Nvidia Gtx 600 aka. Kepler: In depth rumors

Hello guys, last article I talked about some of the rumors about the upcoming Nvidia Kepler cards, if you didn't read it or if your not up to date, then read this. In this post I will be further discussing the Keplers, however I will be focusing more on the card, and its specifications etc, rather than release dates, or production, so lets get started. First of all look at these two images: 

Analyzing the images:
If you look at the first two images (click to zoom) you will see what looks like an ordinary Nvidia GPU, well almost. First off what we are seeing is a reference design, which means it is the stock, in other words normal version of the card. The picture on top shows two six pin connectors for this presumed Gtx680. Now the Gtx 580 (reference design) has one six pin connector, and one eight ping connector. So what that means is we can expect it to draw less power than the previous generation. We also can see what seems to be a normal fan, and until it is released or someone opens it, we will not be able to see the PCB, or the cooling. However it is supposed to have similar cooling to the Gtx 500's, an evaporation chamber heatsink, and judging by the six pin power connectors, and the presumed 28nm chip we can say that it should draw less power, and run cooler than previous generations. Besides that its a normal card, it has the standard SLI connectors, and standard outputs, so there is nothing special there.

Analyzing the Specs:
First of all lets look at the leaked specs:
NOTE: THIS SLIDE HAS NOT OFFICIALLY BEEN ANNOUNCED, IT CAN BE FAKE, SO AS ALWAYS, TAKE RUMORS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT

Now from the spec sheet above we can see a couple of things. First of all we have higher clocks than the current gen Gtx 580, and we still have GDDR5 memory. Now one thing that Nvidia is planning to add to this generation is a function that will turn down the clocks when not in heavy use, and speed them up while gaming. The boost clock is what i believe is the boost feature for the card when it is in use (I know, pretty obvious huh?) However it seems to be an average boost, so no heavy boost or OC there. Another new thing would be 2Gb of memory, as the current gen goes up to 1.5GB. Besides that the only other changes are the CUDA, there is almost three times as many (another reason why triple performance may be rumored), PCIE 3.0, and as said earlier two six pin connectors. It also has a lower TDP which means it should use less power, and produce less heat.

Those are the rumors until now, I will continually update my blog with new news as I myself am very curious to know what happens.


Photo sources: 
http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1004248/gtx-680-spec.jpeg
http://www.2dayblog.com/images/2012/march/550x-nvidia-kepler.jpg 
http://www.2dayblog.com/images/2012/march/550x-nvidia-kepler.jpg 

Nvidia Kepler: Closer than you think!

Source:http://www.2dayblog.com/images/2012/march/550x-nvidia-kepler.jpg

         It has been over a year since Nvidia has released its powerhouse the Gtx 580 (announced Nov 4,2010) on the Fermi platform. Now gamers all around the world looking for a new GPU are drooling (including me) over the release date and performance of the Kepler cards. Amd has announced and released their new cards, the Radeon HD 7000 series a few months ago, and they (Hd 7970) outperform(s) the Gtx 580 from Nvidia, so gamers are expecting an update. The first Kepler rumors stated that the Kepler cards were supposed to come out this Monday, however I thought of it as highly unlikely, considering that the plant that is supposed to be manufacturing the 28nm silicon chips for the Keplers is having a temporary shutdown causing delays for the hard to produce 28nm chips. If other manufactures were able to get their hands on 28nm chips, like AMD for their Hd7000 series, then why cant Nvidia? Well there are many rumors arguing about that, however to summarize there are two problems, it is either the wafers that are is small availability, it could be the manufacturing process that is too slow or has shut down temporarily. There is a third possibility, that the shutdown was due to problems with the production process, or because they are planning to change something in the process or design itself.
           Now, enough with the negative rumors (that we will attempt to forget), time for the positive side of all of this, the performance. Sadly all the benchmarks I have seen to date seem to be fake, some of them even make me laugh, however there is one indicator of performance, Unreal Engine 4, and the Samaritan Demo. Unreal Engine 4, along with the demo game Samaritan (which is built on Unreal 4) is a next generation game, and last year they ran the game at a event on 3 Gtx580's in SLI. Yes thats right, it took three of the massive 1.5GB powerhouses to run the game. Here is the fun part, the same game was run this year, this time on what they say was a unreleased Kepler card, yes just one Kepler card. Now none of the card specs were announced, but some people speculate a triple performance boost from the Fermi's like the Gtx 580. It is easy to see how they got to that conclusion, here is the equation: "3Gtx 580= 1 Kepler, so Kepler=3*Gtx 580." Now is this true, personally I really wish it is, but do I fully believe it? No, I don't. Amd's new cards beat the current Nvidia cards by a bit, and every new generation has an average performance increase of between 7 and 25%, not 300%!!! So it is unlikely that it will be such an increase, but I do think that they will be a great improvement over the Fermi cards (gtx 400's, 500's), and they should be better than the AMD cards.

          Yaay! More rumors! Well here is some more information on the cards. First of all they seem to be launching a bit pricey, but that will go down with the competition between AMD and Nvidia. Second of all they are supposed to be much more energy efficient, and feature PCIE 3.0, which means much higher Pcie bandwith, which should result in better FPS in SLI configurations. There is another rumor, but this one makes me a bit sad, it is claimed that the first Keplers may not be overclockable, with later versions being able to do so. I personally don't think that this will happen, but if it does than it will not be too good, considering we will not be able to squeeze out that extra performance. However even if this does happen (very unlikely) then they still will have versions without such limits. Again I doubt it will actually happen, since that would not be good for competition, since you can overclock the Hd 7000's from AMD, and Nvidia would not risk that.
           So when exactly will they come out? well the answer that is currently being given all around the web is the possibility of a March 23 release, however it is unsure due to the rumored problems (see first paragraph)
Here is the countdown to the speculated release:

Speculated release in   days. 

The best gaming Pc's, definitely not Alienware

Rant Nr.1

Gaming pc’s, I could talk a about them all day, I admire the latest tech, and enjoy talking/ranting about it. Until now I have rarely lost an argument on anything pc hardware related, there are things I agree with and things that I strongly disagree with. Here are things that drive me mad:

People who think that Alienware is the best are at the top of the list. Quite frankly because those people are terribly wrong, and the refuse to admit it. For starters Alienware is overpriced. I often tell this to people, and they respond with nonsense like "Fine it may be expensive, but it's the best," NO!!! they couldn't be more wrong! I convince people by pointing out that Alienware is overpriced because it uses components that can be bought for much less, and puts them together in a stock fashion. They ask a few hundred bucks for a 12GB Ram upgrade, that's crazy because you could buy the same amount of RAM from Corsair for less. Not to mention that it is not stock ram, and it performs better. Then they charge a few hundred bucks for a processor upgrade, which usually costs much less if simply bought, and has a small difference in speed. Then there is overclocking, which Alienware doesn't push the clocks up high, at least for the Sandy Bridge i7s, since they can be pushed higher, and there are many other custom pc builders or companies that will OC it more, and they do it at a lower price. Alienware charges crazy amounts for their overclocks, which by the way a twelve year old with the right guidance can do for free. Ok that may be a bit exaggerated but my general point is solid. For a i7-3960 @ 4Ghz compared to a i7-3960 @4.2 Ghz which they now offer they charge an insane price for a 0.2ghz overclock! They claim to be for "hard core" gamers, but real gamers know better. They try to attract users with their cases that can change into many colors, which looks good, but for the price you can do better. They also offer a hard core <sarcasm> liquid cooling system. True, they do have liquid cooling on all of their pcs, CPU only. Why CPU only you may ask, well there is a reason. It is a closed loop liquid cooling system, which means the radiator, pump, water block, and tubing is permanently shut. That means a GPU block cannot be added to the existing loop. Also such a liquid cooling system, with a small radiator doesn't perform nearly as well as a real custom built liquid cooking system. A person that has never owned or seen a real gaming pc, may consider LEDs and bad liquid cooling to be the "best", even though it's not even close. They are brainwashed into buying it, because they don't know that there is better stuff out there. So far I barely scratched the surface on overpriced gaming pcs, but I feel that I proved my point, Alienware is overpriced, and is not the best performing. Alienware used to be a great company, until it was bought by Dell.

Now to give you the taste of what a real gaming pc had to offer, see my next article.