Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 Ti with Full Fat GM200 Core Ready – Planned for September Launch

A short update on the GM200 front just came our way. The next generation of graphic cards form AMD are nearing launch and it looks like Nvidia isn’t waiting idly either. A report from the usually reliable sweclockers.com states that the Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 ‘Ti’ Graphic Processor is ready for launch. The 980 Ti is a card that would be the successor of the GTX 980 and would form the high end spectrum of Nvidia’s offerings. However, I have some doubts regarding the logistics of this product that I will offer at the end.

A stock GM200 die shot. @Nvidia Public Domain

Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 Ti reportedly ready for launch – full blown GM200 included

According to the report, the Geforce GTX 980 Ti has been completed – which means AIB seeding will begin shortly. It also means that Nvidia must be aware that AMD flagship is very close to launch, something that will happen either at Computex, or shortly before. Should AMD launch a GPU that offers serious competition to the GTX 980 than the ‘Ti’ older brother will step to turn the tides back in Nvidia’s favor. AMD’s market share has been on a relatively alarming trend this year and the launch of the Fiji XT GPU could make or break it for the red duo-pole.

The launch date remains approximately September of this year. The GTX 980 Ti will supposedly have the complete 3072 cores of the GTX TITAN X but with the memory buffer cut to 6GB from 12GB and maybe higher clocks. Now here is the reservation I have about all this (read: opinion). The GM200 core is a huge die, so yields wont exactly be ideal. If Nvidia has two products with almost no differentiation equipped with full dies than what exactly is the pricing strategy here? It doesn’t seem to make sense from a marketing perspective. Even if you look at it from a technical point of view what is green going to do with the cut/recovered dies? A GTX 990 seems to be the ideal choice for such chips in such a case but a GTX 980 Ti and GTX TITAN X seem to be a little too similar for comfort to me. Anyways, here are the comparison specs from what we know so far:

	NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X	Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960
GPU Architecture	Maxwell	Maxwell	Maxwell	Maxwell	Maxwell
GPU Name	GM200	GM200	GM204	GM204	GM206
Die Size	601mm2	601mm2	398mm2	398mm2	228mm2
Process	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm
CUDA Cores	3072	3072	2048	1664	1024
Texture Units	192	192	128	104	64
Raster Devices	96	96	64	64	32
Clock Speed	1002 MHz	1126? MHz	1126 MHz	1051 MHz	1126 MHz
Boost Clock	1089 MHz	1216? MHz	1216 MHz	1178 MHz	1178 MHz
VRAM	12 GB GDDR5	6 GB GDDR5	4 GB GDDR5	4 GB GDDR5	2 GB GDDR5
Memory Bus	384-bit	384-bit	256-bit	256-bit	128-bit
Memory Clock	7.0 GHz	7.0 GHz	7.0 GHz	7.0 GHz	7.0 GHz
Memory Bandwidth	336.0 GB/s	336.0 GB/s	224.0 GB/s	224.0 GB/s	112.0 GB/s
TDP	250W	250W	165W	145W	120W
Power Connectors	8+6 Pin	8+6 Pin	Two 6-Pin	Two 6-Pin	One 6-Pin
Price	$999 US	$699 ?	$549 US	$329 US	$199 US