Trio of Nvidia Pascal GP104 SKUs to launch in June says report

[HEXUS]

Directly replacing the top consumer graphics cards; the GeForce GTX 980Ti, 980 and 970.

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[cheesemp]

Exciting. For the first time in my life I have the money to buy a new higher end card (1070). Wonder if I should grab a 1070 or wait a couple of months to see what AMD can do? I expect AMD will be better Dx12 wise but is it worth the wait...

[jag272]

Gonna be interesting to see how they perform. I'm looking at buying a 70 series nvidia or 90 series amd soon to replace my aging 760, though it is still plenty sufficient to wait around a bit. If the performance difference is significant I may upgrade to this series, if not I might just wait for HBM2. My concern from the other news post still stands, this release feels a little half baked since we know HBM2 is right around the corner too, but we'll see.

[scaryjim]

... Wonder if I should grab a 1070 or wait a couple of months to see what AMD can do? ...

You're making the fatal mistake of assuming the cards will be available to buy on the date they're "launched". And also that AMD's cards won't be ready then. "Launched" in June != available to buy in June. Either way, since we know both nvidia and AMD have new cards coming out this summer the only logically decision is to wait for both launches then pick the best value for money/features card...

[kalniel]

Exciting. For the first time in my life I have the money to buy a new higher end card (1070). Wonder if I should grab a 1070 or wait a couple of months to see what AMD can do? I expect AMD will be better Dx12 wise but is it worth the wait...

It's usually worth waiting until both are in the same market - early products carry a high premium that reduces quite rapidly once competition is present. How much depends on what AMD bring to the table (and what volume of cards they both bring - if low volume production then the price will stay high as they just sell what they make anyway).

I'm quite excited to see what AMD will be doing - I think it's going to be quite a leap.. and they've controlled their leaks very very well this time around - just actual product demos, which is impressive.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

http://laptopmedia.com/highlights/an...hat-to-expect/

We’ve all heard about AMD’s response to the NVIDIA’s Pascal generation CPUs but not all had the chance to test the new GPUs. Luckily, we were able to get our hands on an early engineering sample of what is believed to be an AMD Radeon Polaris 10 series GPU. 10 means that the GPU is used in consoles and notebooks and in our case – a notebook.

The laptop we have is considered to be low to mid-range notebook so the chances are that we are not testing the high-end model. However, it will give us a good grasp of what’s to come from AMD’s Polaris generation and how will compete in the mid-range segment against NVIDIA’s Pascal counterparts.

One of the most notable features we are really excited about is the brand new GCN 4 architecture that brings tons of new features including the well-known instruction pre-fetch, which is found in the CPU industry. Along with the GCN 4, the company finally goes 14nm on its graphic chips using the FinFET manufacturing technology process. This will decrease the overall power consumption at idle and at load while limiting the leakage of current and lower heat dispersion.

We are eager to test out the full potential of the GPU so expect full set of test and a full review in the coming days or week.

Probably means Polaris 11 - so already in laptops.

[iLax]

It's usually worth waiting until both are in the same market - early products carry a high premium that reduces quite rapidly once competition is present. How much depends on what AMD bring to the table (and what volume of cards they both bring - if low volume production then the price will stay high as they just sell what they make anyway).

I'm quite excited to see what AMD will be doing - I think it's going to be quite a leap.. and they've controlled their leaks very very well this time around - just actual product demos, which is impressive.

I think you're right, early adopters must be willing to pay the premium but for most users it will be worth the wait.

There's always the chance that AMD's cards will be a step ahead or behind of the pascal gpu's which would have less of an impact on price competition.

[DanceswithUnix]

My concern from the other news post still stands, this release feels a little half baked since we know HBM2 is right around the corner too, but we'll see.

The 980ti works perfectly well with GDDR5, so we know any card of that performance or lower doesn't *need* HBM2. But then at 16nm the caches will likely be bigger, so I expect the boundary where you need HBM2 will be somewhat faster than 980ti.

So I am expecting HBM2 to be nice to have, but can't see it being a deal breaker. Not at the sort of graphics card cost that I go for.

[gingerninja7]

...Wonder if I should grab a 1070 or wait a couple of months to see what AMD can do?...

It's always worth waiting a few months to stabilise, and even if you can stand the waiting I'd at least wait until both AMD and nVIDIA have their cards out.

Personally, I'm waiting until November/December for a new card, and that's if I feel they're worth the price they're asking for... If not I'll wait longer for Vega/ Big Pascal to show up and push pricing on the parts coming this year down a little more.

[jag272]

The 980ti works perfectly well with GDDR5, so we know any card of that performance or lower doesn't *need* HBM2. But then at 16nm the caches will likely be bigger, so I expect the boundary where you need HBM2 will be somewhat faster than 980ti.

So I am expecting HBM2 to be nice to have, but can't see it being a deal breaker. Not at the sort of graphics card cost that I go for.

Ye thats pretty much my stance, if the performance of 16nm is good i'll just get it regardless of HBM, as I won't be gaming at massively high res, so capacity for HD textures probably matters more to me, but HBM is appealing for the apparent efficiency.

Indeed though, the current top end cards can run everything well aslong asits not an absurd res, so we don't really NEED the new VRAM yet, just a nice thing to have, and may bring high res gaming down in price to more affordable gpus.

[scaryjim]

... HBM is appealing for the apparent efficiency. ...

I think that probably tails off as you move down the performance stack though - ISTR an estimate of a 20W saving for HBM1 vs. an equivalent GDDR5 interface, but that's at the top end of the performance stack, where AMD's cards had 512bit memory interfaces (and would need more than that to match the HBM1 bandwidth). Once you scale down to a card with a 128bit interface and a 75W TDP, saving 5W or less probably isn't worth the extra hassle of interposers and the extra expense of HBM. I have no doubt that we'll eventually see HBM on lower end cards, but lets not forget that - almost 8 years after GDDR5 first debuted on a high end card - both AMD and NVidia are still putting out cards with DDR3 memory into the mainstream discrete market. And the DDR3 - GDDR5 switch is nowhere near as complex as the GDDR5 - HBM one. Those lower segments are hugely price-sensitive. I'm pretty sure both nvidia and AMD would rather save $1 on the street price of a mainstream card v 5W on the TDP....

[jag272]

I think that probably tails off as you move down the performance stack though - ISTR an estimate of a 20W saving for HBM1 vs. an equivalent GDDR5 interface, but that's at the top end of the performance stack, where AMD's cards had 512bit memory interfaces (and would need more than that to match the HBM1 bandwidth). Once you scale down to a card with a 128bit interface and a 75W TDP, saving 5W or less probably isn't worth the extra hassle of interposers and the extra expense of HBM. I have no doubt that we'll eventually see HBM on lower end cards, but lets not forget that - almost 8 years after GDDR5 first debuted on a high end card - both AMD and NVidia are still putting out cards with DDR3 memory into the mainstream discrete market. And the DDR3 - GDDR5 switch is nowhere near as complex as the GDDR5 - HBM one. Those lower segments are hugely price-sensitive. I'm pretty sure both nvidia and AMD would rather save $1 on the street price of a mainstream card v 5W on the TDP....

Ye most likely, depends quite how far they take it. I would personally like to see the x70 series get HBM2, as I think the nvidia 70s and amd 90s will be my choice from now on.

That said, I suspect on the first round we'll see HBM2 on the x80, x80 ti and the titan, and AMD counterparts, probably gddr5x on the 70 and maybe the 60. That said if gddr5x is as easy a change as they say, it might just be a blanket replacement.

[kalniel]

That said, I suspect on the first round we'll see HBM2 on the x80, x80 ti and the titan, and AMD counterparts, probably gddr5x on the 70 and maybe the 60. That said if gddr5x is as easy a change as they say, it might just be a blanket replacement.

*if* this report is right, then x80 will be among the first pascal cards available, so I think it's not going to be HBM2. It also doesn't make sense if nVidia keep the 70 as a cut down version of the 80, it's more likely they'll have the same memory interface.

[jag272]

*if* this report is right, then x80 will be among the first pascal cards available, so I think it's not going to be HBM2. It also doesn't make sense if nVidia keep the 70 as a cut down version of the 80, it's more likely they'll have the same memory interface.

Ahhh, by x80 i mean just the 80 series, rather than the 1080, should have clarified that, apologies. x80 more likely referring to 1180 in this case, if they don't change names then.

[scaryjim]

... I suspect on the first round we'll see HBM2 on the x80, x80 ti and the titan ....

I was quite sceptical to see the 1080 Ti being touted as a GP104 card. For both the 700 and 900 Series the x80 has been the smaller die, and the x80 Ti the larger die. So I'd expect to see a GTX 1080 based on the GP104, with the GTX 1080 Ti following later and being based on GP100 (or maybe GP110, depending on yields).

*shrug* as usual, keep a box of Maldon handy until the things actually launch...!

[kalniel]

I was quite sceptical to see the 1080 Ti being touted as a GP104 card. For both the 700 and 900 Series the x80 has been the smaller die, and the x80 Ti the larger die. So I'd expect to see a GTX 1080 based on the GP104, with the GTX 1080 Ti following later and being based on GP100 (or maybe GP110, depending on yields).

*shrug* as usual, keep a box of Maldon handy until the things actually launch...!

But if nVidia can charge 980ti prices for a 980 class card.. they will

Perhaps the performance gains are significant enough they think they can. Perhaps the report is wrong about card codes - I wouldn't be hugely surprised to find we have a 1080, 1070 and something else, like a small form factor chip to beat Fury for VR systems, or a laptop chip.