Rumors About Upcoming NVIDIA GTX 680M Emerge

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 16, 2012 - 10:40 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: nvidia, gtx 680m, gpu, mobile, kepler

Videocardz.com managed to get their hands on some rumored details about an upcoming NVIDIA mobile graphics card–the GTX 680M. According to rumors, the mobile chip will be launched at Computex 2012 in Taiwan next month.

There aren’t many details about the mobile chip, but it is set up to be a scaled down version of it’s Kepler based GTX 680 desktop counterpart. The GTX 680M will have approximately half as many CUDA cores at either 744 or 768 cores depending on the source. Either way, the card keeps the same 256-bit memory interface and can support SLI configurations. In addition, the 680M will be able to have up to 4GB of GDDR5 memory. Reportedly, it can use as much as 100 Watts of power.

When paired with an Intel Core i7 3720QM processor, the GPU was able to get a score of 4,905 points in 3DMark 11’s Performance present benchmark. It is supposed to be as much as 37 percent faster than the GTX 670M, which is not surprising considering that chip has only 336 CUDA cores and is clocked at 598 MHz (no word yet on what the GTX 680M will be clocked at).

No matter what the GTX 680M turns out to be, you can bet it will only be found in the highest end gaming notebooks where performance is more important than battery life. Until then, feel free to brush up on your Kepler architecture knowledge by visiting our GTX 680 (desktop) review.

Live: First NVIDIA Kepler GK110 GPU Details

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 16, 2012 - 05:14 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: nvidia, kepler, GTC 2012, gk110

We are posting live from the "Inside Kepler" talk at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference with details on the new GK110 GPU.  Here is what we know so far:

• 7.1 billion transistors
• 15 SMX (modified) units
• 2880 available CUDA cores
• Greater than 1 TFLOP FP64 (double precision) compute
• 384-bit GDDR5 memory bus

The block diagram for the GK110 GPU

We will update this post with more photos and information as we have it!

Diagram of the updated SMX for GK110

Don't expect to see this GPU until at least  Q4 of this year.

Check out our full Kepler GK110 deep-dive article we just posted!  

NVIDIA Pioneers New Standard for High Performance Computing with Tesla GPUs

Subject: Shows and Expos | May 15, 2012 - 03:43 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: tesla, nvidia, GTC 2012, kepler, CUDA

SAN JOSE, Calif.—GPU Technology Conference—May 15, 2012—NVIDIA today unveiled a new family of Tesla GPUs based on the revolutionary NVIDIA Kepler GPU computing architecture, which makes GPU-accelerated computing easier and more accessible for a broader range of high performance computing (HPC) scientific and technical applications.

The new NVIDIA Tesla K10 and K20 GPUs are computing accelerators built to handle the most complex HPC problems in the world. Designed with an intense focus on high performance and extreme power efficiency, Kepler is three times as efficient as its predecessor, the NVIDIA Fermi architecture, which itself established a new standard for parallel computing when introduced two years ago.

“Fermi was a major step forward in computing,” said Bill Dally, chief scientist and senior vice president of research at NVIDIA. “It established GPU-accelerated computing in the top tier of high performance computing and attracted hundreds of thousands of developers to the GPU computing platform. Kepler will be equally disruptive, establishing GPUs broadly into technical computing, due to their ease of use, broad applicability and efficiency.”

The Tesla K10 and K20 GPUs were introduced at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC), as part of a series of announcements from NVIDIA, all of which can be accessed in the GTC online press room.

NVIDIA developed a set of innovative architectural technologies that make the Kepler GPUs high performing and highly energy efficient, as well as more applicable to a wider set of developers and applications. Among the major innovations are:

• SMX Streaming Multiprocessor – The basic building block of every GPU, the SMX streaming multiprocessor was redesigned from the ground up for high performance and energy efficiency. It delivers up to three times more performance per watt than the Fermi streaming multiprocessor, making it possible to build a supercomputer that delivers one petaflop of computing performance in just 10 server racks. SMX’s energy efficiency was achieved by increasing its number of CUDA architecture cores by four times, while reducing the clock speed of each core, power-gating parts of the GPU when idle and maximizing the GPU area devoted to parallel-processing cores instead of control logic.
• Dynamic Parallelism – This capability enables GPU threads to dynamically spawn new threads, allowing the GPU to adapt dynamically to the data. It greatly simplifies parallel programming, enabling GPU acceleration of a broader set of popular algorithms, such as adaptive mesh refinement, fast multipole methods and multigrid methods.
• Hyper-Q – This enables multiple CPU cores to simultaneously use the CUDA architecture cores on a single Kepler GPU. This dramatically increases GPU utilization, slashing CPU idle times and advancing programmability. Hyper-Q is ideal for cluster applications that use MPI.

“We designed Kepler with an eye towards three things: performance, efficiency and accessibility,” said Jonah Alben, senior vice president of GPU Engineering and principal architect of Kepler at NVIDIA. “It represents an important milestone in GPU-accelerated computing and should foster the next wave of breakthroughs in computational research.”

NVIDIA Tesla K10 and K20 GPUs
The NVIDIA Tesla K10 GPU delivers the world’s highest throughput for signal, image and seismic processing applications. Optimized for customers in oil and gas exploration and the defense industry, a single Tesla K10 accelerator board features two GK104 Kepler GPUs that deliver an aggregate performance of 4.58 teraflops of peak single-precision floating point and 320 GB per second memory bandwidth.

The NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU is the new flagship of the Tesla GPU product family, designed for the most computationally intensive HPC environments. Expected to be the world’s highest-performance, most energy-efficient GPU, the Tesla K20 is planned to be available in the fourth quarter of 2012.

The Tesla K20 is based on the GK110 Kepler GPU. This GPU delivers three times more double precision compared to Fermi architecture-based Tesla products and it supports the Hyper-Q and dynamic parallelism capabilities. The GK110 GPU is expected to be incorporated into the new Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the Blue Waters system at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“In the two years since Fermi was launched, hybrid computing has become a widely adopted way to achieve higher performance for a number of critical HPC applications,” said Earl C. Joseph, program vice president of High-Performance Computing at IDC. “Over the next two years, we expect that GPUs will be increasingly used to provide higher performance on many applications.”

Preview of CUDA 5 Parallel Programming Platform
In addition to the Kepler architecture, NVIDIA today released a preview of the CUDA 5 parallel programming platform. Available to more than 20,000 members of NVIDIA’s GPU Computing Registered Developer program, the platform will enable developers to begin exploring ways to take advantage of the new Kepler GPUs, including dynamic parallelism.

The CUDA 5 parallel programming model is planned to be widely available in the third quarter of 2012. Developers can get access to the preview release by signing up for the GPU Computing Registered Developer program on the CUDA website.

The GTX 670 and the Case of the Missing (and Returning) 4-Way SLI Support

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 11, 2012 - 04:57 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: sli, nvidia, kepler, gtx 670, GK104, geforce

In our launch review of the GeForce GTX 670 2GB graphics card this week, we had initially mentioned that these $399 graphics cards would support SLI, 3-Way SLI and even 4-Way SLI configurations thanks to the pair of SLI connections on the PCB.  We received an update from NVIDIA later on that day that in fact it would NOT support 4-Way SLI.

The message from NVIDIA was pretty clear cut:

"As I’m sure you can imagine, we have to QA every feature that we claim support for and this takes a tremendous amount of time/resources. For the GTX 680 and GTX 690, we do support Quad SLI and take the time to QA it, as it makes sense for the extreme OC’ers and ultra-enthusiasts who are shooting to break world records."

My reply:

But with the similarities between the GTX 680 and the GTX 670, is there really any QA addition required to enable quad for 670? Seems like a cop-out to me man...

I saw it mostly as a reason to differentiate the GTX 670 and the GTX 680 with a feature since the performance between the cards was very similar; maybe too similar for NVIDIA's tastes with the $100 price difference.  

Well this afternoon we received some good news from our contact at NVIDIA:

"Change in plans.....we will be offering 4-Way SLI support for GTX 670 in a future driver."

So while the 301.34 driver will not support 4-Way configurations with the GTX 670, 4-Way SLI will in fact be enabled after all in a future version.  We'll be sure to keep you in the loop when that happens and the super-extreme enthusiasts can rejoice.  

This does go to show that the fundamental differences between AMD's license-free and seemingly more "open" CrossFire technology and NVIDIA's for-fee SLI technology.  With enough feedback and prodding in the right direction, NVIDIA can and does do the right thing, just look at the success we had convincing them to support SLI on AMD CPU platforms last year.  

Feet to the fire everyone!

Hard to make a profit when no one can find Kepler cards for sale, NVIDIA

Subject: General Tech | May 11, 2012 - 11:38 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: sales, Q2, nvidia, kepler

NVIDIA made $925m this quarter down from the $1,002m they made 12 months ago and profit is even dimmer with profits falling from $137m to a hair over $60m.  This marks the third year NVIDIA's Q1 revenue has been less than in the previous year and that is going to deeply trouble investors.  Even if GTX680s and 690s had flooded the market and were sitting on store shelves hoping that someone would come along and buy them that would not have helped sales in the first quarter, though if Kepler had been released early and in great quantities NVIDIA might have turned this distressing trend around. 

Q2 could be peachy, three models of GTX670 are still available at NewEgg after the initial sales and if the GTX680's production can be ramped up without much in the way of associated costs we could see some nice financials in the summer.  After all they do have the best cards on the market right now. Hit up The Inquirer for more.

"Nvidia is on a high after a successful Kepler GPU launch but its financials paint a very different picture. The firm's first quarter of its 2013 fiscal year yielded revenue of $924.9m, just under four per cent lower than the same period a year previously, however its net income took a beating as profits fell by 55 per cent to $60.4m."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• Tesla gun will probably kill something, sometime @ Hack a Day
• Asustek unveils US$799 ultrabook @ DigiTimes
• If data can be lost, it will @ The Tech Report
• Win HIS HD7870 IceQ Turbo and IceQ X Turbo X Video Cards @ Kitguru
• Weekly Gaming Giveaway #1: Conflict of Heroes: Awakening The Bear @ eTeknix

GeForce GTX 670 vs GTX 570 Performance Update

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 10, 2012 - 02:13 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: nvidia, kepler, gtx 670, gtx 570, GK104, geforce

In the comments to our full review of the GeForce GTX 670 2GB graphics card a user asked for a comparison of the new GTX 670 against the Fermi-based GTX 570.  I had some numbers for that already made up but ran out of time and space for it in our review that went up this morning.  I thought that there might be others interested in this so I decided to put a news post with the results.

These performance graphs pit a reference clocked GTX 570 1.25GB card against the new reference GTX 670 2GB card.  

 Without a doubt the new GTX 670 is a faster GPU than the GTX 570:

• 3DMark11: +45%
• Battlefield 3: +34%
• DiRT 3: +28%
• Skyrim: +32%
• Metro 2033: +31%
• Dues Ex: +29%
• Batman: AC: +39%
• Power Consumption: -14%

With an average performance delta of 30% or more, the GTX 670 makes a solid upgrade for GTX 570 users but maybe more interesting, it does this while using 14% less power as well.  

The GTX 670 has finally arrived

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 10, 2012 - 01:30 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: nvidia, kepler, gtx 670, GK104, geforce

The GTX 670 is a scaled down GTX 680 in every aspect including price.  1344 CUDA Cores is 192 less than the GTX 680, baseclock is reduced 91MHz to 915MHz, 16 less texture units for a total of 112; the memory remains the same at 6GHz.  Most important to consumers is the reduction in price, down $100 to an MSRP of $400, targeting it directly against the HD7950 at its new price.  [H]ard|OCP's testing does not favour AMD as the GTX 670 shows an obvious performance advantage over the HD7950 as well as the still available GTX 580 and does it at a price point which matches AMD's new prices. 

Ryan's full review can be read here, where he tests out Galaxy's GTX 670.

"NVIDIA's next generation Kepler GPU continues with the launch of the GeForce GTX 670. This GPU is positioned to provide great performance at a price level $100 less than the GeForce GTX 680. Could this be the best performing $399 video card, besting even the Radeon HD 7950? We tell you all you need to know if $400 is your price range."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• GeForce GTX 670 @ The Tech Report
• ZOTAC GeForce GTX 670 AMP! Edition 2 GB @ techPowerUp
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 DirectX 11 Video Card Review @Hi Tech Legion
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Review Feat. EVGA: Bringing GK104 Down To $400 @ AnandTech
• Gigabyte GTX670 OC Video Card Review @ Ninjalane
• EVGA GeForce GTX 670 SuperClocked Video Card Review @ Hardware Secrets
• Palit JetStream GEFORCE GTX 670 2GB @ Tweaktown
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Video Card Tests @ Benchmark Reviews
• Palit GeForce GTX 670 JetStream 2 GB @ techPowerU
• EVGA GTX 670 Superclocked @ Overclockers.com
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card @ Bjorn3D
• GIGABYTE GTX 670 OC @ Bjorn3D
• Gainward GeForce GTX 670 Phantom @ Techspot
• Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 Windforce 3X OC 2GB DirectX 11 Video Card Review @Hi Tech Legion
• NVIDIA GTX 670 Review @ OCC
• NVIDIA & EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
• GEFORCE GTX 670 @ Hardware Heaven
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Launch Review @ Neoseeker
• ASUS GeForce GTX 670 Direct CU II 2 GB @ techPowerUp
• Gainward GeForce GTX 670 Phantom @ Legion Hardware
• Nvidia GTX 670 @ lanOC Reviews
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 2 GB @ techPowerUp
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Review @ Hardware Canucks
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 @ Guru of 3D
• GeForce GTX 670 2 and 3-way SLI @ Guru of 3D
• Palit GeForce GTX 670 JetStream @ Guru of 3D
• ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP @ Guru of 3D
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 review plus SLI and 3-way SLI @ Hardware.Info
• NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670 2GB Video Card Overclocked @ Tweaktown
• MSI GTX 680 Twin Frozr Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven
• ZOTAC GeForce GTX 680 AMP! Edition 2 GB @ techPowerUp
• Palit GeForce GTX 680 4GB Jetstream @ Guru of 3D
• NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670 2GB @ Tweaktown
• MSI Radeon HD 7870 HAWK 2GB @ Tweaktown
• MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III @ Kitguru
• Ivy Bridge PCI-Express Scaling with HD 7970 and GTX 680 @ techPowerUp
• HIS Radeon HD 7770 iCooler 1 GB @ techPowerUp
• XFX HD 7870 and 7850 Double Dissipation Review @ OCC
• MSI R7970 Lightning / R7870 Hawk review @ Hardware.Info
• HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ X Turbo X 2GB Graphics Card @ eTeknix