Nvidia Kepler GK104: More Leaks, Rumors on Specifications
Nvidia's Kepler goes big with its 1536 CUDA cores, a vast improvement over the Fermi's 512 CUDA cores.
As reported on February 7th, we got a first glimpse of the rumored specifications for Nvidia's Kepler based graphics cards. The leaked specifications were met with both "wow.. can't wait" and "wow... those are so fake why even post" from both sides of the comment fence. Now, we are starting to get more pieces of information on the upcoming Kepler series. Based on information coming out of German-based 3dcenter.org, we may have a clearer picture of the true specifications for Kepler GK104.
Outside of the switch to the 28 nm process, one of the major changes in the Kepler architecture is to allow for more CUDA cores. This is achieved by no longer having shader frequency, just GPU frequency. Each Stream Multiprocessor will contain 96 CUDA cores, unlike the 32 - 48 that Fermi had. This change in layout of the CUDA cores will have the GK104 sporting up to 1536 CUDA cores, which is a big boost from GF110 and GTX 580. The number of texture units have doubled from 64 to 128 on GK104. The GK104 will only have 32 ROPS versus 48 in GF110 but it shouldn't affect performance compared to the Fermi.
*BSN: Iillustration of GK104 CUDA Core Arrangement
The above GK104 architectural overview comes from Bright Side of News.
Nvidia Kepler GK104:
- 28nm production at TSMC,
- Die size 340mm²
- 4 Graphics Processing Clusters (GPC)
- 4 Streaming Multiprocessors (SM) per GPC = 16 SM
- 96 Stream Processors (SP) per SM = 1536 CUDA cores
- 8 Texture Units (TMU) per SM = 128 TMUs
- 32 Raster OPeration Units (ROPs)
- Chip clock (top model): 950 MHz
- 1250 MHz actual (5.00 GHz effective) memory, 160 GB/s memory bandwidth
- 256-bit DDR memory interface (up to GDDR5)
- 2048 MB (2 GB) memory amount standard
- 2.9 TFLOP/s single-precision floating point compute power
- 486 GFLOP/s double-precision floating point compute power
- Elimination of Hotclocks
The GK104's performance is expected to exceed the GTX 580 at the $350 to $400 price range. In addition, it is expected to outperform AMD's HD 7950 at similar price point and challenge the HD 7970 for the performance crown. The GK104 looks to be the similar to the current generation GTX 560 Ti with regards to price to performance in its category.
Please keep in mind, of course, that these specifications are from 3dcenter's supposed reliable source. We won't know for sure until Nvidia shows its hand. Stay tuned!
Thats looks like amd gpu.
I see that's been downgraded to 'challenge', which is wholly disappointing, seeing as AMD are milking people with their new pricing strategy, it doesn't look like nVidia are going to convert anyone.
Who cares, I'm loving the competition. I love how they keep trying to out do each other over and over because the consumers end up winning. It's like Intel vs AMD except on a different front. When it comes to cpu recommendations, its always "Intel Intel Intel." But with GPUs, its a really huge toss up between the two which gives consumers more options but still able to get their money's worth.
1536CUDA cores=750Watts, assuming that 28nm tech gives them a 40% reduction on power usage, will consume at least 500 watts...not feasible.
It would not surprise me if nVidia has a solid launch with a good mid range card and a high end card that just about tops what AMD has to offer. I bet Kepler will be able to do far more than initial cards will suggest though and we'll see many, many iterations of virtually the same cards with different clock speeds to cover various price points, much like the current 560/560Ti/560Ti(448)...
So much for that then. $300 my ass.
It is actually more like:
750 watts * 0,6 (from 40nm -> 28nm) * 0,63 (950 Mhz / 1500 Mhz) = 285 watts.
You see, if you drop clockrate by one percent, power density drops three percent...
So, when you drop clock from 1500 Mhz to 950 MHz, you can actually use about three times (3x) as much cores and still consume about the same amount of power.
Thats looks like amd gpu.
I bought my HD5870 from AMD solely because the GTX4xx cards ran hot and loud. I've been very happy with it overall. I can even run many games at maximum settings (1920x1080 @ 60Hz) including the new Amalur game (awesome game).
However, the die sizes seem similar between AMD and NVidia so cooling should be similar too.
Therefore, it's likely I'll buy an NVidia GTX670 or GTX680. Now that PhysX can run without dropping a game below 60FPS that's a plus, but NVidia also is a bit better with the driver support.
Games I put on HOLD waiting for a better card than the HD5870:
- Witcher 2
- Crysis 2 (High-Def pack)
- Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
- Metro 2033
- Grand Theft Auto IV
750*(6/10)= 450 not 500
You couldn't be more wrong.
Simple math: 512 cuda core, each at 1544mhz or 1536 cuda core, each at 950mhz
This last one would consumes 1,84 times the wattage, but with 40% reduction it would consume 1,1 times the wattage. With a few optimizations it will be easy to make it consumes the same or lower.
Feasible.