Published in Graphics

The next Geforce doesn’t use HBM 2

by on13 June 2017


Too early for this memory

Volta is out for artificial intelligence, machine learning applications and it will be shipping in DGX 1 systems, mainly for deep learning and AI. The next Geforce will be a  completely separate chip. 

Of course, Nvidia won't jump and manufacture a high end Geforce card with 21 billion transistors. That would be the Volta that Nvidia CEO Jensen launched back in May. That would be both risky and expensive. One of the key reasons is that Nvidia doesn’t really have to push the technology possibilities as GP102 based 1080 Ti and Titan Xp look really good.

Our well-informed sources tell us that the next Geforce will not use HBM 2 memory. It is too early for that, and the HBM 2 is still expensive. This is, of course, when you ask Nvidia, as AMD is committed to make the HBM 2 GPU - codenamed Vega for more than a year now. Back with "Maxwell", Nvidia committed to a  better memory compression path and continued to do so with Pascal.

Next Geforce is GDDR5X

The next Geforce - and its actual codename is still secret - will use GDDR5X memory as the best solution around. We can only speculate that the card is even Volta architecture Geforce VbG. The big chip that would replace the 1080 ti could end up with the Gx104 codename. It is still too early for the rumored GDDR6, that will arrive next year at the earliest. 

All eyes are on AMD, as we still have to see the Vega 10 launching. At the last financial analyst conference call, the company committed to launch the HBM 2 based Vega GPU at Siggraph. This year, Siggraph takes place between July 30 and August 3.

AMD’s lack of a higher end card doesn’t really help its financial cause as you need high margin cards to improve your overall sales profits. The fact that the Radeon RX 570 and 580 are selling for miners definitely helps the RTG. The Radeon Technology Group is selling all they can make, and this is a good place to be. The delay for Vega is not so appealing, but again, if this card ends up being a good miners' card, gamers might have a hard time getting them at all. 

Last modified on 13 June 2017
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