14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 690 has had a good run, but with the GeForce GTX Titan and GTX 780 out and about, it hasn't been selling all that well. Which means that NVIDIA has to make another move.
Well, it doesn't have to do anything, but it knows well that it won't get any extra bragging rights on the high-end front without one, not before it unleashes the GeFofrce 800 line, and that's ages away.
Then there's that little report that Advanced Micro Devices will release the Radeon HD 9000 line of cards in a few weeks' time.
Given all of the above, it isn't a shock to learn that there is a good chance for an NVIDIA GK110-based dual-GPU card coming out soon.
Odds are high that the GeForce GTX 790 will be presented the same week that AMD unveils its Sea/Volcanic Islands adapters. So we're looking at some point in September or October.
According to VideoCardz, the product will cost over $1,000 / €1,000 and will be accompanied by a price cut to all other GK110 cards.
Besides the high-end card, the report says some other video controllers may come out too, most of them GK104/106 rebrands.
Entry-level cards with GK208 graphics processing units could become available as well. These will be most likely exclusive to PC OEMs, since DIY customers aren't about to get low-end add-in boards when they can just as easily cope with the iGPs of Intel chips, or AMD's integrated Radeon series.
Once all these debut, we'll have quite a few months to wait until the arrival of GeForce 800 boards based on 20nm GPUs.
Right now, the ETA is the first quarter of 2014, somewhere between February and March. Unless NVIDIA decides not to base the Maxwell GPUs on that node and produce them on 28nm Instead, like the Kepler.
Then again, the Santa Clara, California-based company might not have a choice, since TSMC could fail to reach 20nm technology by then.