Termie
Diamond Member
What's the source on that?
Really, die size should be pretty locked down from the pictures released at this point. If Tahiti really does have 21% more transistors and 14% more power dissipation for the same load, even a performance tie would be a big win for nVidia.
If the GTX680 performs better than the 7970, that would be such a huge disparity that AMD would be screwed this generation. Even at price parity the GTX680 would be a better choice as it performs better, and costs for nVidia would be lower so margins would be higher.
That being said, for the 680 to have 10% more performance than a 7970, it would need to have 36.6% better perf/mm^2 than Tahiti. That's a bit hard to believe. I'd say it's much more likely that GK104 performs similar to or a little below the 7970, on average.
Nvidia has done plenty of things to screw with its customers over the years (GTX465, GTX460SE, 550Ti, and every card under $100), but it will never be so stupid as to release a GTX680 with performance within 10-15% of the GTX580, which is where your estimate would place it. I leave that kind of chicanery to AMD, which in my mind is now king of rolling out new cards with big new numbers that perform just like their old cards but cost more. Even the GTX580 was 20% faster than the GTX480, and it was basically the same card.
If there is a GTX680, and by all indications there is, it will be significantly faster than a GTX580 and will therefore be faster than the 7970. Let's be serious - all Nvidia would need to do to hammer the 7970 is respin the 580 on 28nm and overclock it. They can do better.
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