The first "proper" Kepler news Fri 17th Feb?

straxusii · 18 Mar 2012 at 07:08

Dave2150 said:
Kepler, too little, too late.

Ati's next gen have been out for months and months, by the time kepler turns up, Ati will have its refresh ready to blow it out of the water, most likely.

AMD won't need a refresh to beat 680, they can just lower the price of 7970 yo £399 job done.

psychodil · 18 Mar 2012 at 07:11

Whether its mid end or whatever doesnt matter really, youre not going to get a faster nvidia card until september by the looks of it. Nvidia have confirmed this is the flagship card, so all those waiting for big kepler are in for a long wait by all accounts.

WingZero30 · 18 Mar 2012 at 08:05

psychodil said:
Whether its mid end or whatever doesnt matter really, youre not going to get a faster nvidia card until september by the looks of it. Nvidia have confirmed this is the flagship card, so all those waiting for big kepler are in for a long wait by all accounts.

Plus I bet it will form part of next series i.e GTX 700 series as have been speculated by several people on this forum

trisp · 18 Mar 2012 at 08:31

Wasn't the 680 the first of this series gpu's? and there is a 685 around the corner? or have i gone mad!

What ever may or may not be coming out within the next 6 months, it would appear that nvidia have released a card that is on par/beat's 7970 in most game's at stock settings. (ignoring overclocks because as we all know on nitrogen or helium these gpu's can reach insane speed's)

O and just to point out it took nvidia 4 months longer to make and ship there's... then amd did so it would make sense that the 680 is better.

Non-biased 6970 crossfire/gtx 580 owner's views.

andybird123 · 18 Mar 2012 at 08:44

the first kepler rumour that came out was that GTX 780 would be double the performance of GTX580 and that it would be released Q3/4 2012

now that we know that there is a GTX680 coming out Q1 2012 that is 30% faster than 580 everyone is upset

I don't see why, because the first rumour that we heard (as above) is still looking likely to be true

other rumours have come and gone in the meantime and in conjunction with the first rumour people started assuming that all the rumours were connected and that GTX780 / double 580 single GPU was being released in march, but Nvidia have never said that

when you assume you make an ass of u and me

pages of rant at nvidia for your own assumption (and over something as trivial as a toy for playing childrens games) is really quite ridiculous when you think about it

wolvers · 18 Mar 2012 at 09:25

DamoTourettes said:
With you. However the magical 1200Mhz clocks that people were getting out of the 7970's might rear their heads again - I noticed that MSI have just released their R7970 Lightning - it's got a default clock of 1070, but with those beefy PCB's and how they bin chips for those cards, 1200Mhz+ isn't entirely impossible...

It's not magical at all, you'd be pretty unlucky to get one that didn't do 1200. There's plenty out there going well over 1200 too, some hitting 1300.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18372317

I've got a 920 d0 that won't do 4ghz, that's just the way it goes sometimes with overclocking.

Gregster · 18 Mar 2012 at 09:48

spankingtexan said:
Trine 2 did it for me, i've played it over and over in 3D and it still amazes, ABSOLUTELY STUNNING. Turning 3d off during play is like being decapitated.

Absoloutely. Trine 2 for me is just "Wow". I play BF3 in 2D, only because I suck and 3D makes it harder IMO (I don't need to suck even more).

I could not go back to 2D gaming and do feel something is missing if I play in 2D.

trisp · 18 Mar 2012 at 10:18

Too help people bridge the gap between new and old games i present...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c1PBufdfcE

...Battlefield 3 NES Edition

RavenXXX2 · 18 Mar 2012 at 11:22

When I look at the 680 specs it smacks of a £300 card, the cut down bus that delivers the same bandwidth as a 580 the card it's suppose to be replacing, for me the bandwidth should be greatly increased not the same for a card that is replacing the last high end part.

And then there are the huge default clocks, way above the 580 clocks. I'm sorry but I'm not touching this at £400+ even if it does clock well, I would feel a mug buying a mid range card priced at a crazy price just because Nvidia can clock it sky high to compete with the 7970.

1kiwi · 18 Mar 2012 at 11:33

RavenXXX2 said:
When I look at the 680 specs it smacks of a £300 card, the cut down bus that delivers the same bandwidth as a 580 the card it's suppose to be replacing, for me the bandwidth should be greatly increased not the same for a card that is replacing the last high end part.

And then there are the huge default clocks, way above the 580 clocks. I'm sorry but I'm not touching this at £400+ even if it does clock well, I would feel a mug buying a mid range card priced at a crazy price just because Nvidia can clock it sky high to compete with the 7970.

Duff-Man said:
From a consumer perspective this is the high end card. No ifs, no buts - it's the GTX680 with a pricetag to match. From that perspective, it is no more impressive than the 7970 was: A modest improvement in performance over the previous generation, with a high-end pricetag.

From a technological perspective it seems to be a fairly impressive chip from what we've seen so far. Small die size, relatively low power, and able to roughly match the performance of the 7970, using 'only' a 256-bit memory bus. We already know that Nvidia is preparing a larger variant, and from GK104 we can extrapolate a fair amount about how that chip will perform.

I think Duff-Man described it best. From a technologist perspective it's fail. NVIDIA releasing a mid range part that can outperform AMD high end part. NVIDIA being able to charge 150%-200%+ for a mid range part. From a consumer/gamer perspective it's still win if it performs at high overclocks.

stulid · 18 Mar 2012 at 12:15

http://vr-zone.com/articles/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-sli-performance-preview/15273.html

555BUK · 18 Mar 2012 at 12:23

stulid said:
http://vr-zone.com/articles/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-sli-performance-preview/15273.html

Well, from the GPUZ screenshot it seems these cards can overclock to 1150MHz, and they did that in SLI config. The VRAM also goes up to 1800MHz (7200MHz), Wowzers! So much for the 7900's killing these cards for overclocks, beause they seem pretty similar.

NVidia have made massive steps forward with their memory contollers. From being ~20% behind AMD, they are now equal, and their GPU's seem to produce better performance per transistor. Bend over time for AMD?

RavenXXX2 · 18 Mar 2012 at 12:31

What if 1150 is the most extreme clock they could get, not good enough for me that. The ram clock is not important, will have little impact on performance.

Martini1991 · 18 Mar 2012 at 12:35

It's impressive Nvidia are better performance per watt, it's disappointing they've chosen to join AMD in raping the consumer, as opposed offering us their 660 as a mid range card and releasing a proper 680.

555BUK · 18 Mar 2012 at 12:37

RavenXXX2 said:
What if 1150 is the most extreme clock they could get, not good enough for me that. The ram clock is not important, will have little impact on performance.

The VRAM clock is probably more important for GK104's 256bit bus than it would be for the 7900's or GTX580's. 1150MHz within SLI is quite impressive, but they could indeed have been ringing it's nuts off. My guess is that memory closks will be just as important, if not moreso than GPU speed for these cards. GPU performance is imminse for such a small die size, potentially offering >double the performance per mm2 over the GTX580. 28nm seems to have worked very well indeed.

These cards may well launch with an artificially high price tag and artificial name tags, but I think prices will drop very quickly once production ramps up and the "must have" enthusiasts run out. I reackon sub £250 before big Kepler arrives. Lets hope for a vicious price war.

edit: Forget the pricing and the name tag. This is a mainstream mid-high card that outperforms the prevous top-gen card by ~30% whilst running a 50% smaller memory bus on a ~35% smaller die. This card is MASSIVELY impressive and a big step forward for graphics cards. It may be NVidia's "Sandy Bridge".

wolvers · 18 Mar 2012 at 12:56

How is 1150 deemed wowzers? Percentage wise over the stock clocks it's a lower than the 7970. Unless they clock higher than that with the retail ones it sounds like they've clocked it higher at stock, this is something I've been saying for a while that Nvidia do with their cards to make them look better at stock than AMD cards. You tend to get more clocking headroom from AMD stuff.

TAC4U · 18 Mar 2012 at 12:57

Those screenshots show the default clock speed is 706MHz. The real question is how comfortably the cards handle higher clocks (i.e. are they just downclocked so they can clock up) as the percentage difference of the overclock is much greater than needed for the 7970, which can easily clock to 1.2.

Jokester · 18 Mar 2012 at 13:01

They clock up to 1GHz in a similar way to Intel's Turbo Boost.

555BUK · 18 Mar 2012 at 13:03

wolvers said:
How is 1150 deemed wowzers? Percentage wise over the stock clocks it's a lower than the 7970. Unless they clock higher than that with the retail ones it sounds like they've clocked it higher at stock, this is something I've been saying for a while that Nvidia do with their cards to make them look better at stock than AMD cards. You tend to get more clocking headroom from AMD stuff.

NVidia usually lag far behind AMD for maximun clock speeds (both GPU and memory). If the have now cut that lead significantly, as appears the case, I consider that a huge feat. It means that NVidia no longer has to rely on massive and really expensive die sizes to match/outpeforom AMD. Even if GK104 ends up clocking 75-100MHz lower tha Tahiti, the percentage gap has narrowed significantly over past generations.

555BUK · 18 Mar 2012 at 13:06

TAC4U said:
Those screenshots show the default clock speed is 706MHz. The real question is how comfortably the cards handle higher clocks (i.e. are they just downclocked so they can clock up) as the percentage difference of the overclock is much greater than needed for the 7970, which can easily clock to 1.2.

No they cannot. 1200MHz is possible for many 7900's, but it is certainly not easy and far from defacto. 1125-1150MHz is probably much more realistic. 1150MHz may also be unralistic for GK104, but it may give an indication of top-end limits (like 1200 is for the 7900's).