NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Uses 7.1 Billion Transistor GK110 GPU 176
Vigile writes "NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX TITAN graphics card is being announced today and is utilizing the GK110 GPU first announced in May of 2012 for HPC and supercomputing markets. The GPU touts computing horsepower at 4.5 TFLOPS provided by the 2,688 single precision cores, 896 double precision cores, a 384-bit memory bus and 6GB of on-board memory doubling the included frame buffer that AMD's Radeon HD 7970 uses. With a make up of 7.1 billion transistors and a 551 mm^2 die size, GK110 is very close to the reticle limit for current lithography technology! The GTX TITAN introduces a new GPU Boost revision based on real-time temperature monitoring and support for monitor refresh rate overclocking that will entice gamers and with a $999 price tag, the card could be one of the best GPGPU options on the market." HotHardware says the card "will easily be the most powerful single-GPU powered graphics card available when it ships, with relatively quiet operation and lower power consumption than the previous generation GeForce GTX 690 dual-GPU card."
Serious stuff (Score:2, Informative)
And here I was, thinking that TI-83 has pretty cool graphics.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Informative)
Really? Like right in the summary man: for the "HPC and supercomputing markets"
Not so you can run Quake at 500,000 fps
Re:GK110 vs. 7970 (Score:4, Informative)
tl;dr version, FP64 performance is 37% better on this board.
Actually right now (Score:5, Informative)
Console rez means 1280x720, perhaps less. I know that in theory the PS3 can render at 1080, but in reality basically nothing does. All the games you see out these days are 1280x720, or sometimes even less. The consoles allow for internal resolutions of arbitrary amounts less and then upsample them, and a number of games do that.
Frame rate is also an issue. Most console games are 30fps titles, meaning that's all they target (and sometimes they slow down below that). On a PC, of course, you can aim for 60fps (or more, if you like).
When you combine those, you can want a lot of power. I just moved up to a 2560x1600 monitor, and my GTX 680 is now inadequate. Well ok, maybe that's not the right term, but it isn't overpowered anymore. For some games, like Rift and Skyrim, I can't crank everything up and still maintain a high framerate. I have to choose choppy display, less detail, or a lower rez. If I had the option, I'd rather not.
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Informative)
That is simply not happening this decade. The jump in required computing power is ridiculous, while the current "fake lighting" is almost good enough. At the same time, you can't really utilize the current GPU types efficiently for real time lighting because that's simply not what they're optimized for.