The rumor is coming from Taiwanese contacts claiming that TSMC, the foundry that produces chips for Nvidia, is not prepared for a full-on 20nm chip production run.

NVIDIA’s next generation Maxwell core architecture based GeForce GTX 880, GeForce GTX 870 and GeForce GTX 860 will launch in October this year, as reported by GDM.OR.JP. The site which is part of one of the most major hardware retailers in Japan have been pretty accurate with their earlier leaks so we will assume that the October launch time-frame is quite accurate considering the launch was planned for Q4 2014 was narrowed down to October / November a few weeks ago and now we have a much more accurate schedule of NVIDIA’s Maxwell GPU launches.

The first two Maxwell cards to launch in the consumer market would be the high-performance GeForce GTX 880 and GeForce GTX 870. These cards will feature the GM204 core architecture which is the successor of the GK104/GK114 core from the Kepler generation. From little things we know thanks to the leaked PCB shot of NVIDIA’s alleged GeForce GTX 880 graphics card, we come to know that the core being used for the sample variant was GM204-INT41684-A1 however there has been a little variation in the codename and it is now called GM204-CS0-A1 (note that the CS stands for Consumer Sample) which means that final testing is under way and the chip will soon end up in the consumer market as the GeForce GTX 880. The chip is also the first of four variants which will make their way to the rest of the lineup including the GeForce GTX 870.

The GeForce GTX 870 on the other hand will be a cut down variant of the GK204 core featured on GeForce GTX 880 with some disabled SMM (Streaming Multiprocessor Maxwell) units.

Soon after launch, NVIDIA is expected to launch a third Maxwell graphics card aiming the more budget and gaming crowd, known as the GeForce GTX 860. The spiritual successor of NVIDIA’s most sold GeForce GTX 660 and GTX 760 graphics cards is said to enter the market in late October at a price point of around $299 US. Specifications and details are not known about this part but if the SKUs rumor is taken into consideration, then the GeForce GTX 860 might also end up with the GM204 core rather the GM206 core which is believed to end up with GTX 850 Ti and such parts. The rest of the lineup would be a mix of GM107 and GK208 chips. NVIDIA will not introduce a new low-end chip for a long time and hence they have chosen to rename their entry-level GK108 chip, GK208.

Before the first ‘CS’ entry which appeared on 12th August 2014, there had only been entries using the nomenclature ‘INT’ which means the core is meant for Internal Testing. Because green follows the same pattern we knew that once the INT chips were spotted the CS chips wouldn’t be that far behind and it looks like our waiting has paid off because the chips with the name GM200-CS0-A1 and GM200-CS1-A1 have been spotted, indicating that the GPU is now more or less ready. This core will have double the performance per watt of the GK110 core (as can be seen from the research paper) and we should see an amazing leap in gaming performance from 204 to 200. So the jump from Titan to the Titan II is shaping out to be pretty cool.

The GTX Titan II (or whatever it is called) should give you a minimum of 50% performance increase in Gaming in real life settings, seeing we are looking at a 100% boost in on-paper performance. Considering the fact that the research paper by Nvidia also claimed that the Titan II would be out before the end of 2014 means that the time line for this GPU is now more or less confirmed. I believe we are looking at a 2 Month launch window considering the history of the GM204 core.  That would put the the launch of the GM200 GPU somewhere around November, unless Nvidia manages to pull one on us and launch alongside GM204.

980 is 5-15% faster then the 290x on immature drivers while the system is consuming 150W less

Got bored this morning. Went out and bought this while waiting for its twin brother to fly in from the states.

how does your GTX680 with 2GB VRAM perform for CODAW?

mine was constantly being bombarded with 'Windows have detected you do not have enough memory bla bla"

crashes CODAW afterwards

and how long does it took for you to load a map?