Tuesday, January 17th 2012

NVIDIA Rushing in Stopgap HD 7970 Competitor This February?

AMD's Radeon HD 7970 seems to have ruffled a few feathers at NVIDIA and it looks like the green team doesn't want too much market exposure for it. A fairly-reliable source at ChipHell learned that NVIDIA's GeForce "GTX 680" part could be launched some time in February. The source says that this part could be competitive with the HD 7970, though not exactly NVIDIA's fastest next-generation GPU in the works. So it has to be something other than the GeForce Kepler 110, that's reportedly slated for March-April. At least the tiny pieces of specifications trickling out seem to reinforce this theory. Graphics cards based on this part apparently have 2 GB of memory, and its core clock speed is reported to be 780 MHz.
Source: ChipHell
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74 Comments on NVIDIA Rushing in Stopgap HD 7970 Competitor This February?

#51
iLLz
nvidiaintelftwOh boy, could this be another Fermi fail?

Whatever nvidia release, ill still be going red team this time around. So hurry up and release your stuff nvidia so there can be a price war.
But then you will have to change your name to amdintelftw. :eek:

Naturally such an occurring event would cause interruption in the time/space continuum and black holes would be spewing out of the atmosphere/stratosphere/magnetosphere and the earth would cease to exist as we know it. :twitch:
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#52
phanbuey
A stop gap would simply be a Fermi 3GB 585 priced slightly below the 580 and clocked at 850 Mhz.

Or... Drop the price of the 580... really they have a stopgap already on the market. AMD has priced themselves out with the 7970.
Posted on Reply
#53
TheMailMan78
Big Member
phanbueyA stop gap would simply be a Fermi 3GB 585 priced slightly below the 580 and clocked at 850 Mhz.

Or... Drop the price of the 580... really they have a stopgap already on the market. AMD has priced themselves out with the 7970.
The second they drop the price so will AMD.
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#54
blibba
TheMailMan78The second they drop the price so will AMD.
Consumer win!

It's kinda overkill, but if you really insist Nvidia, yes I will take that 590 off your hands for the price of a cheese sandwich.
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#55
OneCool
_JP_Rushing is rarely a good idea. Especially in this market. Let's see what comes out of it.
A 6800 Ultra all over again :roll:
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#56
MicroUnC
I wish NV would bring Ultra again!!!
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#57
INSTG8R
Vanguard Beta Tester
I am waiting and have been waiting and well if NV is gonna release something then of course I will continue to wait. I am more waiting for non reference cards to start showing up more than anything but hey if there are gonna be "price wars" well I can wait for that too.
I want my Sapphire Vapor-X 7970:banghead:
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#58
Easy Rhino
Linux Advocate
so many powerful video cards, so few games that need them :(
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#59
trt740
Hayder_MasterI think GTX680 will be another fail like GTX480 and GTX590.
how was the gtx 480 a failure?
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#60
neko77025
the54thvoidWhy do so many folk have to put on either red or green socks to discuss this? Even someone saying, "I'm just pointing out facts" is tending to lean to one side.

When NV paper launched the 480 they were ridiculed by many (as it was already running late). AMD have near enough paper launched the 7970 as availability is low for many brands. Also, the GTX 580 as it is is what, 12-13 months old?
People talk as if Nvidia is down and that couldn't be farther from the truth. They still have a card that performs within -5 to 30% (review & game dependant) of a card that is a year later and on a far smaller production node.
Think about it for a second. The GTX 580 was launched in retail December 2010 on a 40nm node. It runs fairly cool for it's performance and without too much noise. Now we are a year later, with a production size that is 30% smaller than 40nm (for the maths bastards out there 40-28=12 and 12/40 =0.3) and it performs about 0-30% better, again situation dependant.

Do people really have such red coloured vision that they believe NV can't release a 28nm card that will equal the 7970 in performance and not run hot?
GF100 was resurrected by GF110. Some compute functionailty (what Ben's talking about) was dropped and it resulted in a manageable 512 core card.

To counter Ben though the original rumours suggested a bottom up launch for NV to get the process right. The last time I checked, the Kepler behemoth gpu isn't scheduled to arrive until 2013. GK 104 is the card for now (a high end but not top end single card).

But folk are also then forgetting AMD do plan a dual Tahiti card in Q1 2012 which will be enormously powerful..and expensive.

So, to summarise, just lets wait and see what happens. We have two tech companies still vying to be the best, so let them fight it out and we'll all benefit.

And yes, my 7970 purchase plans are now on hold (was waiting for water blocks anyway!).
Too me , it sounds like you had your Green socks on.

And to say the the 580 is 12 -13month old is not 100% ture. Lets take one of the first 580s .. i think they all had 1.5gb of Ram ... and compair that too the 7970 lauch ?. Point is, you are talking about newer higher-end versons of the 580 vs stock 7970. What happens in A month the 3rd party MSI lightings, Asus DCII come out @ the same time of this Nvida Card X.

The Facts are Nvida ... said they were scraping 680 (non-moble) and going for the 780, it was due to be out June-ish. Now that 7970 is out and looks Very (very) good ...Nvida has A new plan on release dates ... sure smells/sounds funny to me.

In all turth this is great for all of us .. can only lower prices of all other video cards.
Posted on Reply
#61
OneCool
There is one thing I do know nV better bring something bad ass to the table cuz the 7970 is a OVERCLOCKING BEAST!!! :cool:






nV just got :nutkick:
Posted on Reply
#62
Benetanegia
neko77025Too me , it sounds like you had your Green socks on.

And to say the the 580 is 12 -13month old is not 100% ture. Lets take one of the first 580s .. i think they all had 1.5gb of Ram ... and compair that too the 7970 lauch ?. Point is, you are talking about newer higher-end versons of the 580 vs stock 7970. What happens in A month the 3rd party MSI lightings, Asus DCII come out @ the same time of this Nvida Card X.
The 3 GB version of GTX580 does not offer a substantial performance gain on average, only some games at 2600x1600. The GTX580 compared here on TPU review is a 1.5 GB version, and so are 90% of the reviews on the net. GTX580 was released when it was released, and that was November 9 2010, 13 months ago. EDIT: wait no, 14 months ago. Almost all of November + all of Dec. + 1 year + 18 days == 14 months.
The Facts are Nvida ... said they were scraping 680 (non-moble) and going for the 780, it was due to be out June-ish. Now that 7970 is out and looks Very (very) good ...Nvida has A new plan on release dates ... sure smells/sounds funny to me.
False. Nvidia has not said anything. They certainly never talked about the branding of the new gen and that remains a mistey even up to this point. Not even the rumored release date that makea this thread have been said by Nvidia. Of course if you believe that every rumor out there comes from Nvidia's mouth you're going to end up with a pretty meshed up head. The only semi-official schedule coming from Nvidia has been a very very vague Q4 2011 or Q1 2012 release, which has not changed since the last 12+ months.

And you really think they said June? Don't make laugh, please. I mean at least use your logic, when in the whole history would a company say they would be late by 6 months, even if it was true? The only "source" claiming June was Charlie Demerjian and even that assumption was stupid and only based on 2 arbitrary things: 1) the date at which he wrote the article 2) the fact that he had not heard about any Kepler chip being taped out at the time he wrote it. To this date he has not heard about a tape out yet. In a thread he even admitted his sources might have missed them. Obviously he was just covering him up in case of failure. I said 2 but were actually 3) the assumption that Nvidia would need 3 spins, like they needed for Fermi.
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#63
LiveOrDie
SeleneI think NV is playing this smart, they will hit AMD with the 670($349.00) and then later in the year hit them again with the 680($499.99) and 690($699.99).
I do not think NV is having any problems, other then they wanted to do a bottom up launch and AMD kinda spoiled it with a top to bottom launch.
Nar more like the 6xx will be start of 2012 and 7xx end of the year.
I think GTX680 will be another fail like GTX480 and GTX590.
Just because the card run warm doesn't mean its a failure for a over a year old card its still holding it ground.
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#64
rangerone766
i picked up a 470 not to long ago off craigslist for a stupid good price. now i'm going to buy a second for sli and sit tight till a must have game comes along that stresses it.

sli and crossfire are so mainstream nowadays that there are profiles to take advantage of multi card configs soon after launch.

i sat on a gtx285 until bf3 came and i upgraded to a 1900x1080 monitor. and even the 285 played bf3 at all high settings with my old 1680x1050 monitor.

so no, i wont be upgrading my gpu until, i find another stupid cheap deal on CL that i can't pass up. or new consols bring a game that 470 sli cant play on high settings.
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#65
entropy13
TheMailMan78The second they drop the price so will AMD.
Depends on where you are though. Right off the bat the 7970 (~$580) is a bit more expensive than a 3GB 580 (~$511).

So if Nvidia drops the price of the GTX 580, even by just $11, AMD have to reduce theirs by at least $60.
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#66
Super XP
No way Nvidia will mess this series up. Look out AMD, let the competition begin.
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#67
AsRock
TPU addict
xenocideI don't see why anyone wouldn't wait. If the HD7970 is the only thing on the market, the price is inflated since it faces no competition. Once Nvidia releases some options, and AMD gets the rest of their line out, the prices will stabalize and you will have time to find the best card in terms of Price\Performance in this round. Jumping on the HD7970 right away risks overpaying for a potentially underperforming product. Plus, GPU's get better with Driver releases, so buying a card right at launch tends to be problematic...



By what reasoning? They are waiting until they are adequately stocked and able to replace their current offerings, I see no "issues" with this. Nvidia has nothing to lose by waiting. AMD rushed their cards out just to get some form of revenue going into the new year.
The 7970 is not price inflated ( it's priced around what the AMD 9800 used to be years ago ), it's more price matching with nVidia and lets face it who can blame AMD for doing so as like every thing prices never stay low..

And i cannot see how AMD rushed their cards out they even had time for a none ref PCB as well. Lets face it nVidia just don't have their new shit ready and AMD do this time around as simple as that.

AMD price matching hopefully stops the pricing war as that will only help AMD to get stronger to give us better products in the end.
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#69
HillBeast
I really do want NVIDIA to do well this time around, but from the specs they have leaked so far, it's look like a pile of crap again. I hope to be proven wrong.
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#70
BrooksyX
I was planning on upgrading to a 7950 but I think ill stick with my 6870 for another 6~12 months.
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#71
Stephen.
New Architecture

If nvidia geforce or amd radeon want my money, i am willing to pay only for new architecture, so if nvidia releases a stopgap and it turns out not to be Kepler and is just a super charged Fermi, the no matter how fast it is i will not buy. I only want new architecture so that will mean AMD Radeon HD7970 or HD7950 has my attention, I'm definitely not considering any other cards from the AMD Radeon 7K series due to they ar not using the new Graphic Core Next (GCN).

So for me to make a new purchase of any new card, from either side it will only have to be new architecture, in this case for AMD Radeon only the cards with Graphic Core Next, and for Nvidia Geforce only the cards with Kepler.
On other words i will keep my current card till i see new architecture from both teams, and frankly I'm quite happy with the card i have now till the time i cant run any new games with it is when I'll change or i see new architecture from both companies at list I've seen AMD's side now just waiting for nvidia, so i can get the best price/performance for whichever card.

Otherwise i currently have my eyes out for Intel Ivy bridge and the new 7series chip set, that's what I'm getting for sure, my board and processor have served me long enough now i need to change them, to an Intel 7 series board with thunderbolt and an ivy bridge processor i5 and above.
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#72
Melvis
All depends on the price/performance and how far away it is from release?

So it would be a yes at the moment
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#73
Hokum
I'm thinking of getting 6970 when the 7950's come out. All the new cards will do is make the older ones more tempting...
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#74
xenocide
HokumI'm thinking of getting 6970 when the 7950's come out. All the new cards will do is make the older ones more tempting...
Judging by the 7970, I think the 7950 will be on par for the 580 and cost like $450. You might want to wait for like a 7870ish card.
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