14 DAY TRIAL // Graphics adapters can be really troublesome things to make, but that hasn't stopped Advanced Micro Devices and NVIDIA from one-upping each other over the years anyway. In fact, it has only spurned them further, to the point where NVIDIA is already designing the top-tier Maxwell-based board.
Admittedly, this has been coming since the early days of the year, when NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti, powered by the GM107 graphics processing unit.
It was a sort of trial run for the technology, since NVIDIA expected something bad to go down with the 20nm process technology, meaning it likely would have to redesign the Maxwell architecture for 28nm.
Fast forward to the present day, and indeed, TSMC has proven unable to deliver on the 20nm production line needs that both NVIDIA and AMD have.
Thus, the two video device makers have to use the same fabrication process they employed for the current-generation GPU collections. The two could have just delayed the products for another half a year or so, but they have been putting it off for long enough.
Anyway, NVIDIA is expected to launch the Maxwell-based range of video cards before the end of next month. We wouldn't be surprised if we saw a GeForce GTX 800 GPU at the IFA 2014 trade show in Berlin, Germany.
Today, though, the GeForce GTX 870 and 880 based on the GM204 are not the ones on our mind. Instead, it is the GeForce GTX Titan II, powered by the fabled GM200.
Until now, it was believed that the flagship GPU GM200 would be held in reserve until mid-2015 or so, with GeForce GTX 880 holding the fort in the meantime.
According to Zauba.com, however, the GM200 has already been taped out, at least the early A1 revision GPUs and engineering samples.
That means that the GeForce GTX Titan II, if it even ends up called that, could reach the market in the first half of 2015, earlier than the time that GM200 was pegged for. It depends on whether or not late winter holiday chip wafer yields are good enough.
Indeed, even if shipments only begin at some point in 2015, the GeForce GTX Titan II could be “launched” by this Christmas. It's probably make-believe, but stranger things have happened, like the coming into existence of chihuahuas.
The GM200 will have a 512-bit memory interface and over 4,000 CUDA cores, but nothing else is known about it for now.
