Hello guys,
The long awaited Nvidia Kepler cards are no longer hidden to us, at least not unofficially.
Now that was the beginning of my blog post a couple of weeks ago, but technology moves so fast that I didn't even have time to post it before the Nvidia Kepler GPU's were released, well at least the Gtx 680. Weeks before the launch of the Nvidia Kepler GPU's I have been looking into all of the rumors I could find, to get a sneak peak at the power that was to be unleashed. I have been a PC gamer for years and I can tell when a rumor is too good to be true. Some of the rumors were in fact, based on the actual product, while some of them were just insane. However as weeks passed and time got closer to the launch date I began seeing rumors that were more and more realistic. The rumors began showing specifications that were actually plausible, and for those of you who check out my blog regularly you will notice that I covered some of these rumors in depth. As time got closer to the rumored launch date (March 22), it turned out to be the launch date if I remember correctly. However the Kepler architecture was announced in September 2010. I will not be talking too much about the rumors, if you want to know what they were then check out my previous post. Anyway about three days before launch I got to see the real benchmarks, they were released by an actual shop owner who had gotten the card, and yet not everyone got to see them. However the benchmarks that he showed had one major problem, if I remember correctly he had run them on an Intel Core i3, along with other components of not the best performance, so many gamers were not satisfied, however it was nice to see some benchmarks that actually showed some truth. The day before the launch I stayed up a bit late, and I got to see the leaked preview video with Nvidia talking about some of the Keplers features. The video was officially released the next day along with the Gtx 680, so I was happy to have seen the real features. Many of them confirmed some new features that were previously rumored, have been confirmed, and are now part of the Gtx 600's series (ie. 670-690). It is amazing how little power the Gtx 680 uses, it has lower power consumption that the competition, ie the AMD Radeon HD 7970, of course us gamers care about power consumption, but that is not even close to as important as the performance a graphics card provides, and the good news is that the Gtx 680 provides loads of power, in fact it leaves the Hd7970 in the dust. Another thing that it has is GPU Boost, which is similar to Intel's Turbo Boost technology, as the card is no longer manually overclocked, it is now overclocked using overheads, for example you move a slider to raise the power overhead, that means that the card will have more power to reach its target boost clock, that means that it is also more likely to do so. In a program like Evga Precision X, or MSI's AfterBurner you can now set overheads, and target clocks which the GPU will boost to under the right conditions, ie. if the temperatures and power consumption allow it to do so. That means if you set a boost clock of +100mhz over the standard boost clock, the card will not always run at that clock speed, it will only do so if it has the right conditions, and if it is running a stressful application like a game or a benchmark. That means the card uses less power and produces less heat when it idles, and it boosts its clock speed when it needs the performance. This technology makes overclocking much easier, as the user simply sets targets, while the card adjusts the clocks, and takes care of the voltage. Other new features include the ability to run up to 4 screens simultaneously off one card, this previously required two cards running in a SLI configuration. Other new features include new anti aliasing features. All this amazing performance runs on TSMC's 28nm process. It is amazing, once again Nvidia beats AMD, and you know what that means, price cuts! The AMD HD7000's cards came out a couple of months ahead of the Gtx 600's (Kepler), so they did have a head start, and that was not to good. Since they had no competition at that time they could set prices as they wished as there was no competition to force that to change. That meant that the HD7000's were not something I would call well priced. Then came the Gtx 680, it embarrassed the Hd 7970, while also being $79 cheaper, coming in at $499. So until now the Gtx 680 looks great, however there is one problem, stay tuned for my next article to find out more about this "problem".
The long awaited Nvidia Kepler cards are no longer hidden to us, at least not unofficially.
Now that was the beginning of my blog post a couple of weeks ago, but technology moves so fast that I didn't even have time to post it before the Nvidia Kepler GPU's were released, well at least the Gtx 680. Weeks before the launch of the Nvidia Kepler GPU's I have been looking into all of the rumors I could find, to get a sneak peak at the power that was to be unleashed. I have been a PC gamer for years and I can tell when a rumor is too good to be true. Some of the rumors were in fact, based on the actual product, while some of them were just insane. However as weeks passed and time got closer to the launch date I began seeing rumors that were more and more realistic. The rumors began showing specifications that were actually plausible, and for those of you who check out my blog regularly you will notice that I covered some of these rumors in depth. As time got closer to the rumored launch date (March 22), it turned out to be the launch date if I remember correctly. However the Kepler architecture was announced in September 2010. I will not be talking too much about the rumors, if you want to know what they were then check out my previous post. Anyway about three days before launch I got to see the real benchmarks, they were released by an actual shop owner who had gotten the card, and yet not everyone got to see them. However the benchmarks that he showed had one major problem, if I remember correctly he had run them on an Intel Core i3, along with other components of not the best performance, so many gamers were not satisfied, however it was nice to see some benchmarks that actually showed some truth. The day before the launch I stayed up a bit late, and I got to see the leaked preview video with Nvidia talking about some of the Keplers features. The video was officially released the next day along with the Gtx 680, so I was happy to have seen the real features. Many of them confirmed some new features that were previously rumored, have been confirmed, and are now part of the Gtx 600's series (ie. 670-690). It is amazing how little power the Gtx 680 uses, it has lower power consumption that the competition, ie the AMD Radeon HD 7970, of course us gamers care about power consumption, but that is not even close to as important as the performance a graphics card provides, and the good news is that the Gtx 680 provides loads of power, in fact it leaves the Hd7970 in the dust. Another thing that it has is GPU Boost, which is similar to Intel's Turbo Boost technology, as the card is no longer manually overclocked, it is now overclocked using overheads, for example you move a slider to raise the power overhead, that means that the card will have more power to reach its target boost clock, that means that it is also more likely to do so. In a program like Evga Precision X, or MSI's AfterBurner you can now set overheads, and target clocks which the GPU will boost to under the right conditions, ie. if the temperatures and power consumption allow it to do so. That means if you set a boost clock of +100mhz over the standard boost clock, the card will not always run at that clock speed, it will only do so if it has the right conditions, and if it is running a stressful application like a game or a benchmark. That means the card uses less power and produces less heat when it idles, and it boosts its clock speed when it needs the performance. This technology makes overclocking much easier, as the user simply sets targets, while the card adjusts the clocks, and takes care of the voltage. Other new features include the ability to run up to 4 screens simultaneously off one card, this previously required two cards running in a SLI configuration. Other new features include new anti aliasing features. All this amazing performance runs on TSMC's 28nm process. It is amazing, once again Nvidia beats AMD, and you know what that means, price cuts! The AMD HD7000's cards came out a couple of months ahead of the Gtx 600's (Kepler), so they did have a head start, and that was not to good. Since they had no competition at that time they could set prices as they wished as there was no competition to force that to change. That meant that the HD7000's were not something I would call well priced. Then came the Gtx 680, it embarrassed the Hd 7970, while also being $79 cheaper, coming in at $499. So until now the Gtx 680 looks great, however there is one problem, stay tuned for my next article to find out more about this "problem".
No comments:
Post a Comment