Friday, March 2nd 2012
NVIDIA GK104 PCB Drawings, Unusual Power Connector Designs Surface
Here is the first x-ray drawing of NVIDIA's GeForce Kepler 104 (GK104) reference board, outlining the VRM area. The GPU and memory areas are blanked out for some very obvious reasons. Nevertheless, there's plenty of fascinating stuff going on in these pictures. To begin with, the picture confirms that the board will have 5 NVVDD phases, and up to three miscellaneous power domains. The PCB has provisions for two 6-pin and one 8-pin connector.
The funny part here is a strange new plug that has two 6-pin (or 8-pin+6-pin) stacked, while one of the two 6-pin connector leads are blanked. Some of our sources also report having seen a similar connector with 8-pin and 6-pin on samples of this card (refer to the last picture below). It's not just this, that makes the card incapable of single-slot operation, the DVI connectors over at the display IO also are stacked like on previous-generation AMD Radeon cards. Other connectors on the card are HDMI and DisplayPort. There are two SLI bridge connectors, giving it 3-way and 4-way SLI support.
Sources:
Expreview, ChipHell, PHK, etc.
The funny part here is a strange new plug that has two 6-pin (or 8-pin+6-pin) stacked, while one of the two 6-pin connector leads are blanked. Some of our sources also report having seen a similar connector with 8-pin and 6-pin on samples of this card (refer to the last picture below). It's not just this, that makes the card incapable of single-slot operation, the DVI connectors over at the display IO also are stacked like on previous-generation AMD Radeon cards. Other connectors on the card are HDMI and DisplayPort. There are two SLI bridge connectors, giving it 3-way and 4-way SLI support.
45 Comments on NVIDIA GK104 PCB Drawings, Unusual Power Connector Designs Surface
could you imagine what could have been with a tri-gtx 460/ 560 ti setup???
I just hope that if it does use a large amount of power, it at least backs it up with proper performance. It's all we can ever ask for... and possibly a new surge protector, some new outlets, maybe even a larger breaker. All-in-all, still waiting to see what comes of it.
Edit: Power efficiency typically results in better scalability.
The odd connection type could be Nvidias way of clearing up cables that they thought were unsightly.
The reason i say this is because of the green pcb layout. The 6/8 pin block stacks into the same connections on the pcb. If Nvidia were drawing that much power on these cards surely the connections would be independent, so as not to cross PSU rails.
High end should bring loads of performance and IF possible efficiency, not necessarily anyway.
To me inefficiency = poor design