It makes one wonder if anything at all will come of the chip

Oct 1, 2012 06:29 GMT  ·  By

We aren't certain if this information we stumbled upon is accurate or not, but we feel the implications of its potential validity are high enough to warrant a report on the matter.

OBR-Hardware website claims to have become privy to a very important piece of information regarding the GeForce GTX 780 graphics card.

That info is the identity of the graphics processing unit, or rather the knowledge that the chip will not, in fact, be used in the card's construction.

Ever since we saw the top-tier GeForce GTX 680 adapter using the GK104 chip instead of the GK110, we have assumed that an even stronger board would show up, based on the successor of the Fermi GF110.

Later leaks and speculations seemed to support this train of thought, but this newest leak, if the source really is as well informed as they say, suggests we may have been looking at the situation wrong.

OBR-Hardware says that the GeForce GTX 780 will not be powered by the GK110 GPU, but by a totally new core.

No information exists on this elusive product, nor on the video card itself. Then again, we didn't really expect to see any, not if the launch really is set for Easter 2013.

Speaking of which, when we found out the likely ETA for the next-generation adapter, we thought the Easter launch meant that GK110 would debut months from now as well, instead of arriving in December 2012.

If the GTX 780 ends up using a different GPU, it once again allows the possibility of GK110 making it to market before the current year is out. This would enable it, as part of Tesla supercomputing modules and Quadro professional boards, to stand against AMD's FirePro W9000.

The Tesla K20 will be the first GK110-powered product to sell. It was introduced back in August but had December as the release time frame, last time NVIDIA said anything about it openly.