14 DAY TRIAL // The much-awaited dual GPU, Kepler-based video card from Nvidia seems to be coming sooner than expected.
A downward chronometer is being displayed on Nvidia’s GeForce.com website that says the Kepler twins will see daylight on April 28th.
The rumored specifications of this dual GPU wonder are as following:
Stream Processors: 2 x 1536
Texture Units: 2 x 128
ROPs:2 x 32
Core Clock: ~ 700 MHz
Boost Clock: ~ 730MHz
Memory Clock: 6.008GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width: 2 x 256-bit
Frame Buffer: 4GB
TDP: ~ 380 W
Transistor Count: 6 Billion
Manufacturing Process: TSMC 28nm
Launch Price: ~ $799 (€607)
These specs are rumored all over the internet, but, in our opinion, they are much too conservatory when it comes to the graphics processing unit’s working frequency. A more realistic assumption would be an approximate 900 MHz GPU frequency with a 950 MHz Boost clock.
On the other hand, if the frequencies are so much lower, we shouldn't see a TDP much higher than 300W.
The high efficiency of Nvidia’s new Kepler architecture is again demonstrated by the GTX 690 model that comes to the market very fast, just one month after the launch of the single-GPU version.
We wish Nvidia to get very good scalability with its new multi GPU card as 800 USD is quite a significant amount of money for a gamer to spend and it would be a pity to still see gaming titles that don’t scale up the performance the buyer expects.
The high power consumption also means that a minimum 650 watts power supply unit is required to power the future system, but we highly recommend at least a 800W model.