXAA/MSAA just to eliminate memory bandwidth bottleneck issue, it does shows GT640 are handicapped by memory bandwidth. But despite that GT640 DDR3 is only capable running around 6670 performance. I highly doubt a DDR5 version can climb over 7770. GT640 DDR5 vs 7750 is more a realistic number. The problem is the chip being too few shaders itself. Unless u can get >50% performance out from just on GPU clock itself I dont see how it is possible. I also hope GT640 can beat 7770, but the benchmark result tells otherwise. You are just being too optimistic on GK107.


as for the edit function i dont get this edit function on adding comments via the article.
 
[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]1. u claim that GT640 DDR5 have higher spec than 660m(we all know it will be higher), but u said is 80gb/s GPU clock 950MHz, I'll like to know where u get the source from? 2. You keep saying that GT640 are very awesome, DDR5 version is likely to beat 7770. Various benchmark has showed that GT640 DDR3 does not even beat 6670. Tomshardware/Anandtech/techpowerup has many benchmarks @ 1280x1024, 1280x800, 1366x768 some without AA/low FXAA/MSAA just to eliminate memory bandwidth bottleneck issue, it does shows GT640 are handicapped by memory bandwidth. But despite that GT640 DDR3 is only capable running around 6670 performance. I highly doubt a DDR5 version can climb over 7770. GT640 DDR5 vs 7750 is more a realistic number. The problem is the chip being too few shaders itself. Unless u can get >50% performance out from just on GPU clock itself I dont see how it is possible. I also hope GT640 can beat 7770, but the benchmark result tells otherwise. You are just being too optimistic on GK107. as for the edit function i dont get this edit function on adding comments via the article.[/citation]

The specs are official Nvidia specs.
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-640-oem/specifications

Also notice how the GT 640 DDR3 has a 50w TDP, not a 75w TDP like the GT 640 DDR3 192 bit and the GT 640 GDDR5.

I have given you everything that you should need to realize that the GT 640 GDDR5 should meet or beat the Radeon 7770. Keep in mind that it would be a small victory and that some of the most highly factory overclocked 7770s would easily surpass a reference GT 640 GDDR5 by much more more than a reference GT 640 GDDR5 would surpass a reference Radeon 7770.

There aren't too few cores. There are 384 Kepler FP32 CUDA cores. By raw core performance comparisons alone, that's ~20% more than the Radeon 7770's 640 because one Kepler FP32 core is about equal to two VLIW4/GCN cores in performance if all else is equal. 640 times 1.2 is 768 and that is twice as much as 384.The GPU itself is more powerful than the Cape Verde when both are at the same frequency if only count the core performance of each GPU.

Also notice how that link specifies that they are OEM. This is why I voiced my concern about whether or not the GT 640 GDDR5 will enter the retail channels and if so, when it will do so.

There aren't any benchmark results that I've seen about the GT 640 GDDR5, so unless you've found some using the latest drivers, you're making that up.

The edit button is shown if you click the text link "Read the comments on the forums" between the comments section and the article.

This card, with current drivers, should be a little faster than the reference Radeon 7770. However, it probably won't be so much faster that you'd see a difference while you're gaming with it. Looking back on when I said quite significantly, I think that I was mistaken. However, the numbers don't lie. It should be a little faster.
 
Reminds me of Nvidia vs. 3Dfx. How funny the past repeats itself.
Nvidia is slowly and methodically being squeezed out. In the last year they have put out two expensive high end cards. That is it. Yes they perform well at the present time for gaming, but are lacking in any future proofing and have abandoned GPGPU which has always been a company trademark. Obvious desperation from a marketing stand point. Where are your cash cow mainstream cards? AMD in the GPU market is much like Intel in the CPU market. Release when needed. Nvidia's sale to Intel has been set in stone for years. It has just been waiting for the right price. AMD is in a pickle. If the clobber Nvidia, in turn its sale to Intel will clobber them. AMD is just buying time with its APU to get enough of a leg up over Intel, so when they have to hit Nvidia for financial reasons, and they are sold to Intel, they have not slit there own throats.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]The specs are official Nvidia specs.http://www.geforce.com/hardware/de [...] ificationsAlso notice how the GT 640 DDR3 has a 50w TDP, not a 75w TDP like the GT 640 DDR3 192 bit and the GT 640 GDDR5.I have given you everything that you should need to realize that the GT 640 GDDR5 should meet or beat the Radeon 7770. Keep in mind that it would be a small victory and that some of the most highly factory overclocked 7770s would easily surpass a reference GT 640 GDDR5 by much more more than a reference GT 640 GDDR5 would surpass a reference Radeon 7770.There aren't too few cores. There are 384 Kepler FP32 CUDA cores. By raw core performance comparisons alone, that's ~20% more than the Radeon 7770's 640 because one Kepler FP32 core is about equal to two VLIW4/GCN cores in performance if all else is equal. 640 times 1.2 is 768 and that is twice as much as 384.The GPU itself is more powerful than the Cape Verde when both are at the same frequency if only count the core performance of each GPU.Also notice how that link specifies that they are OEM.[/citation]It is quite hard to say, because the benchmark on the Gt640 DDR3 on low resolution still have a hard time keep up even vs 6670, 7770 is like another 2 level above. Kepler cores are no where near 2x the performance of GCN cores, u can take the less memory-bandwidth RoP bound GTX670 vs the 7870 the gap is about 20-25% only. Even the performance per watt for 670 are lower than 7870.
 


The GTX 670 is also extremely VRAM bandwidth bottle-necked and it is not less power efficient than the Radeon 7870. The 7870 is slightly less power efficient than the GTX 670, at least according to actual tests done on it. Guru3D, Anandtech, and if you do the math yourself, also Tom's. Furthermore, the GT 640 DDR3 is beyond VRAM bandwidth bound. DDR3 is not a memory that is suited for graphics memory. Bandwidth is not the only problem that it has.
 
[citation][nom]funkydmunky[/nom]Reminds me of Nvidia vs. 3Dfx. How funny the past repeats itself. Nvidia is slowly and methodically being squeezed out. In the last year they have put out two expensive high end cards. That is it. Yes they perform well at the present time for gaming, but are lacking in any future proofing and have abandoned GPGPU which has always been a company trademark. Obvious desperation from a marketing stand point. Where are your cash cow mainstream cards? AMD in the GPU market is much like Intel in the CPU market. Release when needed. Nvidia's sale to Intel has been set in stone for years. It has just been waiting for the right price. AMD is in a pickle. If the clobber Nvidia, in turn its sale to Intel will clobber them. AMD is just buying time with its APU to get enough of a leg up over Intel, so when they have to hit Nvidia for financial reasons, and they are sold to Intel, they have not slit there own throats.[/citation]

Nvidia put out a lot of new cards, granted they're missing mid-ranged and lower high-end desktop cards. There are a lot of mobile Kepler cards from low all the way through mid-ranged and to high-end markets. There are also several low-end Kepler desktop video cards.Furthermore, Intel has been quite adamant that they kinda hate Nvidia and want nothing to do with them. Sure, maybe they will buy Nvidia. However, I think that Intel won't buy Nvidia. Nvidia seems interested in such a deal, but Intel has rejected them. You're also ignoring the fact that Nvidia supposedly has a big revisit to dual-precision (Nvidia did not abandon single-precision; Nvidia only abandoned dual-precision in their Kepler FP32 GPUs) performance with the GTX 700 cards when they are supposedly going to use the Kepler FP64 GK110 as the base for their flagship cards, or at least a GK114 based off of it.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]The GTX 670 is also extremely VRAM bandwidth bottle-necked and it is not less power efficient than the Radeon 7870. The 7870 is slightly less power efficient than the GTX 670, at least according to actual tests done on it. Guru3D, Anandtech, and if you do the math yourself, also Tom's. Furthermore, the GT 640 DDR3 is beyond VRAM bandwidth bound. DDR3 is not a memory that is suited for graphics memory. Bandwidth is not the only problem that it has.[/citation]you can check the performance diff between a GTS450 DDR3/5670 DDR3 vs the DDR5 ones. I believe the gap between the GT640 DDR3 vs 7770 is huge enough that DDR5, and minor GPU clock speed bump alone might not be helping much.

Techpowerup shows 7800 is more efficent per watt. It remains hard to say who is right/wrong. I say both of them are quite close each other. Having u say 670 is Vram bandwitdh bottleneck, that it means counting as the whole card alone the 7800 is more efficient, more balance card.

The only reason I am holding out 7770 is to wait the GK106(GTX650) with 24ROPs. 24 Rops + 192bit DDR5 + 1.5GB Vram could be quite significant diff in games especially when I plan to push my GPU hard on 4xMSAA + 8x-16AF @ 1680x1050/1920x1080 using my E8600 Core 2 duo. (*old benchmark result shows that E8600 is capable of using GTX280/GTX460 without bottleneck)
 
[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]you can check the performance diff between a GTS450 DDR3/5670 DDR3 vs the DDR5 ones. I believe the gap between the GT640 DDR3 vs 7770 is huge enough that DDR5, and minor GPU clock speed bump alone might not be helping much. Techpowerup shows 7800 is more efficent per watt. It remains hard to say who is right/wrong. I say both of them are quite close each other. Having u say 670 is Vram bandwitdh bottleneck, that it means counting as the whole card alone the 7800 is more efficient, more balance card.The only reason I am holding out 7770 is to wait the GK106(GTX650) with 24ROPs. 24 Rops + 192bit DDR5 + 1.5GB Vram could be quite significant diff in games especially when I plan to push my GPU hard on 4xMSAA + 8x-16AF @ 1680x1050/1920x1080 using my E8600 Core 2 duo. (*old benchmark result shows that E8600 is capable of using GTX280/GTX460 without bottleneck)[/citation]

Those other cards are all much less memory-bandwidth bottle-necked. Nothing from the recent graphics card past truly compares in memory bandwidth bottle-necks. A better comparison would be looking at Llano and Trinity. Compare the difference between even DDR3-1066 and DDR3-1866 and you'll see a huge difference in performance. The memory bandwidth difference with the GT 640 is something like three and a half or four times greater than the difference with this Llano example and this is with a GPU that has more performance than the GTX 550 TI's GF116.

There is no such thing as DDR5 right now except maybe as a research that is about a decade away from market and if there was, it and GDDR5 would be very different DRAM interface tecnologies. Please stop referring to GDDR5 as DDR5.

The Core 2 Duo E8600 can bottle-neck a GTX 460 in some games with some settings even at proper resolutions for the GTX 460. Whether or not it is a bottle-neck (and if so, how much of a bottle-neck) would depend on how much you overclock it and the game situation.
 
you just being too optimistic that a Kepler with almost half of the shader core count can actually beat a GCN.

When u run the game on low resolution memory bandwith become a less serious issue. Looking at how the DDR3 GT640 perform on an old game or a low resolution game barely contest the 6670. Even the GDDR5 660m are arent winning 5770/6770/7750 they are on par. Looking at 660m are not where close to 7770, I for one do not believe slightly Overclocked equip with sufficient GDDR5 is enough to climb over 7770 performance. beating 7750 slightly is more or less the realistic estimation.
 
[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]you just being too optimistic that a Kepler with almost half of the shader core count can actually beat a GCN.When u run the game on low resolution memory bandwith become a less serious issue. Looking at how the DDR3 GT640 perform on an old game or a low resolution game barely contest the 6670. Even the GDDR5 660m are arent winning 5770/6770/7750 they are on par. Looking at 660m are not where close to 7770, I for one do not believe slightly Overclocked equip with sufficient GDDR5 is enough to climb over 7770 performance. beating 7750 slightly is more or less the realistic estimation.[/citation]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The memory bandwidth is not the only problem with using DDR3 as graphics memory. DDR3 is not suited for such usage and can't even come close to GDDR3 for graphics memory. Even if it could manage the same bandwidth, it would still be a bottle-neck. The 660M is significantly slower than the GT 640 GDDR5, so it's not even relevant.
 
I dont call 660m a significant slower then is just ~100MHz slower on GPU clock and may be the memory is 1000MHz diff might make up the GT640 speed.

but the benchmark shows that 660m are better than 560m, 560m is an underclocked GTS450 = 5770/6770/7750. 7770 are = GTX460 = 670m-675m you can go figure this from here. I end my debate here until someone benchmark the GDDR5 GT640.
 
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