NVIDIA has the single-GPU performance crown sown up in the form of the GTX Titan, but those pesky dual-GPU cards are still causing the some problems when it comes to the fastest single card in the form of the AMD dual-Tahiti XT partner cards and NVIDIA's own GTX 690. With the anticipated release of the AMD HD7990 'Malta' some time this week it appears that NVIDIA have been cooking up something special based on the GK110.
German enthusiast site 3dCenter.org are reporting that two new SKUs will be on the way, starting this summer with the GTX Titan LE. This slightly semi-skimmed version of the Titan will have a GK110 core with some core components fused off, knocking down the number of CUDA cores to 2496 from 2688 and the memory bandwidth from 384bit to 320bit. Accordingly the amount of GDDR5 memory will be reduced to 5GB in this configuration, although reference core frequencies should be unchanged. Furthermore, the number of Raster Engines may also be dropped to four (from five). It's not clear how much of an impact the changes will have on performance, but either way should be be significantly faster than the GTX680 whilst still offering NVIDIA-exclusive technologies that AMD cannot provide.
The benefits to the consumer are two-fold - a reduced MSRP compared to GTX Titan to around €650, making it more affordable if still a pricey card. Additionally the TDP should be down significantly, as much as 10%, potentially leading to more overclocking overhead or higher GPU Boost frequencies.
Later in the year or early next year will come the GTX Titan II/Ultra, apparently to go up against the anticipated release of the top-end HD8000-series. Whilst still based on the GK110 this should be a fuller-fat version, unlocking all the potential of the GK110 for the (very high-end) enthusiast market. All 2880 CUDA cores are believed to be unlocked on this SKU, almost double that of the GK104. Of core frequency - as high as 950MHz at reference speeds compared to 837MHz for the vanilla Titan (my, it seems odd saying that). Price will equally high, hitting the €1000 point whilst also hearalding price drops for the rest of the Titan range.
Of course, until more firm details come in this should be taken with more than a pinch of salt, however it does seem logical considering what we know of the architecture of the GK110 GPU. As for the rest of NVIDIA's range this year, we early await the coming months as whispers of new SKUs are heard on the wind which may be set to go to-to-toe with the 8000-series long before the latter comes to market.
Source: 3DCenter.org via Techpowerup
