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Maxwell - Shipping By March 2014

rpggamesplayer

rpggamesplayer

rpggamesplayer

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446
Much lower power compared to Kepler

Asia started buzzing again. Nvidia’s GK110 and GK104 chips are slowly becoming yesterday's news as the company plans to start shipping the new Geforce and CUDA core codenamed Maxwell.

From what we heard the new Maxwell based graphics cards are coming in Q1 2014 and shipping in the same quarter. Multiple sources have confirmed that there will be Maxwell based cards in retail and etail before the end of March 2014. This is quite big news for GPU lovers, as Maxwell should be much more power efficient than Kepler. According to Nvidia’s roadmap it is supposed to have four times the Dual Precision Gflops per watt compared to Kepler. According to the same roadmap Maxwell has been pushed from 2013 to 2014 which implies a slight delay from the original plan.

Our multiple sources do agree on the Q1 2014 shipping to customers timeframe, but they are not aware if this is another 28nm or first 20nm graphics chip to hit the market. We can only speculate as we don’t know for sure at this point.

GPU performance lovers as well as Tesla compute performance enthusiasts will like this core as it can offer much more performance per watt than any previous generation including Kepler. The question remains if Nvidia plans to officially introduce this card before March 24 2014, the first day of its GPU technology conference, of if the launch happens a bit earlier. In case Nvidia wants to ship cards to customers, that will have to mean that it has the production right now, as it takes time to ramp these chips to decent yields. We are thrilled as it promises another eventful and competitive year in the PC GPU arena and we are quite sure that AMD is not sleeping.

From what our sources can confirm, Maxwell ships to customers in the form of retail graphics cards by the end of March.
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/33362-maxwell-geforce-cards-shipping-by-march-2014
 
I don't see what else there is to get out of 28nm, short of this being an utterly gigantic architectural reworking of Kepler.

My money's on 20nm personally - but either way i'll be waiting for 20nm offerings from both camps before making my next move.
 
It's sounding from multiple rumours that Nvidia are trying to do a Hawaii.... as in bringing a big architecture upgrade on a current process. AMD's performance went up significantly because they had die size to play with, Nvidia don't, so outside of 5-10% performance boost I wouldn't expect anything more than that.

That is if they released a new "big" maxwell. The likelyhood is, and most people suspect this, that they will do a Maxwell low to midrange card, for mobile and desktop and will be more of a pipe cleaner.

With so much time till 20nm is ramped up properly(and having enough supply for Apple to not screw everyone over stealing it for devices that really don't need it), it makes sense to test a new architecture on a current process.

Intel's tick tock(which is getting a little less consistent) does work very well. Change one thing at a time, architecture or process, not both(or minor architecture changes with a process change). AMD have quite often done this, usually the other way around though, a lower process part on a midrange card(4770 for instance) to gain some process knowledge before moving the entire range over. Really it works best to go architecture first when the process is delayed, and when a process is on time(stupidly rare :p ) then it makes more sense to test the process first.

I suspect we won't be seeing a 780/290x replacements till end of next year. AMD, what is really quite odd is they could have beaten Nvidia soundly every single year since the 4870, they've had either a decently more efficient or WAY more efficient architecture in die size. There was nothing stopping them making a £400 4970 that was a 400mm2 part with almost double the performance of the 4870, yeah, yields would have tanked but the increased cost would still cover it.

They've always gone small since the 2900xt, and no reason to do so. They have a new leader, and the 290x has both sold well, was easily doable, spanks the yield of Nvidia 550mm2 parts and gives them the truly top end performance. They may go big core again, or they may have only done it due to the 3 year process gap. At 20nm... I just don't know. Because 16-14nm is so close behind I actually think at 20nm neither Nvidia or AMD will make a 400mm2+ part, they'll wait a year for 16nm for that, even then I think they'll again make 300-400mm2 sized parts wait 6 months for the process to mature, then make big parts. So we might not see a true 780/290x replacement until late 2015 at the earliest :(

Doesn't mean a couple 7970/680 replacements won't be great and probably between July-October next year.
 
I'm not so sure... TSMC have said they are going to be ready to start producing low volume in Q1, they've also said their order book is full from the likes of Apple, Qualcom, Nvidia... the main thing said to be stopping NVidia from adopting 20nm would be Apple, but iPhone 6 is said to be looking at major redesigns from iPhone 5 and might not be released until mid 2014, which would leave TSMC's early production available to NV

Nvidia have never released a mobile or low end new arch card before (despite heavy rumours of such with e.g. kepler) so I would err on the side of caution on assuming that
 
All the analysts were saying 20nm doesn't start production until 2H 2014, so safe bet that it's 28nm mid-range parts under a new nomenclature.

Credit to Rroff for calling it. :D
 
EdgeDs said:
Sounds great but will these be at titan like price levels?
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I highly doubt it unless they come out with a titan 2 card based on the Maxwell architecture.

Why would they be titan priced? The 780 wasn't so no reason to think the 880 will be.
 
Quite funny if this happens, imagine it, GTX 780ti's top dogs for just 6 months, it's Titan, GTX 780 vicious circle all over again.

Gone are the days of GTX 670's lasting a year at £360, with custom coolers from the start...

Everyone will still get suckered in, alright if your earning £500+ a week, and still living with mummy and daddy! lol :rolleyes:
 
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Nelly said:
Quite funny if this happens, imagine it, GTX 780ti's top dogs for just 6 months, it's Titan, GTX 780 vicious circle all over again.

Gone are the days of GTX 670's lasting a year at £360, with custom coolers from the start...

Everyone will still get suckered in, alright if your earning £500+ a week lol. :rolleyes:
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Not funny at all Nelly. I said the Titan would be "Top dog" for two years and I was 14 months out :D
 
Gregster said:
Not funny at all Nelly. I said the Titan would be "Top dog" for two years and I was 14 months out :D
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Nightmare! lol. I always want the best of the best, it's terrible these 6 monthly dish out of cards.

Nvidia are not daft though, they know their is a large group of people with this way of thinking, and they will splash out at every opportunity to have the creme de la creme!
 
Nelly said:
Nightmare! lol. I always want the best of the best, it's terrible these 6 monthly dish out of cards.

Nvidia are not daft though, they know their is a large group of people with this way of thinking, and they will splash out at every opportunity to have the creme de la creme!
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Yarp, me and you and most of the users here agree.
 
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