[Sweclockers] Nvidia GM200 will be unveiled at GPU Tech conference March 17-20

[Mondozei]

Sweclockers are on a roll!

After yesterday's scoop about a likely early-June release of 380X, they are now bringing us the news concerning GM200.
Basically, the gist is that Nvidia will unveil it in late march, and it's going to be the Quadro and/or Tesla cards.

Sweclockers says that it hasn't heard anything about any consumer version of this card, a.k.a Titan II, so that one will likely come later(coinciding with Computex, perhaps?).

All in all, it looks like the spring of 2015 will be mostly status quo and things will heat up only in the summer. I'm pleased I got myself a second card to put in SLI. Pascal, next.

 

[RussianSensation]

You mean to tell me NV will have the performance crown with a $550 mid-range GM204 and maximize profits for as long as possible for 8-9 months after launch? Sounds like a smart strategy from a business point of view. No pressure from AMD and being able to sell a 256-bit 398mm2 chip for $550+? NV shareholders and JHH = winning.

Too bad though as a lot of new games are slated to come out before the summer: Dying Light, Evolve, Project CARS, GTA V, Witcher 3.

 

[5150Joker]

You mean to tell me NV will have the performance crown with a $550 mid-range GM204 and maximize profits for as long as possible for 8-9 months after launch? Sounds like a smart strategy from a business point of view. No pressure from AMD and being able to sell a 256-bit 398mm2 chip for $550+? NV shareholders and JHH = winning.

Too bad though as a lot of new games are slated to come out before the summer: Dying Light, Evolve, Project CARS, GTA V, Witcher 3.

Why are you always hating on NVIDIA for making a profit? Should they give away their cards? Or better yet price them so low that they bleed money like AMD and be on the verge of bankruptcy? Your concept of capitalism is so screwed up. And none of those games will have trouble running on a 980.

 

[dangerman1337]

I think they'll release a Titan 2 at that event. I expect a 990 and 990ti in the summer or slightly later to counter the R300 series high end.

And none of those games will have trouble running on a 980.

You sure?

http://www.pcgamer.com/dying-light-system-requirements-are-killer/

Minimum requirements:

• OS: Windows® 7 64-bit / Windows® 8 64-bit / Windows® 8.1 64-bit
• Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-2500 @3.3 GHz / AMD FX-8320 @3.5 GHz
• Memory: 4 GB RAM DDR3
• Hard Drive: 40 GB available space
• Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560 / AMD Radeon™ HD 6870 (1GB VRAM)
• Direct X®: Version 11
• Sound: DirectX® compatible

Recommended requirements:

• OS: Windows® 7 64-bit / Windows® 8 64-bit / Windows® 8.1 64-bit
• Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4670K @3.4 GHz / AMD FX-8350 @4.0 GHz
• Memory: 8 GB RAM DDR3
• Hard Drive: 40 GB available space
• Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 780 / AMD Radeon™ R9 290 (2GB VRAM)
• Direct X: Version 11
• Sound: DirectX® compatible

Sure you don't have to run at max (except insane MSAA settings in today's games featuring complex geometry) but it wouldn't be nice to know that your 550USD GPU may not been a good purchase for 1080p gaming for current gen games instead of cross-gen games.*

*though I hope developers for AAA games have SMAA T2X for their PC versions, that makes MSAA a poor trade off for image quality and far better than FXAA or TXAA and don't blur textures. That said as well I wish benchmarking sites did not have MSAA tested as the default, we are moving away from cross-gen aside from CoD on PC for the AAA space.

 

[5150Joker]

Yes I'm sure the 980 will be JUST fine at 1080p + 60 fps in this game. There's already guys playing it on twitch + youtube w/lesser cards on high settings and hitting the 60 fps mark.

 

[realibrad]

Why are you always hating on NVIDIA for making a profit? Should they give away their cards? Or better yet price them so low that they bleed money like AMD and be on the verge of bankruptcy? Your concept of capitalism is so screwed up. And none of those games will have trouble running on a 980.

He slams both AMD and Nvidia. Ill agree that Nvidia should be charging as much as they can, and that he is wrong to not like when Nvidia does it. But I would not say he is biased against Nvidia and Pro AMD. I have read many posts by him pointing out what AMD has been doing wrong.

 

[imaheadcase]

I think they'll release a Titan 2 at that event. I expect a 990 and 990ti in the summer or slightly later to counter the R300 series high end.


You sure?

http://www.pcgamer.com/dying-light-system-requirements-are-killer/

Sure you don't have to run at max (except insane MSAA settings in today's games featuring complex geometry) but it wouldn't be nice to know that your 550USD GPU may not been a good purchase for 1080p gaming for current gen games instead of cross-gen games.*

*though I hope developers for AAA games have SMAA T2X for their PC versions, that makes MSAA a poor trade off for image quality and far better than FXAA or TXAA and don't blur textures. That said as well I wish benchmarking sites did not have MSAA tested as the default, we are moving away from cross-gen aside from CoD on PC for the AAA space.

I have never known system requirements to be even close to accurate. Nor has anyone else.

 

[RussianSensation]

Why are you always hating on NVIDIA for making a profit? Should they give away their cards? Or better yet price them so low that they bleed money like AMD and be on the verge of bankruptcy? Your concept of capitalism is so screwed up. And none of those games will have trouble running on a 980.

Where in my post did I ridicule NV for the strategy which they have implemented? I would have done exactly the same from a business point of view and I even said what NV is doing is both logical and a winning strategy for a business. It's not NV's fault that gamers keep buying mid-range products at $550-600. If you have followed my posts, I am mostly vocal against mainstream gamers that will buy anything and everything NV-badged or put NV on a pedestal, regardless or value, price/performance, etc. For example, trying to portray HD7000 CF as stutter-fest but ignoring that SLI has its own share of frame time issues, or trying to paint NV drivers as near perfect and AMD's as in a poor state but ignore how Kepler's driver optimizations have been lacking. Or how our forum was all about GTX460 overclocking and ignored perf/watt in favour of price/perform against HD5850 but today perf/watt > price/performance and overclocking is often dismissed unless it's NV that excels at it (460/470/970, etc.) It's these types of double standards that I am most vocal about.

I even admitted on many occasions that both AMD and NV raised mid-range prices but at least when AMD brings out new cards, it undercuts NV significantly. I also criticized 7970's $550 launch price and AMD's reference coolers. Mind you, I still paid high prices for 7970 cards because of bit-coin mining for but for gaming I tried to steer gamers towards 7950/670 cards, until 7970 1Ghz started falling to $300-350.

Either way, I've said more than once that to get similar price/performance gains, gamers just have to wait longer for GPU upgrades due to slower pace of GPU innovation OR they have to accept higher prices for additional % gains if they want to upgrade as often as in the past generations.

NV did improve price/performance moving from a $699 780Ti to a $330 970 and $550 980. I am not denying that. The extra pressure those cards added on R9 290 series pricing was also welcome as more performance was available at lower prices for gamers. However, in terms of overall performance mark, 980 isn't that impressive and many are truly waiting for GM200/390 series as a lot of gamers have a desire to move from 1080P to 2560x1440 or 4K, and some want more performance at 1440P/1600P than 980 SLI can offer.

I can't recall a time when NV dropped MSRP on its high end card without any competition though which is why I said in my post that NV can continue focusing on maximizing profits and selling 980 for $550 until May/June 2015 if GM200/390X aren't even slated to launch until then.

 

[SirPauly]

I really don't like nVidia's strategy of unveiling their latest tech for professional use first; it's sort of a slap in the face to gamers. You have to settle for this and don't have the time or effort for you right now.

What ever happened to unveiling, at all costs, at all risk, to the customers that did help create the brand GeForce and did help build the company?

This could backfire, have a backlash if the competition does risk, at all costs, much more.

 

[chimaxi83]

Why are you always hating on NVIDIA for making a profit? Should they give away their cards? Or better yet price them so low that they bleed money like AMD and be on the verge of bankruptcy? Your concept of capitalism is so screwed up. And none of those games will have trouble running on a 980.

Green tinted glasses have soiled your reading comprehension, as well as blinded you to the fact that this guy calls out either company, all the time. He switches up who he shills for with the seasons.

:sneaky:
/sarc


Warning issued for thread crapping.

-Rvenger

 

[RussianSensation]

I really don't like nVidia's strategy of unveiling their latest tech for professional use first; it's sort of a slap in the face to gamers. You have to settle for this and don't have the time or effort for you right now.

What ever happened to unveiling, at all costs, at all risk, to the customers that did help create the brand GeForce and did help build the company?

This could backfire, have a backlash if the competition does risk, at all costs, much more.

Would you say when Porsche introduced the Cayenne SUV, their 911 became watered down and it was no longer a sports car focused firm? As long as the core product continues to improve, I don't think it's detrimental. I don't think NV focusing on Quadro/Tesla takes away from GeForce.

From a profit maximization point of view, selling GM204 at $550 and launching GM200 for Quadro/Tesla first might make them more $. I suppose if they launched GM200 at $799 it would still sell like hot cakes in the consumer market. I don't work for AMD or NV so I don't know for sure. Maybe NV waits for yields and revisions to improve to hit specific GPU clock targets on their consumer line. Maybe NV knows GP200 Pascal is slated for Q1 2017 so they are in no rush to launch GM200. I am personally not ready to buy the claims that Maxwell will be short lived and big Daddy Pascal is out mid to late 2016.

At least it's not as bad as Apple announcing products like the new iMac and iWatch 6-8 months before market availability. :sneaky: With NV, it's not long after the Quadro card is announced that we see the flagship consumer product.

 

[Headfoot]

Just like with the Titan, people were cautioned -- don't get a 980 now, you'll get a meager 15% over the 780 Ti and 290x and it'll get replaced in 6-9 months. And yet people swarmed over the 980s for that 15%. And if this is to be believed, then it'll get leapfrogged massively 8-9 months from its launch

 

[SirPauly]

I don't think NV focusing on Quadro/Tesla takes away from GeForce.

nVidia can afford to focus on Quadro/Tesla based on competition. If AMD's 380X was out now and in volume, surprising product, do you believe nV would only be focusing on Quadro/Tesla?

And let's say, AMD delivers the goods with the 380X and nVidia was siting on their laurels maximizing profits this will not harm the name-brand?


You always asked how do nVidia loyalists move away -- by outworking and innovating the technology -- To continue to maximize profits, potentially push back one's core brand for others and allow the competition to out work and innovate ya -- may be a potential backlash.

Last time I did see a potential backlash was the raise of MSRP with the 7970 and allowed in my thinking if nVidia could deliver more performance for less money with the GK-104. It did actually happen.

 

[destrekor]

Would you say when Porsche introduced the Cayenne SUV, their 911 became watered down and it was no longer a sports car focused firm? As long as the core product continues to improve, I don't think it's detrimental. I don't think NV focusing on Quadro/Tesla takes away from GeForce.

From a profit maximization point of view, selling GM204 at $550 and launching GM200 for Quadro/Tesla first might make them more $. I suppose if they launched GM200 at $799 it would still sell like hot cakes in the consumer market. I don't work for AMD or NV so I don't know for sure. Maybe NV waits for yields and revisions to improve to hit specific GPU clock targets on their consumer line. Maybe NV knows GP200 Pascal is slated for Q1 2017 so they are in no rush to launch GM200. I am personally not ready to buy the claims that Maxwell will be short lived and big Daddy Pascal is out mid to late 2016.

At least it's not as bad as Apple announcing products like the new iMac and iWatch 6-8 months before market availability. :sneaky: With NV, it's not long after the Quadro card is announced that we see the flagship consumer product.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I suspect yields for the big chip are down, which is why it isn't released in any capacity yet. As they add any revisions to the design and/or hoard inventory from the low-yield production runs, they start to scale up card production and market availability. Going first for the professional market offers two things: they will price these things out of the stratosphere, and the sales numbers will be so low that they will not only be able to keep up with fabrication, they'll be able to continue to bin both fully-enabled (and any lesser bins) for the consumer market, where they will definitively have more sales volume.

Quite likely, they might also have already dedicated much of what they have produced for a supercomputer project. Titan [the supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory] went online with nearly 19,000 GK110s in the Fall of 2012, and it was about that time when the first GK110s were even announced for sale in the form of Tesla K20 and K20x. All of those first GK110s weren't even the fully enabled parts, which my guess is more likely a yield constraint than an actual decision. They might have only been able to bin a small percentage of 100% functional chips, which, when trying to get nearly 19,000 to fulfill a contract order and still get some chips ready for market, that might make sense. Titan went online in the fall, and the building of it started about a year prior - Nvidia was already hard at work producing that silicon and binning early parts at least a 12-18months prior to releasing any GK110 parts to any public market, let alone considering consumers.

 

[SirPauly]

Makes logical sense based on their GK-104 and GM-104 cores compete strongly against the competition.

 

[exar333]

Just like with the Titan, people were cautioned -- don't get a 980 now, you'll get a meager 15% over the 780 Ti and 290x and it'll get replaced in 6-9 months. And yet people swarmed over the 980s for that 15%. And if this is to be believed, then it'll get leapfrogged massively 8-9 months from its launch

A lot of people were coming from older cards, not just 780s or 780Tis....I was personally waiting to get the best deal on a 290/x or a 970 when the 970 launched (came from a 670). It was a great improvement.

Those who moved from a 780Ti to 980 did get (1) more VRAM and (2) better driver support, as Kepler support has been pretty poor since Maxwell arrived. Anyway, if someone replaced 2-3 780Ti's with 2-3 980s, I very much doubt they are too worried about the economics of the 15% improvement....

In my case, I am trying to hold-off getting a second 970 until GM200 is here. I do prefer a single GPU (if possible)...

 

[alcoholbob]

Rumors have been floating around that the price is going to be $1350 for the GTX Titan II. If they really aren't releasing this until April then Nvidia will have to cut prices drastically within a month or two when 380X hits the shelves.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Just like with the Titan, people were cautioned -- don't get a 980 now, you'll get a meager 15% over the 780 Ti and 290x and it'll get replaced in 6-9 months. And yet people swarmed over the 980s for that 15%. And if this is to be believed, then it'll get leapfrogged massively 8-9 months from its launch

A lot of those people were coming from GTX 600 series or older cards. Myself included.

 

[ocre]

Does every thread have to fall into a hopeless hole of worthlessness?


You guys have to realize, nvidia is in competition and their moves are calculated.

Nvidia could have brought down the hammer with the gm204. With maxwell in general. Imagine what would happen if they dropped a full gm204 at 300 and cut down 970 class at 200. Then the gm106 from 100-199

This is the only way you would get a 500$ gm200 that so many unreasonable people are insisting. But don't anyone understand that this would have completely crushed AMDs GPU division. Had nvidia been so aggressive as some keep insisting should have happened, the harm to AMD would be so severe.......
The gm204 already, at the prices they dropped at, already put a major hurt on AMD.

You have to take in account the market. Nvidia releases gpus at specific times and prices them according to the current market conditions. It's really dumb to be dogging the 980\970 when these cards dropped to cause such a major impact. The 980 was faster than both AMD and nvidias flagships but was cheaper. It was a winning strategy, one that caused AMD to struggle. If nvidia was anymore aggressive, they would be trying to shut AMD down.

They have had the cards and the ability. But that's not what anyone wants. Luckily, that's not how the market works. Not unless your trying to put everyone out of business.

If you innovate and create a product that beats the competition in almost every metric, why would you price it at half the cost? Why would nvidia release a full gm204 at half the cost of the 290x when it launched? You guys have to be crazy to be even thinking that way.

The gx980 at 550 has put enought hurt on AMD. The 970, its a serious jab that has left them staggered. The 960 could completely take the entire mid range market away from AMD. If that's what nvidia wanted....if that's what you guys think should be happening.

The absolute best thing for AMD right now is a Hugh priced gtx960. They need nvidia to price it at 250. It allows them to make profit too. Nvidia leaving some meat on e bone, so to speak.

Nvidia is gobbled up 70% of the market. And too many people here are blasting thm cause their cards aren't cheap enough? Cause they didn't rush a gm200 out crush everything around. We don't even know if they could have, if the gm200 has been ready...cause most likely it's not.

When it is ready, nvidia will look at the current market. Look at the situation and price it accordingly. AMD would be luckily if its priced over 1000$. Then it won't effect them much and they have time to ready the 380x for a counter strike. One that nvidia will be expecting.

SEE, LIKE IT OR NOT

Nvidia holds all the cards right now. And their actions have a real effect on AMD. One they are aware of.

I am not saying that nvidia are the good guys and praise them for high prices. I am saying things are always more complex than we seem to realize on these forums. That nvidia loves making money, we all know that. They should love making money. That's the goal here. But people take note, the market is split 70/30 now. Nvidia knows exactly how they can take more of the pie if they really wanted to. Each move they make, it's based on how many cards they want to sell. They aren't going after the whole market and that's okay.
Do you guys really think that nvidia should? They should price their cards so well that there would be no reason for anyone to buy AMD at all?

the gm200 will come out when it's ready. But i expect it to be an expensive, low volume card. At least until the market changes. This is the situation and it is the best way to go about it

 

[Xed]

I hope nvidia will allow custom designs this go around for Titan cards.

 

[Keysplayr]

Ocre. Single best post I've seen in a long while here.

 

[destrekor]

Ocre. Single best post I've seen in a long while here.

Indeed. Terrific post that seemingly captures the reality of the market and the complexity of the situation.

As much as some might argue that Nvidia's best interest would be killing AMD's GPU division, that is hardly the case. It's situations like these that allow them to make money and steer clear of legal issues by owning the market. And much like AMD/Intel out-compete each other and often focus on different market segments, so to will AMD/Nvidia over the course of time. And ultimately, both of them need the other to challenge them from time to time, because this allows them to get customers to buy new product. By competing, they increase the pace of innovation, which increases the pace of generational improvements, thus increasing the pace at which the product is bought. Higher annual revenue is always the goal at these behemoths.

 

[Silverforce11]

Imagine if NV bring the hammer down on AMD with GM204 at $250 and $400. AMD won't be able to sell any Tonga or Hawaii SKUs without making a loss.

Then the final blow would be GM206 at $175. AMD = dead, single digit marketshare and bleeding cash, damaged beyond repair for many generations.

It becomes a monopoly. NV won't have any competition anymore, just like Intel (@destrekor, Intel has no competition in their core market!) on the CPU side. They release iterations with 5-10% performance gains each year, slotting it in the same high margin segment. They don't even have to try to innovate and still remain in total control of the market.

There's one risk to that strategy: AMD in its dying woes will sell off the GPU IP and division to someone more capable of management, such as Samsung or Apple...

That would be a terrible situation actually. NV would not like competing with giants in their niche.

 

[escrow4]

I purchased a Titan for $1200 or so, then returned it, got something AMD, got rid of that for a 780 Ti GHz at a bit over $900 or so, still waiting for a decent $1K replacement. Not this mid range rubbish. What happened to the love for the ultra enthusiasts? I'll spend in 5min what 4 GTX 960 buyers will . . . .

 

[5150Joker]

There's one risk to that strategy: AMD in its dying woes will sell off the GPU IP and division to someone more capable of management, such as Samsung or Apple...

That would be a terrible situation actually. NV would not like competing with giants in their niche.

I doubt Samsung would be interested but a company like Qualcomm might and that's something NVIDIA probably doesn't want and might be why they haven't been more aggressive against AMD. As long as they keep AMD contained at 30% market and they can sell $1k Titans, all is good in the world for NVIDIA in their niche market until they can expand more w/their Tegras.

Edit: Just caught this on AT's front page: http://anandtech.com/show/8913/amd-reports-q4-fy-2014-and-full-year-results Things are looking very bleak for AMD. Fortunately they are divesting from the PC space so that might save them or it might not. Clearly on the GPU side of things, they aren't doing good at all:

Computing and Graphics segment had a net revenue for Q4 of $662 million, down 15% from Q3 and down 16% from Q4 2013.

Releasing 300W parts are good and well for the 1% enthusiast market that me and a few others fall into but it doesn't help AMD with design wins that they badly need, especially in the laptop market where they are completely absent in the mid or high end. NVIDIA can release chips like GM200 and get away with it because they were smart enough to create an efficient archiecture that scales so well. Before I came back to desktop gaming, I was heavily into laptop gaming during med school and all I bought were high end Alienwares. At first AMD was doing ok with 4870m/5870m/6970m (I owned all 3 in Crossfire) but by the time 7970m rolled around, they had fallen so behind in driver support and performance that NVIDIA just eclipsed them. They haven't recovered since then and hardly anyone looks at AMD now or takes them seriously - and that is perilous for AMD's C&G division considering gaming notebooks make up a big chunk of revenue now. Just look at how well Maxwell was received - people are rushing out and paying $900 for a 980m MXM card and high end gaming laptops with 970m/980m can't be built fast enough.