Sunday, September 14th 2014
NVIDIA Readies GeForce GTX 960
It looks like GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 won't be the only Maxwell-based graphics cards NVIDIA plans to launch within the next 30 days. The company is readying a third SKU based on the chip, the GeForce GTX 960. The company's next sub-$300 graphics card, the GTX 960 will be launched some time in mid to late-October, 2014. The company's GTX 970 and GTX 980 will come out later this week (19th September), timed with the Game24 event. There's no word on the exact specs of the GTX 960.
Source:
Hermitage Akihabara
27 Comments on NVIDIA Readies GeForce GTX 960
Yet another year going down the drain. I might just go and buy a R9-290X when they get cheaper. It's not like new cards will offer much more and even R9-290X doesn't exactly blow my ancient HD7950 out of the sky. The difference is rather small considering the price you pay for it...
HD 7850 at or near HD 6950 performance at a lower price
HD 7870 at or near HD 6970 performance at a lower price
HD 6870 at or near HD 5850 performance at a lower price
GTX 570 at or near GTX 480 performance at a lower price
GTX 560 Ti at or near GTX 470 performance at a lower price
Weird sh!t huh!Happy shopping.In other news, Bears still crap in the woods and the Pope remains Roman Catholic.
Since GM107 is 5SMM (with a real dubious power/clock limit), the goal would appear to make a stack from two chips. GM107 in the ~75w-<150w range, 960/970 150-225w, and probably 980 225-300w.. The theory would be this would slot in the lower-end of the 150-225w spec. I agree with your general outlook: compete with Tonga/Tahiti and allow GK104 to die, and I would add probably using a similar amount of die area as gk104 (ex: if gm204 is 400mm2, this would be 75% spec similar to the die space of gk104). Perhaps something along the lines of trying to embarrass 285 in it's power/cooling segment and/or perhaps be a better space/power-efficient alternative to 285x. The semantics of specs probably comes to a game of best clock/units per watt within whatever tdp segment is between the (real) power limits of 750ti and 970...I don't think a 'TDP' of ~150-170w with ~190w max power seems out of the question though.
I suppose another main factor will be to wait and launch with at least a smidgen faster speed than 285x at stock, which itself is probably designed for being a smidgen faster than 770 at stock, which of course was a hair faster than 7970ghz, which was in response to 680...which was clocked to compete with OG 7970.
I don't know if that last sentence should make me laugh or cry.
TLDR: I agree with you. We may not know exactly what gm204 is for a couple days, but the segments it has to hit are basically known unknowns. 290x, 290, Tahiti (7970ghz/285x). 500, 400, 300. <300w, up to 225w, ~150w-190w. The last part being what should set them apart. AMD will probably have higher compute, and probably similarly higher power consumption (one notch up from nvidia) per segment in general performance. nvidia will have lower power consumption (similar to one notch down from amd) and similar general performance per segment, but compute will likely require one level up to compete.
I was under the impression that the 970 was going to be an alternative to the 780. Prices for the card seem to be falling - which makes sense if TSMC's 28nm is mature enough that yields justify possibly canning it.
would like to see another dual gpu with a good price.
I’d figure reference 750 (or something with slightly less clocks) able to get a in the L-P passive with a creative heat-pipe finned cooler even if two slots. If you figure the TDP of the 750 is 10W less than the 250 Oland XT, it should with just a little engineering a passive even if dual-slot shouldn’t be all that much stretch. Cost that's a different story.
Maybe I'm overly optimistic as there's that R7 250E (Cape Verde PRO indicated to be 55W) and those are L-P, though single-slot and assuredly need a small fan. While even to create that Sapphire Ultimate R7 250, it received a "creative" heat-pipe finned cooler and it's still not L-P or single slot. That said how many 750's are L-P (a few), but as single-slot even even with a fan? At least with the R250E there's already a few…
I would believe the 750ti is done right could be passively cooled but it would require a machine built around the card with some sort of airflow in the system. But that is of course just speculation based on what ive seen.
So this thing should be 10 SMM SKU.
Core config would be 1280:80:32 (shader processors:texture mapping units:render output units) with 256bit bus width and GDDR5 clocked between 6-7Ghz.
They could also do 11 SMM SKU but that would put it closer to the 970 than what 970 is from 980.
Which could be solved by lower stock clocks (more overclocking headroom, would eat 970 sales) or by keeping the clocks and strangling the card with 192bit bus width which I would dislike a lot. I hope they don't do that. Seriously. Nvidia, if you're reading this. Just don't..
SO I'm personally hoping for a 10 SMM SKU with 256bit bus width. It would of course be a bit further away from 970 than what 970 is from 980 but that could be solved by higher stock clocks which could be allowed by the smaller SMM count.
Infact I'd be almost willing to bet on the 960 being a 10 SMM SKU.