We got word that Nvidia finally talked to its partners about its highly confidential Kepler products.
They got briefed, they got the reference design and the production of the cards is staring as we speak. It looks like most of the cards available at launch are going to look alike, with different cooling from some partners, but the non-reference partner cards will come a bit later.
Nvidia should be ready to release GK104 by April, but we are not aware of any solid date at this time. Jensen did mention that Nvidia had some lower than expected 28nm yields but also clarified that it is nothing like the transition to 40nm a few years back.
Despite some rumors that Kepler might be a good performer, AMD is still enjoying quite good sales of its 28nm products. It is getting ready to finish launching top to bottom portfolio from entry level all the way to high-end.
We are also told that AIB partners will have enough inventory on launch day to fulfil needs of most markets. It’ll not be a soft launch like AMD Radeon HD 7970. We aren’t allowed to tell much about the upcoming graphics card from NVIDIA but what we can assure you is that next couple of months will be very interesting.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Specifications RevealedReported by Sub on Tuesday, March 6 2012 4:37 pm NVIDIA's much anticipated GK104 release is finally impending and we have specifications and details for the first SKU - GeForce GTX 680.
1NEWS As previous rumours suggested, GTX 680 will feature 1536 SP and 256-bit memory. However, contrary to rumours, NVIDIA has retained the shader hotclock, although the Kepler shaders could be significantly different from its Fermi counterparts which makes it difficult to predict performance. The core will be clocked at 705 MHz and the shaders at 1411 MHz, retaining the 2x shader hotclock from Fermi. GK104 significantly improves upon GF110/GF114's memory controller, setting a new record for reference memory clock at 6 GHz. This equates to a memory bandwidth of 192 GB/s - exactly the same as GTX 580 despite the narrower memory bus.
As we have witnessed from previously leaked PCB pictures, the GTX 680 will sport 4 display outputs - stacked dual DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. GK104's die appears to be slightly smaller than Tahiti but significantly larger than Pitcairn. Two SLI connectors will enable upto 3-way SLI. However, the experimental stacked PCI-e power inputs may not make it to the final production graphics cards. GTX 680 will be 10 inches long, which is longer than GTX 560 Ti or HD 7870 but shorter than HD 7950 or GTX 570. The general visual appearance will be reminiscent of GTX 570, albeit more compact with a repositioned fan. The rear end will be similar to HD 5800 or HD 6900, with identical outputs and a blocked exhaust.
NVIDIA will reveal details about GTX 680 in an event on 12th March, with a hard launch rumoured for 23rd March - days after HD 7800's release.
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038464236&postcount=51GK104 will be 680.
Seeing some benchmarks show 7970 in the lead, mostly in tessellated situations there, other "normal" synthetic 3D benchmarks and gaming benchmarks show 680 faster. Driver advancements still happening as well for 680.
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/03/07/tsmc-suddenly-halts-28nm-production/Sit down before you read this one, we will wait for a second while you do. OK, now, where to begin other than the obvious, TSMC shut down 28nm production about three weeks ago.
No, we are not joking, word has reached SemiAccurate that TSMC halted 100% of 28nm production in mid-February to make unnamed changes to the process. Since only Nvidia was having issues, and those are not really process related, we have no explanation as to why they would take this drastic step, but yields don’t seem to be it. That said, we are quite certain that it happened, and is still in effect.