Today Nvidia released to the world at large, what may be a picture of their latest new graphics card. We’re not so sure they’re pleased with how it looks though, as this is the picture they’ve given to us:
It seems either Nvidia has gone and modelled the GPU’s cooler on an anatomically correct Steve Buscemi, or it is playing its cards very close to its chest in an effort to drum up publicity before an actual announcement. We can’t help that at Atomic this fills us with a tingling sensation coupled with considerable feelings of excitement, as well as some other thoughts about Steve that are… weird and confusing.
*pulls self together*
In either case Nvidia generally saves ‘big-bang’ media circuses for its high end cards and there are two gaping slots that stand out in that lineup (we’ll assume it’s a card as it was released on Nvidia’s ‘GeForce Facebook page). The first possibility is that this is the run up to an announcement of a dual-GPU card, much like the GTX 590 (and probably named the GTX 690) which is likely to consist of two of the GK-104 cores found in the GTX-680, paired with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. The second candidate is a card that, rather than possessing dual graphics cores, uses a single, much larger core and would sit between the GTX 680 and hypothetical GTX 690. Such a card has been considered possible down the line given Nvidia’s history of producing giant graphics chips and the inherent complexity of a large (complex and therefore time-consuming to design) graphics chip. Finally the (GK) 104 codename used for the GTX 680 core is a hint in itself - the top single core card is traditionally numbered ‘110’. Nvidia are characteristically silent about this.
News sites and forums are fairly abuzz with speculation on this one picture – theories ranging from a GTS 650 Ti, a new console to hidden Alienware logos and in one case, a space-station. We’ve tried to be reasonably factual: inverting and enhancing the image as above (which wasn’t as effective as in Bladerunner) we see a few more details. Among them, towards the bottom of the picture what is either a pair of the exhaust vents or more likely a fan, suggesting a possible multi-fan configuration. Certainly the upper portion shows something very reminiscent of the (famously hot) GTX 480 external radiator, conceivably with a darker colouring to better radiate heat. This is still very much inference; for all we know Nvidia could be releasing a GeForce-branded keyboard and just messing with everyone. However if the picture does indeed show a cooling design that uses a radiator, our bet is that this is a shot of a dual GPU GTX 690 as that would be the hottest (and therefore most in need of a radiator) model. However all Atomic can be certain about right now, other than that something’s coming from Nvidia, is that its marketing department remains unquestionably more effective than AMD’s.
What are your thoughts?
