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Nvidia Kepler - Geforce GTX680 Thread - Now with reviews

gatti-man

Member
Were all of you guys really looking forward to a card rumored at $750?

As long as the GK104 part is still on track to bring down prices in the sub-$400 market, I'm happy.

If i could get 1 card that improves my performance on all games over my 480sli while putting out far less heat id gladly pay 750.
 

Xyber

Member
Ah, damnit. Was planning on getting the 580 successor. Have to see how this 670 will perform and if it is a good overclocker.
 
hell by 2013 I'll be able to do Quad SLI on dual 30 inch monitors (I won't do that) but I could if I wanted to (I don't want to) but I want to see what their flagship does.
 

pestul

Member
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038407585&postcount=344

ibrPiWgwIn4bhF.jpg


A little nebulous, but it probably means the ball is rolling. Good troll on Kyle's part lol.
 

dr_rus

Member
Kepler might win 'handily' against Radeon 7800
Radeon 7800 is GTX 560 level of perfomance. And that's Fermi.

Guys, it won't be long now. Just wait a bit. Most of stuff Charlie is pushing out right now was born in his own head.
 
are you sure?

I'm more inclined to believe that they will be announced in 2013, with a 2014 release. and it actually wouldn't surprise me if that estimate turned out to be sooner than what will actually transpire.

If consoles sales continue to decline, I would be shocked if 720 comes out in 2014. I'm betting on it being released in 2013.
 
If consoles sales continue to decline, I would be shocked if 720 comes out in 2014. I'm betting on it being released in 2013.

perhaps you're right. I might just be cynical due to the interminable wait we're currently enduring, and the fact that 360/PS3 are still considered "next generation" consoles in certain circles.
 

artist

Banned
Finally some concrete (good) news.
Confirmed: NVIDIA GeForce Kepler GK104 Coming In April

There has been many rumors lately about the launch date of NVIDIA’s upcoming 28nm graphics cards based on their latest GeForce Kepler architecture. It was reported by SweClockers that GK104 based GTX670 will come in March but our reliable sources in NVIDIA AIB partners have told us that NVIDIA will be launching their 28nm in first two weeks of April, not any time before that It’ll be based of GeForce Kepler GK104 chip and cards are currently in production as it was reported by FudZilla earlier.

We are also told that AIB partners will have enough inventory on launch day to fulfil needs of most markets. It’ll not be a soft launch like AMD Radeon HD 7970. We aren’t allowed to tell much about the upcoming graphics card from NVIDIA but what we can assure you is that next couple of months will be very interesting.
 
Radeon 7800 is GTX 560 level of perfomance. And that's Fermi.

Guys, it won't be long now. Just wait a bit. Most of stuff Charlie is pushing out right now was born in his own head.

7800 is only as good as a mid range nvidia card? I thought the 6870 was around the same level of performance as a 560 Ti (which would make it a mid-class battle). The 6970 was meant to be around the same as a 580 and everything I've read about the 7870 put it around 6970 levels of performance.

Am I missing something?
 
7800 is only as good as a mid range nvidia card? I thought the 6870 was around the same level of performance as a 560 Ti (which would make it a mid-class battle). The 6970 was meant to be around the same as a 580 and everything I've read about the 7870 put it around 6970 levels of performance.

Am I missing something?

6970 isn't as fast as a 580...and i want to say 6870 was generally below a 560ti too.

the top pitcairn chip probably will be at least as fast as a 6970 though. but it'll also probably be at least 299 so...
 
6970 isn't as fast as a 580...and i want to say 6870 was generally below a 560ti too.

the top pitcairn chip probably will be at least as fast as a 6970 though. but it'll also probably be at least 299 so...

Ok well that puts my suspicions to rest then, it helps to know these comparisons for buying purposes I suppose.
 

artist

Banned
Time inject some life into this thread!

Kyle_Bennett said:
I am seeing information out of China this morning showing 45% to 50% performance increase over 580 in canned benchmarks.
http://75.126.99.220/showpost.php?p=1038447903&postcount=437

When asked about the "canned benchmarks", he said:

Kyle_Bennett said:
680 vs 580 - Artificial 3D benchmarks.
http://75.126.99.220/showpost.php?p=1038448529&postcount=462

PCB Layout Design:
40101961.jpg


NVIDIA GK104 PCB Drawings, Unusual Power Connector Designs Surface

Here is the first x-ray drawing of NVIDIA's GeForce Kepler 104 (GK104) reference board, outlining the VRM area. The GPU and memory areas are blanked out for some very obvious reasons. Nevertheless, there's plenty of fascinating stuff going on in these pictures. To begin with, the picture confirms that the board will have 5 NVVDD phases, and up to three miscellaneous power domains. The PCB has provisions for two 6-pin and one 8-pin connector.

The funny part here is a strange new plug that has two 6-pin (or 8-pin+6-pin) stacked, while one of the two 6-pin connector leads are blanked. Some of our sources also report having seen a similar connector with 8-pin and 6-pin on samples of this card (refer to the last picture below). It's not just this, that makes the card incapable of single-slot operation, the DVI connectors over at the display IO also are stacked like on previous-generation AMD Radeon cards. Other connectors on the card are HDMI and DisplayPort. There are two SLI bridge connectors, giving it 3-way and 4-way SLI support.
http://www.techpowerup.com/161597/N...-Unusual-Power-Connector-Designs-Surface.html
20d.jpg


And best for last:
GK104 PCB Pictured in Full

Here is the first true-color picture of the GeForce Kepler 104 (GK104) reference PCB shot in full (well, almost, excluding the uneventful PCIe bus connector). The picture provides a panoramic view of the card's VRM as shown in a drawing posted earlier this day, and reveals the strange double-decker power connector. The card is loaded with a 5-phase NVVDC configuration, as detailed in an older article. It also confirms that the GK104 has a 256-bit wide memory interface, with likely 2 GB standard memory amount. This is also the first picture of the GK104 ASIC, which has square package, and somewhat square die. While the PCB is green in color, it's most likely an engineering sample. The final product (branded GeForce GTX 680 / GTX 670 Ti), could have a black-colored one.
http://www.techpowerup.com/161601/GK104-PCB-Pictured-in-Full.html
22a.jpg


Folks at B3D put the die size to be between 320-340mm2, smaller than Tahiti (7970). Charlie was right.
 

gatti-man

Member
Well its not 30% across all games, settings. It generally ranges from 20-30%.


Pretty good chance it will.

Once you non voltage oc it yeah its 30%. I know that's kindof a shifty argument but I think its relevant given the significant headroom 7970s ship with vs the 580 and typical nvidia hardware. I'm an nvidia Guy too.
 

pestul

Member
Most are speculating at HardOCP now that they're referring to the GK110 numbers (680) instead of the GK104 (670) for the 50% increase. This makes a lot more sense to me. Not that I believe random numbers from China. :S
 

artist

Banned
Most are speculating at HardOCP now that they're referring to the GK110 numbers (680) instead of the GK104 (670) for the 50% increase. This makes a lot more sense to me. Not that I believe random numbers from China. :S
Kyle's quote: "I am seeing information out of China this morning showing 45% to 50% performance increase over 580 in canned benchmarks."

Emphasis mine. Combine that with this:
Kyle_Bennett said:
I think NVIDIA put a bunch of disinformation out here very recently as to clocks and prices and such. Not sure what is going on yet. But we hear from China that GPU have been delivered in very small quantities and building should be moving forward very soon. So things are rolling and getting much much closer.
http://75.126.99.220/showpost.php?p=1038444120&postcount=410

Dont think that's GK110. Nobody knows what the GK104 will end up as .. last week it was GTX670Ti and now Kyle is saying 680. I guess we'll find out soon.

Also Kyle dropped this bit but then later deleted his post:

Kyle_Bennett said:
It will have NV Surround out of the box on a single card.
http://75.126.99.220/showpost.php?p=1038447933&postcount=443
 
I like the sound of surround on a single card. About time they catch up to AMD in that respect.

I wonder how one of these bad boys will perform doing 3d vision surround at 3x1080p in modern games.
 

sk3tch

Member
You would probably need >2GB VRAM for some games.

That link was a good read. I have a box with 3x570s in it coming on Monday (bought it used). That 1.2GB has me worried for running NV Surround on 3 1080p monitors. Looks like not all is lost and that many games can play well in that size. I'll slang 'em when the new 580 equivalent drops.
 

tokkun

Member
So if all the rumors are to believed, a chip with smaller die size than the 7970 and a 256-bit memory bus width beats it by 20%?

Certainly not impossible, but reason to be skeptical.
 
So if all the rumors are to believed, a chip with smaller die size than the 7970 and a 256-bit memory bus width beats it by 20%?

Certainly not impossible, but reason to be skeptical.

Yeah, the 256 bus is really the kicker. It's going to put some type of upper limit on the card performance especially at higher resolutions.

Last I heard GK104 was going to maybe sit between 7950 and 7970 performance wise. Then Gk110 in perhaps august was the real monster chip.

So if this info is true (gk104=680), now there may not be a Gk110? I dont know...

Folks at B3D put the die size to be between 320-340mm2, smaller than Tahiti (7970). Charlie was right.

Right about what? Maybe 1 of the 100 whacky things he said? He also delivered some weird spiel that GK104 would have a built in physx chip, and only be faster than Tahiti in physx accelerated games or some nonsense. http://semiaccurate.com/2012/02/01/physics-hardware-makes-keplergk104-fast/

I swear charlie retroactively changed his article though. I'm 99% he originally said gk104 would have dedicated physx hardware (which everybody thought was nonsense) but now the article just talks about physx optimizations not dedicated hardware.
 

markot

Banned
Wtf, honestly, I wish they would stop naming their cards at all really >_> its like they just pluck these ideas out of the bin.

Why dont they just have a name for a series, like this series would be called 'Kepler' and number them accordingling, 100 is entry level, 900 is over 9000 power wise.

That way they wouldnt need to reset redo and undo their whole damn naming convention every 2 years >.<;
 
I'm surprised nVidia doesn't market cards that only tackle physx, tesselation, and other weird effects no one wants to enable on single card systems.
 
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