back to article Nvidia shows off first 'Kepler' GPUs

Graphics chip and PC and server processor wannabe Nvidia is lifting the skirt a bit on its next-generation "Kepler" graphics processing units today as it starts talking about the feeds and speeds of its new GeForce graphics cards for desktop and notebook PCs. As Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang explained when he outed …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Tom 15

    Errm...

    Overclockers UK have the GTX 680 up for £420 inc. VAT.

    The GTX 580 launched at over £500 if I remember correctly.

    1. adnim

      Re: Errm...

      Which means that one could find a GTX680 at £380 if one shops around.

  2. Bob Howard

    "The promise that Huang made back in September 2013"

    Wow, looks like the Special Projects Bureau got the time machine working...

  3. TheTick

    Power consumption

    "Performance scales more or less linearly (okay, less) with the number of cores on a CPU or GPU, but power consumption and heat dissipation go up exponentially with clock speed."

    Nonsense - power consumption and heat dissipation go up exponentially with voltage, but linearly with clock speed. Agreed, you often need to boost voltage to reach the higher clock speeds, but 10% more clock speed = 10% more power used as I understand it.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Power consumption

      Ceterum censeo, that would be "quadratically with voltage"

    2. TRT Silver badge

      Re: Power consumption

      Dissipation, not consumption. IIRC that's governed by Yate's Law, which is something to do with the fourth power of the temperature differential.

    3. Roo

      Re: Power consumption

      "Nonsense - power consumption and heat dissipation go up exponentially with voltage, but linearly with clock speed."

      It depends.

      According to the databooks of yore the 74HC gates burnt power at f^n where n>1 of the frequency and the device physicists I lived & worked with way back when reckoned on a gate burning power at f^n. The V^2 model given in Wikipedia seems to make some sense but it is a fairly crude approximation and I suspect that the "activity factor" is often abused to fudge f^n (where n>1).

      YMMV...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    And the software is where ???

    I have two 580s in SLI, have had for over a year. I don't have a single DX11 game (Mass Effect 3 is DX9 for example) and therefore they are sorely underexploited. The games industry long since gave up on pushing the limits for PC games reliant upon state of the art GPUs in favour of dumbing down with console ports (one of the reasons the industry is in a bad way in my opinion). Without software to justify it's existence why should I upgrade to a 680, despite my general love of the technology and desire for the best equipment?!

    1. Bronek Kozicki
      Devil

      Re: And the software is where ???

      Three possible answers here:

      1. don't upgrade; it will make you feel better because of your own frugality;

      2. upgrade only for sake of improved power consumption; it could make you feel better because of your cards frugality, unlikely to pay off though.

      3. upgrade and then start buying new games; it will make you regret you did not wait for 690 !

      and me? I'm still using old Radeon 4870 and happy with it.

    2. adnim

      Re: And the software is where ???

      Yup..... I run at 1680x1050 and have yet to find a compelling reason to upgrade my 5850. I recently upgraded my CPU from E6400 to i5 2500k. This provided a far bigger performance boost in current games than upgrading the vid card would have done.

      1. Bronek Kozicki
        Pint

        Re: have yet to find a compelling reason to upgrade my 5850

        fair enough. You could of course upgrade your monitor to 1920x1024 and buy few really recent titles, but I would not bother either.

        Interesting thing about 680 is that, as far as software is concerned, this card seems to be optimized solely for games. Personally I'm more interested in GPU compute performance and thus find this card not very compelling.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. Nexox Enigma

          Re: have yet to find a compelling reason to upgrade my 5850

          Last video card upgrade for me was because I got a second monitor, and my trusty Nvidia 7800GT didn't have a wide enough video buffer... so I got a 9800GT, which can theoretically display 8096x8096 pixels.

          And I can play Quake 3 on native resolution. For all 9 minutes per month that I have free to play games. The rest of the time, it handles Fluxbox + hardware transparency with about a hundred windows spread across a dozen workspaces just fine. Which is all I need: Quake 3 and a hundred windows.

          It displeases me that there seem to be no more dual DVI-I cards out there that fit in a single slot, and have no aux power connector... HDMI and Display Port don't work so well with my CRTs...

      2. Shane 4

        Re: And the software is where ???

        Running at that resolution will use more cpu than gpu anyways,The lower the res the more work the cpu does

  5. Dave 126 Silver badge
    Holmes

    For a graphics-related company...

    I'm loving the c1995 dithered JPEG!

  6. b166er

    I suggest a fourth Bronek:

    Sell both 580's quickly before the word gets out and buy the 680, less power, less heat, less noise.

  7. Sithlord

    Will these cards be any good at Bitcoin mining / password cracking (hashcat)? Nvidia cards have been notoriously slow in these tasks compared to AMD.

  8. jason 7
    Meh

    Amazed at the frothing for the benchmarks in reviews.

    Seeing the tech boys going "Wow this card crucifies the AMD card!" when it does say 156fps compared to the AMDs 150fps and sometimes it's the other way around.

    Strange how people want to perceive things. I actually see each top range card release with growing disappointment as we no longer see the leaps we used to get say 10 years ago. Plus how much faster do you want to go once you get past 120FPS for those few with a 120Hz monitor?

    Also how many of them are happy to splash $500 on a new card that does an extra 8fps over the $500 card they bought 6 months ago.

    Some people need to stop scrounging off their parents, move out and get a life I reckon.

    1. Shane 4

      Re: Amazed at the frothing for the benchmarks in reviews.

      Some people are jealous I think. ;)

      Why move out to rent and pay off someone elses mortgage, Or buy a house and be in debt for next 50+ years for what a bit of privacy,Are they too scared to bring someone home?

      Yes I am one of those "losers", Drive around in hotted up car, Splurge on everything luxury and still save more money than most even though I am on low income, A few more years at home and I will buy a house outright, While all those who moved out in late teens or twenties will be still working for next 30+ years to try pay it off and giving banks extra money on interest.

      I reckon it was real estate agents or builders who must have come up with the "loser" notion, to keep people buying houses and economy moving.

      My folks happy to have me here I am happy to be there, Money stays in family we all win!

      Asians/Euorpeans all live together as long as possible and they have no problem with it, And they are the ones you see driving around in expensive cars or have latest tech which make others envious.

      I'll take the extra 8fps for an extra $500 thank you very much, Which in turn brings prices down for some of you debt people to afford, We all win.

      Try Heaven benchmark 3.0 on ultra/extreme settings in 3d on a large screen or multiple screens, You will see how much faster some of us want/neeeeeeeeed to go! You won't even get to 60fps let alone 120fps,Hell some of you might not even reach the needed 30fps for smooth play. lol

      1. jason 7
        Happy

        Re: Amazed at the frothing for the benchmarks in reviews.

        Chap,

        There is more to life than running benchmarks.

        Trust me, when you hit 40 you'll regret all that time wasted sitting at a keyboard. Especially if you are still living with mum.

        Just saying.

      2. Ragarath

        Re: Amazed at the frothing for the benchmarks in reviews.

        Quote: "Yes I am one of those "losers", Drive around in hotted up car, Splurge on everything luxury and still save more money than most even though I am on low income, A few more years at home and I will buy a house outright"

        Right your on a low income and can afford to buy all these "Splurge on everything luxury" and still buy a house outright. I call a load of brown smelly stuff. You are either on high income, your parents pay for everything, you don't pay rent (or very low) or you have a nice little trust fund.

        On the other hand you might be around 50 years old or so and actually have saved the few spare pounds after all that "luxury".

        1. Shane 4

          Re: Amazed at the frothing for the benchmarks in reviews.

          Low rent of course it's home,Yes money is invested in a few areas,No the income is borderline minimum wage, I work like a dog though,Any overtime available I take it!

          Don't drink,Don't smoke,No drugs(except gaming it's addictive)Clubbing days long gone but I am no where near 50 lol

          Folks pay for everything,No I wouldn't say that I just spent 10k went thirds on replacing rotted windows for double glazed UPVC! I am telling you now, If you are young don't friggin' move out just because others say so and put money away,You might get a shock how much you have after 10+ years! You could buy that new car or have deposit for block of land or house.

          Interest from even just a crappy bank savings account will net you a new high end pc every year for life if you got a decent amount in there, Not that hard just time. How many of you spend an easy $20+ a week on junk food? Thats 1k a year now times that by 10 years, 10k on shit food, Or if you are old maybe you have been doing that for 30 years? There is 30k a cars worth of junk food.That is just one example of where money is easily wasted without most people thinking about where it goes, How many drive to the shops yet you probably could walk and save money, Hell my neighbour gets in car just to drive down to corner milk bar it's quite rediculous but his choice, List is endless.

          I make sacrifices in other areas so I can splurge on my pc/car hobbies,Simple as that,Nothing magical and no I don't just eat a bowl of rice and a cup of water each day.

          My point is people judge online without having met me, Yet I am the type that would buy dinner for a total stranger even on my shit wage,Hell I even once shouted a friend to a certain establishment back in our days,ahem. :)

          Anyways back to what matters,The cards!!!!!

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Amazed at the frothing for the benchmarks in reviews.

            Living at home and not paying 'market value' rent is not a sacrifice. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with it, but it's dishonest to say you're sacrificing. Your parents were the ones that sacrificed and your reaping benefits from that. It's like my g.f.'s father buying her a new car every 6-7 years or her parents paying for her rent up until she moved into my apt. Of course she should have money in the bank, she's had no real financial responsibilities. My mom used to skip meals when we were younger so we had enough to eat because 'dad' was irresponsible and the courts seemed to think $13/week to support two kids (he didn't pay) was enough. That is sacrifice (the mom part, not the dad part). Stopping at the stores on my way home from work is frugal and less wasteful, but it isn't sacrifice.

          2. IronTed

            Re: Amazed at the frothing for the benchmarks in reviews.

            I gave Shane another thumbs-up lol!

  9. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Bronek Kozicki

      Re: The question I have is:

      Answer I spotted in reviews: apparently not. This seems to be best improvement, and possible reason for upgrade - let's call it "fourth Bronek" ;)

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    re: efficient performance, while consuming the least possible energy

    Then, why the big fan?

    :-/

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: re: efficient performance, while consuming the least possible energy

      A large and slow fan is much quieter than a small and fast one even if they move the same mass of air.

      So you want a big fan if you can.

      In my desktop the GPU fan is the only audible one, and it's by far the smallest.

      At some point I will have to sort that out.

  11. P. Lee

    Next driver

    will be larger screens and higher resolutions rather than pushing way past 120fps. 24" still aren't too common (though they should be). At 27" you might be in trouble trying to fit more than one on a desk. 2x24" is probably better than 1x27".

    As tablet sales show, people are less concerned with performance tweaks and more concerned with utility now.

    I'm after 3x27" so I can sit in the middle and look out the front and side windows. I might need to upgrade my 9800GT though...

  12. Retron
    Thumb Down

    Those with eagle eyes will have spotted that the 680 is based on GK104, which would suggest it would otherwise have been released as the 660 - just as the 460 used the GF104 and the 560 used the GF114. There's no sign of the "full", 384-bit memory bus GK110 GPU - I daresay nVidia are holding that back for the summer, having benefited from selling an ostensibly mid-range GPU at a premium price.

  13. emmanuel goldstein
    Thumb Up

    Please can we have more die shots in future on el reg

    they're cool.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like