The company seems determined to leave AMD in the metaphorical dust

Mar 2, 2012 07:43 GMT  ·  By

NVIDIA has been conveying bits and pieces of information about Kepler, directly or indirectly for months now, so we aren't overly surprised to hear of another ambitious claim.

Going by what the Santa Clara, California-based company has been saying about its next-generation graphics platform, Kepler is supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread, figuratively speaking (we guess).

The most recent statement to that effect comes from NVIDIA Italy, and is basically summarized as “Patience. Patience. The moment it shows up, nothing will be able to beat it.”

Though we are honestly excited, we aren't going to hold our breath, not after learning of the potential 300W TDP (thermal design power).

In addition, the company is taking a significant risk saying all these things, given what happened with the Fermi architecture.

After delaying its DirectX 11-capable cards for half a year after AMD released its first one, the GeForce GTX 400 series proved disappointing.

The GTX 480 was barely better in benchmarks than the AMD Radeon HD 5870 while needing much more power and working at a very high temperature.

It was such an underwhelming product, in fact, that the GTX 580 just barely restored its maker's reputation in the eyes of the high-end community.

Sure, quite a few people still bought the 480 and 470 cards by the time the 500 series came out, but benchmarks are benchmarks.

NVIDIA obviously sees this as well, because even if it doesn't like to admit it, AMD has been one-upping it for years now, even if only in how fast it is to bring new video boards to market.

Advanced Micro Devices already has the 28nm-based card collection out, minus the Pitcairn which should start selling this month (March, 2012).

Thus, by the time the first of the GXT 600 series shows up, AMD will have been selling its full 6000-series lineup for months.