Tuesday, June 22nd 2010
New NVIDIA GF100 Board Surfaces, Suggests New High-End SKU
Sources in the hardware industry leaked some interesting pictures of a new, supposedly reference-design NVIDIA GF100 GPU graphics card PCB, watermarked by board partner Little Tiger. The pictures reveal a PCB that's similar to that of the GeForce GTX 480, but with a stronger VRM that makes use of better high-C surface-mount capacitors (completely doing away with cylindrical capacitors), and draws power from two 8-pin PCI-Express power inputs. The design can deliver up to 375W of power (that's not the board power we're talking about).
This also opens up speculation about what NVIDIA would do with this design. The most talked about theory as of now points to a new high-end SKU by NVIDIA based on the GF100, that enables all streaming multiprocessors (SMs) physically present on the GF100, taking the CUDA core count up to 512, and ROP count to 64. The most likely marketing name for this SKU is GeForce GTX 485. Apart from higher CUDA core and ROP count than that of the GTX 480, slightly higher clock-speeds for the GPU are also on the cards. The memory subsystem remains untouched, at 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 924 MHz (effective 3.7 GHz), over a 384-bit wide memory interface. NVIDIA could release this SKU this fall.
Sources:
Hardware-Infos, Expreview
This also opens up speculation about what NVIDIA would do with this design. The most talked about theory as of now points to a new high-end SKU by NVIDIA based on the GF100, that enables all streaming multiprocessors (SMs) physically present on the GF100, taking the CUDA core count up to 512, and ROP count to 64. The most likely marketing name for this SKU is GeForce GTX 485. Apart from higher CUDA core and ROP count than that of the GTX 480, slightly higher clock-speeds for the GPU are also on the cards. The memory subsystem remains untouched, at 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 924 MHz (effective 3.7 GHz), over a 384-bit wide memory interface. NVIDIA could release this SKU this fall.
75 Comments on New NVIDIA GF100 Board Surfaces, Suggests New High-End SKU
This one sounds like revision of the 480.
$549 for the x1800 was normal,
whereas 1000 euro for the 8800gt was not.
Expect this card to be very expensive.;)
When NVIDIA does that, then let me know and then I might start paying interest in it.
Saddly, that isn't true...
The 8800 Ultra has the strongest thing of 384bit frontside bus kicked all Ati cards coming out at that time.
He accompanied me in many games and never had made me disappointed, still today when I see it for sale at auction sales there is always a queue of offers.
no hole in the PCB
2x 8 pin Plugs on a GF100 and know i dont think there going to go back to the ultra heat sink
if this card is the GTX 485 it would have to be watercooled or some crazy cooling to keep the temps down
Its only a GTX 480 nothing more ,Tiger is developing a non-public version of the GTX480 PCB Design
translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fbykj.com%2Fzhuanti%2Fgtx480%2Fgtx480.html&sl=zh-CN&tl=en
translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fexpreview.com%2F9967.html&sl=zh-CN&tl=en
There is room for Cypress to grow, if the chips get better. But they need to maek current designs a profit before they release next gen, so, at this point, a refresh seems most likely.
Thing is though, it's not needed, at this point. Every chip sold can make the next chip a wee bit cheaper.
Now, if ATi gets good silicon, nVidia will as well. Then the story might change.
At the same time, TSMC needs to make thier foundry pull a profit before they can change things. I truly think this is why 32nm is not expected...they need extra time to pull a profit, so that's the only viable solution.
This is why things like this PCB in the OP are important. For the time being, the best we can hope for is improvements at that level, which can either give us more performance, or lower cost.
Personally, I think this PCB here greatly resembles MSI's Lightning series, without the extra goodies. But the Lightning series fails to really improve anything, that I have seen. Maybe I've missed something, but with this one at least, I think it does look very clean...
catcard is long