TPU: nVidia readies 1660TI

ZGR

Platinum Member
Oct 26, 2012
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What a weird naming scheme. It is so weird I have trouble believing it. I hope I'm wrong, because these names are hilarious.

"This new series could feature SKU number such as 1660, 1550, 1330. Anything goes as long as it's <2000. So NVIDIA runs two parallel client-segment families, GTX 10-series, and RTX 20-series."

Quote from link above.
 

sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
70,085
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What a weird naming scheme. It is so weird I have trouble believing it. I hope I'm wrong, because these names are hilarious.

"This new series could feature SKU number such as 1660, 1550, 1330. Anything goes as long as it's <2000. So NVIDIA runs two parallel client-segment families, GTX 10-series, and RTX 20-series."

Quote from link above.

Ya, it's awkward, but it does create a clear distinction between them and the 20x0 line. Even more awkward though are the 2 lines having such different feature sets. I don't recall this ever happening in the Market before. Probably just a one time thing, once performance is good enough at the bottom to make Tensor cores useful.
 

Qwertilot

Golden Member
Nov 28, 2013
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The Tensor cores - if they keep them in as per rumour above - should be really quite useful (on these cards) for DLSS. Ray Tracing rather less so!
 

beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
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Sounds good at first until you realize your getting 5th tier performance for previous 3rd tier pricing. I woudl rather see RTX2060 performacne for $250 but we all know why they aren't offering that.
 

happy medium

Lifer
Jun 8, 2003
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Sounds good at first until you realize your getting 5th tier performance for previous 3rd tier pricing. I woudl rather see RTX2060 performacne for $250 but we all know why they aren't offering that.

Well it will be 18% faster than a gtx1060 for $20 less than a AIB gtx 1060 or $50 less than the 1060 FE edition.

If its $250 it will be 10% faster than a rx590 and cost $30 less.

Lets examine the performance tiers.....
gtx1080ti tier 1
1080 tier 2
1070ti tier 3
1070 tier 4
1060 6gb tier 5

2080ti tier 1
2080 tier 2
2070 tier 3
2060 tier 4
1160 tier 5 (faster than a gtx980ti.)
 

PeterScott

Platinum Member
Jul 7, 2017
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I believe that is the original story that spawned the TPU article.

This is definitely along the lines of expectation. In general the expectation was that the low end chips would not be RTX.

The naming is odd, but they want to clearly differentiate that it is between 10 and 20 series.

This looks like the true inheritor to the x60 cards, and would be nice little bump in perf/$ if priced like the 1060.

But given the current stagnation in Perf/$, I expect it will be $300. :(
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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This looks like the true inheritor to the x60 cards, and would be nice little bump in perf/$ if priced like the 1060.

But given the current stagnation in Perf/$, I expect it will be $300. :(

I could see them launching at $300 just because AMD has no real competition. The 590 is bad value and this should easily beat it.

It also gives NVidia the option to cut prices later in response to Navi and makes the $350 2060 look like a much better value on top of that.

Maybe we’ll get something in the middle like $280.
 

Leadbox

Senior member
Oct 25, 2010
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Is it possible that nvidia were expecting Navi parts to come out at CES or shortly after and they had this ready to go up against it? Could go someway to explaining JHH's unprofessional reaction to Vega VII?
 

Qwertilot

Golden Member
Nov 28, 2013
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No. Timing on these nothing to do with AMD, everything to do with needing to get rid of the ex crypto boom card mountain :(

In more normal times we'd probably have already had these cards.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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Is it possible that nvidia were expecting Navi parts to come out at CES or shortly after and they had this ready to go up against it? Could go someway to explaining JHH's unprofessional reaction to Vega VII?

There were some rumors that AMD would have liked to show Navi at CES. They allegedly had early silicon back from TSMC in October so it's reasonable to assume from NVidia's perspective that AMD would show it at CES.

I think that it's fairly reasonable to assume that Navi needed a respin since there was nothing said at CES. The article above indicated that the early sample was performing better than expected, but that doesn't mean there weren't some critical issues that needed to be resolved.

Since it doesn't look like we'll see Navi until summer, it must have been something major or at least large enough to require new masks and they probably want to be able to make another round of adjustments on top of that.

Depending on how long it took to identify and fix the flaw, AMD might not have even had working silicon back to demo at CES, which would prevent them from showing anything off entirely. Radeon VII was rumored to be a potential panic response from AMD to have something to compete against high-end Turing, but this could be a similar response from NVidia to have something to sell into the low end of the market and go up against whatever AMD might have there.
 
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Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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No. Timing on these nothing to do with AMD, everything to do with needing to get rid of the ex crypto boom card mountain :(

In more normal times we'd probably have already had these cards.

I'm not sure how releasing this helps with that problem though? It would almost make it more difficult for them to move 1060 GPUs without taking a major bath on them.

It makes more sense that NVidia started to ramp production on these under the assumption that AMD would be talking about Navi at CES and would have cards of their own to target the $200 - $400 part of the market.

If they knew several months ago that AMD wouldn't have Navi ready for CES, there's no reason for NVidia to put these into production while there are still a load of 1060's they need to get rid of first.
 
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PeterScott

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Jul 7, 2017
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I think that it's fairly reasonable to assume that Navi needed a respin since there was nothing said at CES. The article above indicated that the early sample was performing better than expected, but that doesn't mean there weren't some critical issues that needed to be resolved.

It doesn't looke like a reasonable assumption to me.

It looks like believing in fake rumors, then rationalizing why the fake rumors don't turn out true.

Navi was never intended to arrive at CES. Vega 7 was not a "panic response". It was always intended to be both a Pro card and a consumer gaming card.
 
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Mopetar

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Jan 31, 2011
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It doesn't looke like a reasonable assumption to me.

It looks like believing in fake rumors, then rationalizing why the fake rumors don't turn out true.

Unless you have any reliable well to determine which rumors are true and which are false, you're only doing the same thing and rationalizing after the fact.

We know that plans change and products are delayed (or outright canceled) all the time. It's hardly an unreasonably assumption.

Navi was never intended to arrive at CES.

The first part you have no way of knowing, so you're just rationalizing after the fact. If you look further back at information AMD themselves verified, they were clearly looking to have Navi available sooner if possible.

Vega 7 was not a "panic response". It was always intended to be both a Pro card and a consumer gaming card.

The only reason that AMD can even sell Radeon VII is because NVidia jacked up their own prices with Turing.

It's one card at the far end of the "consumer" market. There's no product stack, it is just Radeon VII and the rumors are that there might not even be more than 20,000 of them sold.

It's basically another Frontier Edition card at best. It's not even good as a stopgap. It only makes sense to show it off at all if you don't have anything else, because it's just that bad.
 

Qwertilot

Golden Member
Nov 28, 2013
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I'm not sure how releasing this helps with that problem though? It would almost make it more difficult for them to move 1060 GPUs without taking a major bath on them.

Which is why they’ve carefully waited until they’ve basically got tried of the backlog :) Otherwise we’d quite plausibly have seen these smaller cards months ago.

There were some recent articles where NV confirmed that the backlog of 1070 upwards was cleared, and the 1060 etc will be done relatively soon.

They’ve already stopped producing all the 10xx cards (of any size) so replacements obviously needed.
 

Roger Wilco

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Mar 20, 2017
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Here's my theory:

Once AMD saw the price/performance on the Turing cards, they realized that they could still easily continue selling their existing cards at current prices for a short but profitable window of time. Navi will likely invalidate much of their existing consumer GPU product stack, so they decided to continue milking existing Vega and Polaris, refresh Polaris again, and do a die shrink of Vega frontier edition.
 

PeterScott

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Jul 7, 2017
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Unless you have any reliable well to determine which rumors are true and which are false, you're only doing the same thing and rationalizing after the fact.

We know that plans change and products are delayed (or outright canceled) all the time. It's hardly an unreasonably assumption.

No, the reasonable position is to assume all rumors are false. So unless it was officially stated that Navi was going to be ready for CES, then it is unreasonable to assume a second made up theory, to cover the first rumor not coming true.

The first part you have no way of knowing, so you're just rationalizing after the fact. If you look further back at information AMD themselves verified, they were clearly looking to have Navi available sooner if possible.

That Link is mixing supposition with fact. All that Lisa Su actually confirms is that there are tapeouts. She does not say tapeouts are Navi: "We will be doing tape outs later this year and as we get closer to production will give more insights there. But the idea is to be more competitive throughout the portfolio."



The only reason that AMD can even sell Radeon VII is because NVidia jacked up their own prices with Turing.

It's one card at the far end of the "consumer" market. There's no product stack, it is just Radeon VII and the rumors are that there might not even be more than 20,000 of them sold.

Vega 7 was always planned as a consumer card. Lisu Su stated as much in a recent interview. It's again rumor and assumption that got it wrong, so now we get wild theories, when actual facts are out there.


But of course, you can choose to believer rumors mixed with your assumptions instead of the CEO.
 
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Innokentij

Senior member
Jan 14, 2014
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Vega 7 was always planned as a consumer card. Lisu Su stated as much in a recent interview. It's again rumor and assumption that got it wrong, so now we get wild theories, when actual facts are out there.

"states that it’s definitely not being planned for as a traditional gaming GPU. "

"His reasoning is sound on this – price. "

https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd-7nm-vega-not-for-gaming

Actually i agree with the other guy, nVidia enabled AMD to push out this bad value power hungry monster. Where is your god now?
 

GodisanAtheist

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Nov 16, 2006
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"states that it’s definitely not being planned for as a traditional gaming GPU. "

"His reasoning is sound on this – price. "

https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd-7nm-vega-not-for-gaming

Actually i agree with the other guy, nVidia enabled AMD to push out this bad value power hungry monster. Where is your god now?

-To be fair, your link is quoting a guy quoting another guy speculating on why there won't be a 7nm Vega consumer card... Not exactly an airtight argument.

On the other hand we have the CEO of AMD, who has to actually be responsible for what she says, stating there was always a roadmap for 7nm Vega in the consumer space.

That being said, being the market leader, NV gave a lot of room to AMD to price up their cards if they thought the performance would be there...
 

SPBHM

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Sep 12, 2012
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I think $300 would be way too much given the 2060 is $350, so it makes sense to go lower, maybe they will try something like $280 so they can still sell 1060s around $200

in any case I was surprised that the 2060 was $350 and not something like $400, so who knows...
but this card does make a lot of sense, RT takes a lot of die space and they need a cheaper card that is better than a 1060 I think.