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While we were off at NVIDIA’s GTC 2012 conference seeing NVIDIA’s latest professional products, NVIDIA’s GeForce group was busy with some launches of their own. The company has quietly launched the GeForce GT 610, GT 620, and GT 630 into the retail market. Unfortunately these are not the Kepler GeForce cards you were probably looking for.

As NVIDIA was already reusing Fermi GPUs for GeForce 600 series parts for the OEM laptop and desktop market, it was only a matter of time until this came over to the retail market, and that’s exactly what has happened. The GT 610, GT 620, and GT 630 are all based on Fermi GPUs, and in fact 2 of them are straight-up rebadges of existing GeForce 400 and 500 series cards. Worse, they’re not even consistent with their OEM counterparts – the OEM GT 620 and GT 630 are based off of different chips and specs entirely.

At the bottom of the 600 series retail stack is the GeForce GT 610, which is a rebadge of the GT 520. This means it’s either a GF119 GPU or cut-down GF108 GPU featuring a meager 48 CUDA Cores and a 64bit memory bus, albeit with a low 29W TDP as a result. This is truly a rock bottom card meant to be a cheap as possible upgrade for older computers, as even an Ivy Bridge HD4000 iGPU should be able to handily surpass it.

The second card is the GT 620, which is a variant of the OEM-only GT 530. With 96 CUDA cores we’re not 100% sure that this is GF108 as opposed to the 28nm GK117, but as NVIDIA currently has a 28nm capacity bottleneck we can’t see them placing valuable 28nm chips in low-end retail cards. Furthermore the 49W TDP perfectly matches the GF108 based GT 530. Compared to the OEM GT 620 the retail model has twice as many CUDA cores, so it has twice as much shader performance on paper, but because of the 64bit memory bus it’s going to be significantly memory bandwidth starved.

The final new 600 series card is the GT 630, which is a rebadge of the GT 440. Like the GT 440 this card comes in two variants, a model with DDR3 and a model with GDDR5. Both models are based on GF108 and have all 96 CUDA cores enabled, and have the same core clock of 810MHz. At the same time this is going to be the card that deviates from its OEM counterpart the most. The OEM GT 630 was a Kepler GK107 card, so this rules out getting a Kepler based GT 630 retail card any time in the near future.

As always, rebadging doesn’t suddenly make a good card bad – or vice versa – but it’s disappointing to once again see this mess transition over to the retail market. We hold to our belief that previous generation products are perfectly acceptable as they were, and that the desire to have yearly product numbers in an industry that is approaching 2 year product cycles is silly at its best, and confusing at its worst.

As earning season wraps up NVIDIA has released their earnings report for Q1 Fiscal Year 2013 (Feb-April 2012).

For the first quarter of FY2013 NVIDIA booked $924M in revenue, with a net income of $60M. This is compared to $962M in revenue with $135M in net income for Q1 of FY2012, meaing for a year-over-year basis NVIDIA’s revenue is slightly down while their net income has taken a larger hit.

Looking at NVIDIA’s revenue breakdown, the biggest hit was to NVIDIA’s consumer GPU business (GeForce), where revenues declined by $58M. Otherwise the professional solutions group (Tesla/Quadro) and consumer products (Tegra) were both up slightly compared to last year.

So why have revenues and profit margins fallen since Q1 FY2012? The biggest change for NVIDIA is that the next product cycle for the GPU side of their business started more than 15 months after the previous cycle. For example while the GTX 580 launched in November 2010, the GTX 680 didn’t launch until March of 2012. Consequently while NVIDIA was in the midst of selling a number of new GTX 500 series cards by Q1 FY2012, they got a late start with the GTX 600 series.

NVIDIA sells GPUs year-round of course, but outside of holidays their strongest periods are the months following major product launches, while their weakest periods are the months immediately preceding a major product launch as customers hold off for the next generation of cards. NVIDIA is also at the mercy of Intel and AMD to some extent for the same reason; the launch of Ivy Bridge was good for NVIDIA’s sales, but because of Ivy Bridge everyone in the PC industry saw lower sales in the first part of the year before Ivy Bridge launched.

At the moment the biggest cloud hanging over the head of NVIDIA’s GPU business is supply issues. As we’ve seen from the launch of the GTX 680 and GTX 690, NVIDIA’s partners have been unable to keep their latest generation of video cards in stock due to a lack of GPUs, and that’s only finally started to break with the launch of the GTX 670 yesterday. In their earnings call NVIDIA updated their investors on the status of 28nm production over at TSMC, and while the situation is improving it’s still not great.

As far as 28nm yields go things are looking decent. NVIDIA has said that they believe that TSMC’s 28nm process is probably the best of any new node that TSMC has ever done. Like any other process yields will continue to improve over the lifetime of the process of course, but as it stands what NVIDIA is reporting is nothing like the teething issues that 40nm went through in 2009/2010.

The real problem for NVIDIA right now continues to be overall capacity. They have been rather straightforward in stating that they need more 28nm wafer allocations and they need them yesterday. As it stands NVIDIA is expecting to be supply constrained at the wafer level throughout the end of the year, slowly becoming less constrained as capacity improves. For at least the next quarter however this means NVIDIA will be unable to meet channel demand and will have no problem selling everything they can get. This also means that the shortage of GTX 680 and GTX 690 cards may very well continue for another quarter.

Consequently NVIDIA’s dip in GPU revenue is being attributed to this shortage. High-end desktop sales in particular were the biggest contributor here; in spite of a general decline in desktop sales, desktop GPU sales are still such a large part of NVIDIA’s GPU revenue that the lack of 28nm GPUs there is adversely affecting NVIDIA’s bottom line. NVIDIA has used their limited capacity to launch their premium notebook and desktop GPUs first, and even then NVIDIA says they could have shipped many more GPUs if they had them. Kepler GPUs have higher margins on them than the aging Fermi lineup, so it’s in NVIDIA’s best interests to shift as much over to Kepler as quickly as possible. To that end NVIDIA is expecting 30% of their GPUs to be 28nm this quarter, with that improving in the future.

As for NVIDIA’s other major businesses, NVIDIA’s Tegra group has done better than expected, which is a big part of the reason that the consumer products group has seen revenue grow over last year. Although the first Tegra 3 products technically shipped at the end of last year, NVIDIA is still fairly early into Tegra 3’s lifecycle as the first Tegra 3 phones just now being released. So NVIDIA is hoping that they’ll be able to continue to grow their market share this year on strong sales of Tegra 3, particularly in overseas markets where there’s greater demand for quad-core SoCs and LTE isn’t as prevalent.

Speaking of market share, as it stands today nearly half of all Tegra SoCs are going into tablets. That’s going to shift some as more Tegra 3 phones are released (and again when WinRT is released), but it’s a good reminder of just how much traction NVIDIA has gained in the tablet market in very little time. And unlike the GPU space NVIDIA shouldn’t have any supply issues here; since Tegra is still on TSMC’s 40nm process supplies are plentiful and yields are high.

In a typical high-end GPU launch we’ll see the process take place in phases over a couple of months if not longer. The new GPU will be launched in the form of one or two single-GPU cards, with additional cards coming to market in the following months and culminating in the launch of a dual-GPU behemoth. This is the typical process as it allows manufacturers and board partners time to increase production, stockpile chips, and work on custom designs.

But this year things aren’t so typical. GK104 wasn’t the typical high-end GPU from NVIDIA, and neither it seems is there anything typical about its launch.

NVIDIA has not been wasting any time in getting their complete GK104 based product lineup out the door. Just 6 weeks after the launch of the GeForce GTX 680, NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 690, their dual-GK104 monster. Now only a week after that NVIDIA is at it again, launching the GK104 based GeForce GTX 670 this morning.

Like its predecessors, GTX 670 will fill in the obligatory role as a cheaper, slower, and less power-hungry version of NVIDIA’s leading video card. This is a process that allows NVIDIA to not only put otherwise underperforming GPUs to use, but to satisfy buyers at lower price points at the same time. Throughout this entire process the trick to successfully launching any second-tier card is to try to balance performance, prices, and yields, and as we’ll see NVIDIA has managed to turn all of the knobs just right to launch a very strong product.

In an unusual move, NVIDIA took the opportunity earlier this week to announce a new 600 series video card before they would be shipping it. Based on a pair of Kepler GK104 GPUs, the GeForce GTX 690 would be NVIDIA’s new flagship dual-GPU video card. And by all metrics it would be a doozy.

Packing a pair of high clocked, fully enabled GK104 GPUs, NVIDIA was targeting GTX 680 SLI performance in a single card, the kind dual-GPU card we haven’t seen in quite some time. GTX 690 would be a no compromise card – quieter and less power hungry than GTX 680 SLI, as fast as GTX 680 in single-GPU performance, and as fast as GTX 680 SLI in multi-GPU performance. And at $999 it would be the most expensive GeForce card yet.

After the announcement and based on the specs it was clear that GTX 690 had the potential, but could NVIDIA really pull this off? They could, and they did. Now let’s see how they did it.

If there was any doubt after Saturday night as to what NVIDIA's prybar was for, this should put it to rest. FedEx just dropped off the prybar's companion, the venerable wooden crate.

Top: Caution, Weapons Grade Gaming Power

Side: 0b1010110010 [690]
BT-7.080
G08-H86-A000

Applying the prybar in a slightly more civilized manner than we would in most video games, we find the GeForce GTX 690 inside. (ed: If this was a 90's video game, then according to the Crate Review System NVIDIA is already doing very well)

That's all we can show you for now. We'll have more on Thursday.

As we mentioned back on Monday, NVIDIA was going to be making some kind of GeForce announcement this evening at the NVIDA Gaming Festival 2012 in Shanghai, China. NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has just finished his speech, announcing NVIDIA’s next ultra-premium video card, the GeForce GTX 690.

Launching later this week, the GeForce GTX 690 will be NVIDIA’s new dual-GPU flagship video card, complementing their existing single-GPU GeForce GTX 680. Equipped with a pair of fully enabled GK104 GPUs, NVIDIA is shooting for GTX 680 SLI performance on a single card, and with GTX 690 they just might get there. We won’t be publishing our review until Thursday, but in the meantime let’s take a look at what we know so far about the GTX 690.

As AMD’s 28nm allocation has improved so has the selection of cards available on the market. We’re still in the first phase of the Radeon HD 7000 series rollout, with AMD’s partners building semi-custom cards based on AMD’s reference PCB, but even without custom PCBs AMD’s partners have been able to turn out a number of interesting designs. This is particularly the case for the 7800 series, where prices are high enough for partners to experiment with different coolers and TDPs are low enough to allow more than a handful of approaches.

Last month we saw some of those first designs with PowerColor’s PCS+ HD7870 and HIS’s IceQ 7870 Turbo, and today we’ll be looking at a third: Sapphire’s HD 7870 Overclock Edition, their semi-custom factory overclocked 7870. How does Sapphire’s dual-fan entry stand up to the competition? Let’s find out.

While NVIDIA doesn’t publically announce most of their OEM desktop graphics cards, they do update their website with the specifications of these cards, which is how we usually find out about them. Today has been no exception, and after NVIDIA's latest site update a bit of digging has unearthed the fact that NVIDIA has released their first Kepler cards for the desktop market. There are 5 new OEM desktop cards, composing a mix of both Kepler and Fermi: the GT 645, the GT 640, and the GT 630.

If this product stack looks familiar, it should. It’s generally the same product stack as the GeForce 600 series Mobile lineup, except with higher clockspeeds. As with their mobile parts, NVIDIA is going to be mixing 40nm Fermi parts and 28nm Kepler parts into their desktop product stack, leading to a hilariously frustrating selection of video cards.

At the top of the new product stack we have the GT 645, which is a GF114 Fermi rehash. GT 645 has 288 CUDA cores enabled and paired with what’s listed as a very crippled 128bit memory bus. However considering the memory bandwidth NVIDIA lists for the card (91.9GB/sec) and the fact that they already have a very similar card in the GTX 560 SE, we’re confident that the 128bit bus in NVIDIA’s specs is a typo and that it’s actually a 192bit bus, and we are listing it in our charts accordingly. In any case you’re still looking at significantly less memory bandwidth the GTX 560 is typically paired with.

The next card is the GT 640, the GT 640, and the GT 640. Just like the GT 640M LE, NVIDIA is mixing Fermi and Kepler here in a very odd manner. We have a GT 640 that’s a full GK107 (384 cores) with GDDR5 memory and a fairly high clockspeed, a GT 640 that’s a binned GF116 (144 cores) with DDR3 memory, and a GT 640 that’s a full GK107 (384 cores) with DDR3 memory and lower clockspeeds. Not even the TDP or form factor is consistent among these cards; the GK107 DDR3 card is a low-profile 50W card, while the other two are full-profile 75W cards.

The final card is the GT 630, which is another GK107 part. This is also a full GK107 (384 cores), paired with DDR3 memory and a mid-range clockspeed, with a TDP of 50W. The most interesting part? It’s clocked 10% higher than the equivalent GT 640 and should have better performance as a result, though memory bandwidth is the same between the two.

It’s safe to say that at this point the OEM desktop video card market has turned into a similar mess as the OEM laptop market, and this latest round of video cards serves to cement that fact. As with the laptop market we’ve reached a point where it’s nearly impossible to tell which video card a product actually uses based on computer specs alone, and that’s worrisome. Accordingly, our best advice for buying an OEM desktop is the same as buying an OEM laptop: make sure you research what you're getting if you want faster GPU performance. It may not be possible to tell what video card is in use until a product has been reviewed.

Oh a final note, it’s interesting though not surprising that NVIDIA is releasing desktop GK107 cards to OEMs first. They did the same thing with the GT 200 series, which were NVIDIA’s first 40nm cards, and while these GT 600 cards don’t have the same distinction, the root cause – a lack of sufficient GPU supply – is the same. On a positive note however, this launch means that retail GK107 desktop cards – particularly a retail version of the GDDR5 + GK107 based GT 640 – can’t be too far away; we’d speculate a few months at the most. So budget desktop users shouldn’t be waiting too much longer for the 28nm generation to hit their market segment.

Source: SH SOTN, NVIDIA

AMD kicked off 2012 by refreshing its desktop graphics, and now it's back, giving its mobile GPUs the same treatment. The company just announced its third generation of DirectX 11 mobile chips, the Radeon HD 7000 family. All told, the collection includes three 28nm GPUs: the high-end 7900M, the mainstream 7800M and, last but not least, the 7700M, a darling little chip intended for AMD's thin and light Ultrabook competitors. Across the board, the series ushers in a new feature AMD is calling Enduro, a graphics-switching technology that takes direct aim at NVIDIA Optimus. Building on older AMD technologies like PowerXpress, it doesn't require you to close apps, reboot your system or manually specify which apps will trigger the GPU. Additionally, it's designed to work with both Intel CPUs and AMD's own application processing units, so presumably you'll find this inside some Ivy Bridge machines too. With this generation, too, the two higher-end chips support the PCI Express 3.0 interface, and all three make use of AMD's existing ZeroCore Power and Power Gating battery-saving features. That's the abridged version, but we also have a full breakdown of the specs awaiting you past the break.

Continue reading AMD announces Radeon HD 7000M series with Enduro graphics-switching technology

AMD announces Radeon HD 7000M series with Enduro graphics-switching technology originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It’s not often that we cover marketing teasers, but then it’s not often that we get crowbars in the mail either…

Earlier this afternoon the following crowbar unexpectedly showed up on our doorstep courtesy of NVIDIA. The crowbar reads “For use in case of zombies or…” and has the right half of the NVIDIA logo at the end of the sentence.

Meanwhile over at GeForce.com NVIDIA has posted a teaser countdown page, announcing that they will be making an announcement at the NVIDIA Gaming Festival 2012 in Shanghai, China, at 7:30pm PDT on Saturday the 28^th.

So what does a crowbar have to do with anything? At this point we haven’t a clue. And while crowbars happen to be the signature weapon for Valve’s Half-Life series, we’re rather confident that a black crowbar has nothing to do with Half-Life. This leaves us with opening crates… and that’s all we have so far.

It looks like we won't get our answer until Saturday night, so until then stay tuned.