Sunday, September 14th 2014
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Reference Board Pictured
Here are the first pictures of the reference-design GeForce GTX 980 graphics card. This gorgeous looking board is something to get used to, as it could be a while before we see non-reference boards for the GTX 980. Its smaller sibling, the GTX 970, could launch with non-reference design boards right off the bat. Outwardly, the GTX 980 looks exactly like a GeForce GTX 780 reference board, with NVIDIA's space-age cooling shroud.
The only difference here is a metal backplate decking up the card. This backplate isn't cooling anything, and traces reveal that the card is indeed holding just 8 memory chips, confirming its 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. The GeForce GTX 980 is based on NVIDIA's new GM204 silicon, a derivative of the company's new "Maxwell" architecture, which made its debut with the GeForce GTX 750 Ti. The package of GM204 looks roughly as big as a GK104. The card draws power from a pair of 6-pin PCIe power connectors, and uses a 4+1 phase VRM to condition power.
Source:
VideoCardz
The only difference here is a metal backplate decking up the card. This backplate isn't cooling anything, and traces reveal that the card is indeed holding just 8 memory chips, confirming its 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. The GeForce GTX 980 is based on NVIDIA's new GM204 silicon, a derivative of the company's new "Maxwell" architecture, which made its debut with the GeForce GTX 750 Ti. The package of GM204 looks roughly as big as a GK104. The card draws power from a pair of 6-pin PCIe power connectors, and uses a 4+1 phase VRM to condition power.
49 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Reference Board Pictured
And now take a look at this graphs...
290X had far better VRM design yet 780Ti trailing close in power consumption.Oh yes it does more efficient, 2W is BIG for some :roll:
To make it more simple,nVidia will be efficient,but not because they make better VRM design,they want to control power delivery more precisely.And likely we wouldn't see I2C OnSemi NCP same as 780Ti/Titan had in this unit,they might upgrade or change to another.
I mean it's not like these cards are gtx 480 levels of noise or heat, and you can easily cool those with these coolers.
Backplate is nice too, hope this trend catches on, even if they're not functional. AMD used to do backplate on their high end GPU s with the 5870s and 6900s, but they've abandoned that for some reason since the 7900s.
Wouldn't suprise me though, a chip which performs equal to another chip of the same size while consuming less power would still be an improvement and worth selling/buying.
That would mean the new die is roughly 335 mm².
Say Hello to Hardcore Gamers :D
Oh wait.
Doesn't apply for this SKU, but still.
I see this back plate has become a hot topic...