Nvidia GeForce GTX 680: Kepler-based, dynamic “Turbo Boost,” arriving this month

At CeBIT, world’s largest computer expo in the world (as opposed to CES, which is consumer electronics), details of the first Kepler-powered Nvidia graphics card, the GeForce GTX 680, have leaked out. It is expected to launch by the end of March and will probably cost upwards of $500.

Based on the GK104 core, the GTX 680 will be Nvidia’s first 28nm part (not pictured above). While the use of a GK104 core (as opposed to GK107 or GK110) would suggest that this will be the GTX 660 Ti, multiple manufacturers at CeBIT have confirmed that this first part will be a full-fat GTX 680, and, if Nvidia isn’t overplaying its hand, competitive with AMD’s Radeon HD 7950 and 7970, both of which are currently the fastest single-GPU cards on the block. The same sources say that a GK107-based card should arrive in April, and the GK110 sometime in the summer.

And now the most important bit: Specs. The GK104/GTX 680 will have 1536 CUDA cores and a 256-bit memory controller connected to 2GB of GDDR5 memory (4GB will be an option). The core will sit at 705MHz, while the shaders will be clocked at 1.4GHz. The memory will be clocked at 2GHz QDR (6GHz effective) and should be capable of 192GB/s. There’s no information on the GK107, but the GK110 is expected to have 2304 shader cores. It is rumored that the GTX 680 will be slightly faster than the HD 7970 in some tests, and slightly slower in others.

There has been a little confusion over whether Kepler would feature dynamic clock speed adjustment, but now its presence seems to have been confirmed. According to VR-Zone, the dynamic clock (née “hot clocks”) will be a lot like Intel’s Turbo Boost, with the GK104 core being capable of bursts up to 950MHz. There will also be the introduction of a 300MHz low-power state (music to my ears!)

In other news, the GTX 680 was demoed yesterday at the Game Developers Conference by Mark Rein of Epic Games. He ran the Unreal Engine 3 Samaritan demo on a single GTX 680; a feat that required three GTX 580s this time last year.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 680: Kepler-based, dynamic “Turbo Boost,” arriving this month