Alleged NVIDIA GK104 Kepler GTX 670 Ti Photo Leaked
Subject: Graphics Cards | March 8, 2012 - 03:41 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: nvidia, kepler, graphics card, gpu, GK104, gaming, 28nm
GDC 2012 is upon us, and in addition to the Samaritan demo and some gaming goodness, we spotted a leaked image over at Legit Reviews that is allegedly a photo of a production NVIDIA GTX 670 Ti graphics card.
The cooler looks to cover the whole PCB and be of the blower design, funneling hot air of the of the front of the card and out of the case. The connectors include two DVI, one HDMI, and one Display Port. Rumors suggest that the latest NVIDIA cards will be capable of multi-display (>2) from a single card much like AMD cards have been doing for some time.
Not a whole lot is known about the upcoming GK104 "Kepler" GPUs with a good deal of certainty, but we have reported on a few leaks including that the cards will have 2 GB of GDDR5 RAM on a 256 bit memory bus, and that the cards may just be coming out in May. Due to Epic using a working Kepler GPU in their Samaritan demo, that launch date does not sound too far fetched either. On the performance front, there are conflicting rumors; some rumors state that the cards will blow AMD out of the water and other people swear the cards will not be as powerful as the rumors suggest. I suppose we'll find out soon though!
Are you still waiting for NVIDIA's Kepler GPUs or have you jumped on the latest Radeon series?
The Truth
There are few people in the gaming industry that you simply must pay attention to when they speak. One of them is John Carmack, founder of id Software and a friend of the site, creator of Doom. Another is Epic Games' Tim Sweeney, another pioneer in the field of computer graphics that brought us the magic of Unreal before bringing the rest of the gaming industry the Unreal Engine.
At DICE 2012, a trade show for game developers to demo their wares and learn from each other, Sweeney gave a talk on the future of computing hardware and its future. (You can see the source of my information and slides here at Gamespot.) Many pundits, media and even developers have brought up the idea that the next console generation that we know is coming will be the last - we will have reached the point in our computing capacity that gamers and designers will be comfortable with the quality and realism provided. Forever.
Think about that a moment; has anything ever appeared so obviously crazy? Yet, in a world where gaming has seemed to regress into the handheld spaces of iPhone and iPad, many would have you believe that it is indeed the case. Companies like NVIDIA and AMD that spend billions of dollars developing new high-powered graphics technologies would simply NOT do so anymore and instead focus only on low power. Actually...that is kind of happening with NVIDIA Tegra and AMD's move to APUs, but both claim that the development of leading graphics technology is what allows them to feed the low end - the sub-$100 graphics cards, SoC for phones and tablets and more.
Sweeney started the discussion by teaching everyone a little about human anatomy.
The human eye has been studied quite extensively and the amount of information we know about it would likely surprise. With 120 million monochrome receptors and 5M color, the eye and brain are able to do what even our most advanced cameras are unable to.
Continue reading our story on the computing needs for visual computing!!
GPU sales look a little down in the month
Subject: General Tech | February 27, 2012 - 12:24 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: jon peddie, gpu, market share
The graphics market seems to be changing, a feeling backed up by Jon Peddie's latest report on the GPU market. IGPs are dying, low end discrete is dying, and the quickest selling GPUs are integrated onto the CPU. All this means that the sales of discreet GPUs are down, with a 10.4% drop from the previous quarter as customers opt out of a GPU and simply use the one found on their CPU. AMD is slowly gaining in this market thanks to the fact that Llano is now available for those who would purchase it. One oddity that SemiAccurate notes is that NVIDIA actually still claims a share of the IGP market thanks to some sales in China.
"Word has just come in from everyone’s favorite market research group, Jon Peddie Research, that Q4 2011 was not a particularly inspiring quarter for graphics shipments. Q4 was seasonally down compared to Q3, in step with the prior years, and up slightly compared to 2010. The seasonal drop this year was particularly heavy coming in at 10.4 percent, the largest Q3 to Q4 drop since 2008."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Gigabit Internet for $70: the unlikely success of California's Sonic.net @ Ars Technica
- DIY quadcopter for around $200 @ Hack a Day
- Intel Joins LibreOffice @ Slashdot
- Make any photo 3D using The Gimp @ Hack a Day
- NewerTech Power2U USB Wall Power Outlet Review @ Legit Reviews
- LSI Releases Code To Manufacturers - New Increased Capacity 'SandForce Driven' SSDs Hit The Streets @ SSD Review
- Examining The SSD Industry - Researching The Controller or Processor With Wayne Eisenberg @ SSD Review
- How Far Have AMD & Intel Integrated Graphics Come Since 2006? @ Legit Reviews
- Flood-hit Thai disk fabs to pour out 140m drives @ The Register
- Weekly Giveaway #23: AMD and Gigabyte 6850 Graphics Card Giveaway Part #1 @ eTeknix
- Design, Spec and Win Your Ultimate PC. ENDS 28th Feb 2012 @ HardwareHeaven
Podcast #190 - PCAudioLabs system giveaway, the future of NAND Memory, potential Ivy Bridge delays and more!
Subject: Editorial, General Tech | February 23, 2012 - 04:10 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: Thinkpad, podcast, piledriver, nvidia, Ivy Bridge, Intel, gpu, cpu, amd
PC Perspective Podcast #190 - 02/23/2012
Join us this week as we talk about a PCAudioLabs system giveaway, the future of NAND Memory, potential Ivy Bridge delays and more!
You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still
The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!
- iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
- RSS - Subscribe through your regular
RSS reader - MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file
Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath, and Allyn Malvantano
This Podcast is brought to you by
Program Schedule:
- 0:00:31 Introduction
- 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- 0:01:45 Intel, PCAudioLabs and PC Perspective Rok Box System Sweepstakes!!
- 0:03:45 How We Review Laptops At PC Perspective
- 0:05:30 MSI Graphics Card Division Interview: Alex Chang Takes our Q's
- 0:09:10 Lenovo ThinkPad T420 Review: Kickin' It Old School
- 0:12:00 NAND Flash Memory - A Future Not So Bleak After All
- 0:27:15 This Podcast is brought to you by
MSI Computer , and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
- 0:28:30 Mass Effect 3 is Coming, Pre-Order Now and Get Battlefield 3 (PC) Free
- 0:31:00 Intel may delay shipments of Ivy Bridge processors
- 0:35:10 VIA teams with Tensilica to roll their own SSD controller
- 0:40:53 HP dates NVIDIA on Valentine's Day. We get Z1 workstation.
- 0:46:30 Wi-Fi on Rosepoint SoC die. Intel flexes before ARM wrestle.
- 0:51:15 Of Near Threshold Voltage and Atomic Transistors
- 0:55:15 AMD and Cyclos reduces clock power usage with Piledriver
- 1:04:00 Intel becomes a 22nm foundry -- yes, for other people.
- 1:11:35 Contest Reminder - http://pcper.com/contest
- 1:11:55 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
- Ryan: IKEA DIODER + HOLY AWESOME https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-LmEQUm1PUXU/T0W8e-KQz0I/AAAAAAAAYNA/XB64fVxgLvo/w402/engagement.jpg
- Ken: SUPAboy
- Jeremy: Hardware Leaderboard
- Josh: Get it while you still can!
- Allyn: Nintendo 1982 Game & Watch Donkey Kong (counter to Ken's pick)
- 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- Closing
Podcast #189 - AMD Radeon HD 7750 and 7770, Mechanical Keyboards from Rosewill, Windows on ARM and more!
Subject: Editorial | February 16, 2012 - 03:49 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: WOA, rosewill, podcast, nvidia, Intel, gpu, cpu, amd
PC Perspective Podcast #189 - 02/16/2012
Join us this week as we talk about AMD Radeon HD 7750 and 7770, Mechanical Keyboards from Rosewill, Windows on ARM and more!
You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still
The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!
- iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
- RSS - Subscribe through your regular
RSS reader - MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file
Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath, and Allyn Malvantano
This Podcast is brought to you by
Program Schedule:
- 0:00:29 Introduction
- 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- 0:01:45 AMD Radeon HD 7770 and 7750 Cape Verde GPU Review
- 0:20:15 Rosewill Second Generation Mechanical Keyboard Review: RK-9000, RK-9000BR, RK-9000BL, RK-9000RE
- 0:23:20 ASUS Transformer Prime TF201 Keyboard Dock Review
- 0:25:45 This Podcast is brought to you by
MSI Computer , and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards! - 0:27:45 WOA! We wanted Windows 8 on ARM details. We got them.
- 0:31:00 Intel Haswell Processors To Launch In First Half of 2013
- 0:37:25 CTO Eric Demers to Leave AMD
- 0:41:15 OCZ Launches Z-Drive R4 CloudServ 16TB Solid State Storage System
- 0:46:00 Asustek? Your Ultrabook orders are ah pulled.
- 0:48:25 Take that Moore! Electron beam etching set to take us to the 10nm process
- 1:00:55 Email from James
- 1:02:45 Email from Dave
- 1:05:45 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
- Ryan: HINGES!!! YouTube video
- Jeremy: SilverSands Active Directories Migration tool
- Josh: Apparently quite fun.
- Allyn: NewerTech Power2U
- 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- Closing
Podcast #188 - Featuring David Hewlett - White Space Wireless, AMD and NVIDIA GPU roadmaps, Hard Drives with lasers and more!
Subject: Editorial, General Tech | February 9, 2012 - 04:08 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: wireless, whitespace, ssd, podcast, nvidia, mdt, intel 520, Intel, gpu, APU, amd
PC Perspective Podcast #188 - 02/09/2012
Join us this week as we talk about White Space Wireless, AMD and NVIDIA GPU roadmaps, Hard Drives with lasers and more!
You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still
The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!
- iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
- RSS - Subscribe through your regular
RSS reader - MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file
Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Allyn Malvantano, and David Hewlett
This Podcast is brought to you by
Program Schedule:
- Introduction
- 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- 0:01:30 Introduction with David
- Okay, seriously, how nerdy are you really?
- What kind of hardware systems and specs do you have?
- What games are you playing today?
- 0:13:25 AMD Processor and GPU Roadmaps Through 2013
- 0:28:30 Galaxy MDT GeForce GT 520 Graphics Card Review
- 0:32:00 Intel 520 Series SSD Full Review - SandForce on Steroids?
- 0:43:00 This Podcast is brought to you by
MSI Computer , and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
- 0:45:05 White Space Wireless Discussion
- Links for reference: - Wikipedia, US Radio Spectrum Chart (2003),
- 0:56:00 Increased Hard Drive Write Speed and Density - Using Frickin' Lasers
- 1:02:00 An academic collaboration leads to a GPU/CPU collaboration
- 1:07:25 AMD shows 18mm thin reference ultrathin notebook based on Trinity
- 1:11:05 Tablets / Ultrabooks in Schools
- 1:16:45 NVIDIA Kepler Graphics Cards Lineup Leak To Web
- 1:22:30 PC Perspective Office Tour - Feb 6th, 2012
- 1:26:40 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
- Josh: Just got one for the wife. For great justice.
- Allyn: ioSafe SoloPRO
- David: Samsung Flexible Displays
- 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- Closing
NVIDIA Kepler Graphics Cards Lineup Leak To Web
Subject: Graphics Cards | February 6, 2012 - 06:23 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: nvidia, kepler, graphics, gpu
Although there were quite a few rumors leading up to AMD's Radeon 7000 series launch, the Internet has been very quiet on the greener side of the graphics market. Finally; however, we have some rumors to share with you on the Nvidia front. As always, take these numbers with more than your average grain of salt.
Specifically, EXP Review managed to uncover two charts that supposedly detail specifics about a range of GeForce 600 series Kepler cards from the number of stream processors to the release date. Needless to say, it's a lot of rumored information to take in all at once.
Anyway, without further adieu, let's dive into the two leaked charts.
| Model | Code Name | Die Size | Core Clock (TBD) MHz | Shader Clock (TBD) GHz | Stream Processors | SM Count | ROPs | Memory Clock (effective) GDDR5 | Bus Width | Memory Bus Width |
| GTX690 | GK110x2 | 550mm2 | ~750 | ~1.5 | 2x1024 | 2x32 | 2x56 | 4.5 GHz | 2x448bit | 2x252GB/s |
| GTX680 | GK110 | 550mm2 | ~850 | ~1.7 | 1024 | 32 | 64 | 5.5 GHz | 512bit | 352GB/s |
| GTX670 | GK110 | 550mm2 | ~850 | ~1.7 | 896 | 28 | 56 | 5 GHz | 448bit | 280GB/s |
| GTX660Ti | GK110 | 550mm2 | ~850 | ~1.7 | 768 | 24 | 48 | 5 GHz | 384bit | 240GB/s |
| GTX660 | GK104 | 290mm2 | ~900 | ~1.8 | 512 | 16 | 32 | 5.8 GHz | 256bit | 186GB/s |
| GTX650Ti | GK104 | 290mm2 | ~850 | ~1.7 | 448 | 14 | 28 | 5.5 GHz | 224bit | 154GB/s |
| GTX650 | GK106 | 155mm2 | ~900 | ~1.8 | 256 | 8 | 24 | 5.5 GHz | 192bit | 132GB/s |
| GTX640 | GK106 | 155mm2 | ~850 | ~1.7 | 192 | 6 | 16 | 5.5 GHz | 128bit | 88GB/s |
From the chart above, we can see the entire lineup of Kepler cards from the NVIDIA GTX 640 to the dual GPU GTX 690. The die size in the higher end GeForce cards is approximately 50% larger than that of the AMD Radeon HD 7970, but not much bigger than that of the GTX 580. If only we knew the TDP of these cards! In the next chart, we see alleged performance comparison versus the AMD competition.
| Model | Bus Interface | Frame Buffer | Transistors (Billion) | Price Point | Release Date | Performance Scale |
| GTX690 | PCI-E 3 x16 | 2x1.75 GB | 2x6.4 | $999 | Q3 2012 | |
| GTX680 | PCI-E 3 x16 | 2 GB | 6.4 | $649 | April 2012 | ~45%>HD7970 |
| GTX670 | PCI-E 3 x16 | 1.75 GB | 6.4 | $499 | April 2012 | ~20%>HD7970 |
| GTX660Ti | PCI-E 3 x16 | 1.5 GB | 6.4 | $399 | Q2/Q3 2012 | ~10%>HD7950 |
| GTX660 | PCI-E 3 x16 | 2 GB | 3.4 | $319 | April 2012 | ~GTX580 |
| GTX650Ti | PCI-E 3 x16 | 1.75 GB | 3.4 | $249 | Q2/Q3 2012 | ~GTX570 |
| GTX650 | PCI-E 3 x16 | 1.5 GB | 1.8 | $179 | May 2012 | ~GTX560 |
| GTX640 | PCI-E 3 x16 | 2 GB | 1.8 | $139 | May 2012 | ~GTX550Ti |
If these numbers hold true, NVIDIA will handily beat the current AMD offerings; however, I would wait for reviews to come out before making any purchasing decisions. One interesting aspect is the amount of GDDR5 memory. It seems that NVIDIA is sticking with 2GB frame buffers (or less) per GPU while AMD has really started upping the RAM. It will be interesting to see how this affects gaming in NVIDIA Surround and/or at high resolutions.
What do you guys think about these numbers, do you think Kepler will live up to the alleged performance scale figures?
Live Blog: AMD Financial Analyst Day
Subject: Editorial, Graphics Cards, Processors | February 2, 2012 - 12:31 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: reports, gpu, fad, cpu, APU, analyst, amd
Consider this fair warning: tomorrow here at PC Perspective you will learn the future of AMD. Sound over dramatic? We don't think so. After a pretty interesting year in 2011 for the company and AMD has said on several occasions that this year's Financial Analyst Day was going to reveal a lot about what the future holds for them on the GPU, CPU and APU front.
Hopefully we will learn what AMD plans to do after the cancelation of the second-generation of ultra lower power APUs, how important discrete graphics will be going forward and what life there is for the processor architecture after Bulldozer.
We will be in Sunnyvale at the AMD campus covering the event and we will be holding a live blog at the same time...right here. The event starts at 9am PST on February 2nd, aso be sure you set your calendars and bookmark this page for all the news!!
MSI Announces 7950 Twin Frozr III Graphics Cards
Subject: Graphics Cards | January 31, 2012 - 05:48 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: msi, HD7950, hd 7950, graphics cards, gpu, amd
MSI today officially announced their new Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards with Twin Frozr III coolers. Specifically, the new cards are part of the "R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC" series. The new Twin Frozr III cooler features a nickel plated block, two 8mm Superpipes (heatpipes), and dual 80mm propeller blade fans that, according to MSI, delivers up to 10 degrees Celsius lower GPU temperatures versus reference coolers. Further, the dark gray Twin Frozr III cooler reduces noise by 13.7dB by using two slower spinning fans versus the single reference design fan spinning twice or more as fast. This extra bit of overclocking headroom has allowed MSI to claim a large "core and memory voltage potential providing up to 37.5% overclockability" Just like the company's motherboards, they are advertising the new graphics cards as being built with Hi-c CAP Super Ferrite Choke and solid capacitors that pass MIL-STD-810G testing. Based on the AMD 28nm Radeon HD 7950 reference design, the card supports the PCI Express 3.0 interface. Also, the card features 1 DVI, 1 HDMI, and two Mini-DisplayPort video outputs.
Further specifications include 3 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 384 bit bus, a core clock speed of 880 MHz, and memory clock of 5,200 MHz (effective, 1,300 MHz base). The card itself measures 261mm x 111mm x 38mm, (just under 10.3") which means that it should fit comfortably inside most Mid Tower (or larger) cases. While the 80 MHz increase in GPU clock speed over the reference design is not saying much, the cards themselves should have plenty of overclocking headroom beyond what MSI does at the factory. In our review of the AMD Radeon HD 7950 graphics card with reference cooler we achieved a nice 1050 MHz clock speed, and the "Supa-pipe" (as Josh likes to say) powered Twin Frozr III 7950 cards should be able to go even further beyond that, specific GPU permitting of course.
In addition to the new Twin Frozr III cooler powered cards, MSI is releasing a version of the Radeon 7950 with a reference design cooler and another Radeon 7970 card with a reference cooler to provide gamers with plenty of alternative options. Unfortunately, there is no word (yet) on pricing or availability. The Twin Frozr III version of the 7950 sure looks a lot cooler, so it will be interesting to see if it actually keeps the GPU cooler (heh).
Raspberry Pi Linux Computer Will Have Fast GPU For The Price
Subject: General Tech, Systems | January 26, 2012 - 11:45 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: Raspberry Pi, linux, htpc, hd, gpu, broadcom
As reported earlier, the Raspberry Pi is a small computer intended to run Linux and is made to be portable and able to be powered by USB. The small board is based on the Broadcom BCM2835 chipset, which includes an ARM 11 CPU and a dual core VideoCore IV graphics card co processor. The Raspberry Pi further includes connections for HDMI, component output, and USB ports. The higher tier $35 model will further feature an Ethernet jack and twice the RAM (512 MB).
The Raspberry Pi will soon be available for sale and if the company behind the device- The Raspberry Pi Foundation- is to be believed, the GPU in the little Linux computer will pack quite a punch for its size (and cost). In a recent Digital Foundry interview with Raspberry Pi Executive Director Eben Upton reported on by Eurogamer, Upton made several claims about the Raspberry Pi’s graphics capabilities. He explained that the Broadcom BCM2835’s VideoCore IV GPU is a tile mode architecture that has been configured with an emphasis on shader performance. Upton said “it does very well on compute-intensive benchmarks, and should double iPhone 4S performance across a range of content."
The comparison to the iPhone 4S relates to his further claims that the Raspberry Pi GPU is the best on the market and can best both the iPhone 4S’s PowerVR (Imagination Technologies) based graphics and even the mighty Tegra 2 in fill rate performance. Rather large claims for sure; however, we do have some independent indication that his claims may not be wholly inflated. The coders behind XBMC, open source media center software that allows users to play a variety of media formats, have demonstrated their XBMC software running on the Raspberry Pi. They showed the Raspberry Pi playing a 1080p blu ray movie at a smooth frame rate thanks to the Broadcom GPU being capable of 1080p 30 FPS H.264 hardware accelerated decoding. You can see the Raspberry Pi in action in the video below.
The little Raspberry Pi is starting to look quite promising for HTPC (and even light gaming) use, especially for the price! At $25 and $35 respectively, the Raspberry Pi should see quite the following in the modding, enthusiast, and education community.
PC Perspective Upcoming Events
|
