The info on the GK110, GK114 and GK116 doesn't fit previous reports

Oct 17, 2012 06:27 GMT  ·  By

A fairly lengthy report has emerged regarding the next generation of graphics cards that NVIDIA is preparing, a group that promises a good increase in cost-performance ratio, among other things.

One of the things we have noticed about the information published by 3DCenter.org is that it clashes with data we have previously encountered.

Less than a week ago, it was said that the GeForce GTX 780, the flagship Kepler model that would replace the GeForce GTX 680, would use the GK114 GPU, not the GK110.

Before that, a different source said, similarly, that the card would use a different chip than the GK110.

Now, though, 3DCenter.org states that the GK110 will indeed power the GeForce GTX 780, with its 2888 CUDA cores, 7.1 billion transistors and 384-bit GDDR5 interface.

Compared to GTX 680, performance will supposedly be 40-55% higher, even as the price remains the same ($499-599 / 499-599 Euro). A far cry from the 15% rise that AMD's Sea Islands GPUs will have compared to HD 7000.

The GK114 is expected to cover the upper mainstream market, the so-called performance segment, and has the same specifications, more or less, as the GK104. Clock speed modifications will, thus, be the source of whatever performance boon the GPU has over its precursor.

We can't imagine the GTX 760 and 760 Ti debuting without a clear advantage over the GTX 660 and 660 Ti, especially if the claims about GK110 are true.

The last processor in the collection, called GK116, will power the GTX 750 Ti. Like the GK114, it has the same component layout as its forebear, but better frequencies.

All in all, the claims are very ambitious, which makes us wonder if perhaps the previous rumors are actually the true ones. NVIDIA could very well decide to use the GK104 as its top consumer GPU and keep the overpowered GK110 as the chip employed in professional/HPC supercomputing modules (Tesla K20).