Tuesday, 06 March 2012 10:27
Kepler 256-bit, faster in DX11 games than 7970
Written by Fuad Abazovic
Small chip but powerful
Kepler is real, people have seen it, editors are getting cards and even notebooks based on it as we speak, and the launch happens later this month.
We can confirm a few things now. Kepler has a 256-bit memory interface and the fastest one to launch in the second half of March is GK104. The GK106 and GK108 are also on the way, and of course they will end up slower than GK104.
The GK104 is much smaller than Tahiti, Radeon HD 7970 family and according to our intel it should end up faster in some cases. In all DirectX 11 games, Nvidia’s GK104 based Kepler card should end up faster, at least this is what a few sources are confirming.
Nvidia is producing its 28nm GK104 chips for a while and the focus is on big OEMs, especially notebook manufacturers, but there will be plenty of add-in-board partners to have cards on launch, at least until they sell out.
Sources close to Nvidia are confident that the green team will win this round, but as always let’s take this with a grain of salt. Either way, AMD already has 28nm products in the shops and it commands a clear lead over Nvidia, so there is a lot of catching up to do.
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