[ExtremeTech] GTX 680 "...will probably cost upwards of $500."

[Leadbox]

Well (some) people were expecting the GTX680 would be twice as fast as the GTX580.

The price and price/performance of this GTX680 GK104 will be a cue on when the GK100/110 will be released - if NVIDIA try to significantly undercut AMD it will mean a faster card will arrive sooner than later, otherwise those Q3 and later projections will be more probable.

Q3 and later?

Ain't that late enough to considered a refresh?

 

[railven]

I cannot believe anyone is trying to argue this is a midrange part if it is getting a 670/680 label and selling for $500 (going on rumors here). There may be a higher end part coming, but it is very likely not coming very soon.

edit - Just wanted to add, GO MARGINS!

Man, if this thing is $500+ and slower than the 7970 or even marginally faster, there are going to be so many people eating crow...

I know a great recipe for Crow

Times change. There are so many different shifts in the PC world lately, I don't get how people were expecting things to stay the same. Hell, even Intel has rumored to be switching to a 3 year phase. That speaks volume to me. AMD/nVidia are going to try to stretch this software stagnation as long as they can.

From a business point - why make cards that can render God in real time when the world is happily playing Angry Birds. Might as well just refresh your cards, a few tweaks etc, and then cash in.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Well said guy

On the low end, it seems those cards are going to start disappearing soon. I'd personally wait a tad longer for the channel to dry up and hopefully the current cards (HD 78xx/GTX 6xx whatever) will start to slot into those price points.

I'd personally advice against buying last gen technology even more so when the price difference are so marginal (again, this doesn't include clearance prices, I mean more so the usual going price.) But that's just me.

I'll be doing that.

The near future game I'm expecting to spend my playing time with is Guild Wars 2 and that doesn't seem to be big requirements, so my OCed 6850 and unlocked Phenom II X2 should do just fine. If not, then I'll decide what to upgrade.

 

[Tuna-Fish]

If the charge $500 for GK104 for GTX580 +30-40% performance, they will face the same shitstorm as AMD. At least from me

There is absolutely zero chance that they can ship +30-40% GTX580 performance on a card with a 256-bit bus. No way, no how. It will take the fastest ram on the market just to get to parity. In order for the new card to beat GTX580 by any actual margin, GF110 would have to have been somehow particularly inefficient about it's bandwidth use, and it really isn't.

So the card will likely land somewhere between GTX580 and HD7970. Anyone waiting for actual advancement in the high-end will have to keep waiting for the next one from NV.

 

[railven]

I fear it will be indeed Q3 or Q4. Nvidia might decide to milk the cow, too. If GK104 is sufficient to battle Tahiti XT, they might sell all their first GK110 chips to the HPC clusters and as Quadros and then when the yields have improved considerably or when they run out of customers for the time being, they bring it as GTX780.

This ties in nicely to what I said in another thread. With nVidia's experience in the GPGPU sector, they could easily create a two prong attack.

With PC gaming (and gaming in general) in a slump of innovation, why cater to the lower profits margin when you can milk your top end GPU at the $5,000 price point. EDIT: ANd face it, anything that will be based on the new Unreal Engine won't manifest in our hands until at least Q4 2012 or Q1 2013. By then - Refresh city!

I should dig up my post. I'm definitely buying a lottery ticket this weekend. If I win the lotto, I promise to buy each of you a last generation card - since of course, they are good enough

 

[boxleitnerb]

There is absolutely zero chance that they can ship +30-40% GTX580 performance on a card with a 256-bit bus. No way, no how. It will take the fastest ram on the market just to get to parity. In order for the new card to beat GTX580 by any actual margin, GF110 would have to have been somehow particularly inefficient about it's bandwidth use, and it really isn't.

So the card will likely land somewhere between GTX580 and HD7970. Anyone waiting for actual advancement in the high-end will have to keep waiting for the next one from NV.

Latest leaks of GK107 point to a very bandwidth-efficient Kepler. The GTX560Ti has significantly less bandwidth than the GTX285 and look how that turned out.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Q3 and later?

Ain't that late enough to considered a refresh?

Refresh in my opinion is the same chip with some tweaks and higher clocks or shrinks. I guess we can start considering enabling previously disabled shaders/units refresh as well.

On the other hand, generally releases of new architectures go top -> bottom.

 

[Lonyo]

This ties in nicely to what I said in another thread. With nVidia's experience in the GPGPU sector, they could easily create a two prong attack.

With PC gaming (and gaming in general) in a slump of innovation, why cater to the lower profits margin when you can milk your top end GPU at the $5,000 price point. EDIT: ANd face it, anything that will be based on the new Unreal Engine won't manifest in our hands until at least Q4 2012 or Q1 2013. By then - Refresh city!

I should dig up my post. I'm definitely buying a lottery ticket this weekend. If I win the lotto, I promise to buy each of you a last generation card - since of course, they are good enough

They've been doing that for a long time.
The majority of their profits, IIRC, come from workstation and HTPC markets. Very high margin areas.

 

[Arzachel]

I was under the impression that Nvidia had a lot of problems with leaky transistors going full size would have pushed the power draw too far and it already took major "heat" for that on release.

The problem wasn't the big die, the problem was the design itself.

They actually never really solved the design problem, or so I was lead to believe. They actually just put insulators per say around the leaky problematic transistors and cut them off when they released the GTX 580, which is why the 580 has 200,000 less transistors and an slightly smaller die size.

Is that wrong, was the problem the die size, or was it the design?

That's partly true. IDC had a fantastic post about parametric yield and functional yield in one of these threads. Wafers usually get defects per certain number of mm^2 and the chance that the chip will be defective increases with it's die size. While Nvidia could (and eventualy did as you said) work around the issues with the process, leaky transistors, you can't ship parts that outright just don't work. Hence the GTX 480 shipping with fused off execution units: they just couldn't harvest enough working dies.

 

[Lonyo]

Believe it because it's happening \>Right Now</

Nothing is happening \>Right Now</ except more rumours being posted about a new NV card/GPU.

 

[railven]

They've been doing that for a long time.
The majority of their profits, IIRC, come from workstation and HTPC markets. Very high margin areas.

I thought they were taking their biggest GPU and selling it to the HPC markets for $5,000 and then the same GPU and selling it to the gamers for $500?

This time, they'd be taking their biggest GPU and selling it to the HPC markets for $5,000 (all yields) and taking their normally smaller GPU (ie cheaper model) and selling it to the gamers for $500.

It's just MAXIMUM PROFITS! (sorry had to haha.) No split yields for the big stuff, straight to big margins. Gaming side gets the cheaper stuff at a premium since it's more than enough with current games.

Go Premiums!

 

[SirPauly]

If the charge $500 for GK104 for GTX580 +30-40% performance, they will face the same shitstorm as AMD. At least from me

If nVidia offers similar price/performance -- basically riding that 40nm price/performance status quo instead of truly redefining it --- still will be consistent as well.

Not going to strongly defend premium pricing when it doesn't redefine price/performance on a substantial and significant node change and arch.

 

[railven]

Not going to strongly defend premium pricing when it doesn't redefine price/performance on a substantial and significant node change and arch.

I'm sure you'll find a way to root for the home team

Go Premiums!

 

[Nintendesert]

Damn. Maybe if I pray real hard and keep my faith strong Nvidia will reconsider and reward me with a $300 7970 killer card. :'(

 

[blackened23]

If nVidia offers similar price/performance -- basically riding that 40nm price/performance status quo instead of truly redefining it --- still will be consistent as well.

Not going to strongly defend premium pricing when it doesn't redefine price/performance on a substantial and significant node change and arch.

If nvidia does carry a large premium for 28nm products we should consider that the rumors of 28nm wafer shortages to be true. If there are wafer shortages that means increased pricing to the consumer due to excess demand from quallcomm, amd, apple and nvidia for wafers.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that these companies don't want to charge this much but may have to out of necessity. If TSMC is charging them increased prices because of shortages, it is passed on to us. ** I do hope to be pleasantly surprised by GK104 performance or price

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Nvidia doesn't feed trolls, they are the trolls

 

[imaheadcase]

If the charge $500 for GK104 for GTX580 +30-40% performance, they will face the same shitstorm as AMD. At least from me

Why? a GTX 580 already cost close to $500. If you expected %30-40 that would be a steal

 

[GaiaHunter]

If nvidia does carry a large premium for 28nm products we should consider that the rumors of 28nm wafer shortages to be true. If there are wafer shortages that means increased pricing to the consumer due to excess demand from quallcomm, amd, apple and nvidia for wafers.

For some reason this remind me of a cartoon (that I can't find) with 3 business women in prison.

The first one says: "I'm in jail because I sold my products at a lower price than the competition" <- predatory pricing
The second one says: "I'm in jail because I sold my products at the same price as the competition" <- fixing
The third one says: "I'm in jail because I sold my products at a higher price than my competition" <- monopoly

 

[Nintendesert]

Nvidia doesn't feed trolls, they are the trolls

That's why they changed the logo, it's the claw, it's reaching from the depths to take our wallets! D:

 

[SirPauly]

I'm sure you'll find a way to root for the home team

Go Premiums!

Not really, there is actually objective reasoning why I choose a company over another and if this comes to fruition -- performance parts being masqueraded as enthusiasts parts -- hardly worth strongly defending- but there may be some very one-sided nVidia posters that will.

Edit:I'm with boxleitnerb and share similar views on this.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Maybe it's time for a console. AMD and Nvidia are designing for HPC anyways, I think we're all getting duped.

"Kepler will be unbeatable"

"And you thought AMD's 13% margins over the 580 were bad, ours are worse! Come get some of this 28nm failaid"

 

[railven]

Maybe it's time for a console. AMD and Nvidia are designing for HPC anyways, I think we're all getting duped.

"Kepler will be unbeatable"

<snip>

"And you thought AMD's 13% margins over the 580 were bad, ours are worse! Come get some of this 28nm failaid"

Trollvidia! The Way It's Meant to be Played!

 

[Ieat]

Gotta love all the fanboys reveling in possible higher prices for everyone. lol Kind of pathetic when you think about it.

 

[railven]

Gotta love all the fanboys reveling in possible higher prices for everyone. lol Kind of pathetic when you think about it.

He who is screwed with me, is my friend.

 

[DeeJayeS]

This. IF GK104 is > or = 7970, NV will price it at or a bit below the 7970s. Rinse and repeat on down the AMD line. Would be shocked and (pleasantly) surprised if they leave $$ on the table when it comes to pricing, at least initially.

from a month ago...no surprise here unfortunately