Avoid Nvidia 700 series

[John P. Myers]

OEMs can flash current GTX680 inventory with the GTX770 BIOS, peel off the branding sticker, and slap a new one on. Viola, instant, “all new” GPU! No one will ever know because this scheme is far too clever for end users to figure out, right? Except that it is weeks before launch and everyone now knows, and those that don’t know as of right now probably will by the end of the day. Welcome to Teh inTarnets!

Nvidia is not doing a kepler refresh. It's nothing more than a Kepler renumbering with the new 780 being a broken Titan, which is a broken K20X. Why are these tards still in business? *sigh*

[DrPop]

Nvidia is not doing a kepler refresh. It's nothing more than a Kepler renumbering with the new 780 being a broken Titan, which is a broken K20X. Why are these tards still in business? *sigh*

Man, that is just sick. And how many hundreds of $ will they want people to fork over just for new numbers being printed on the outside? :p:mad:

[zombie67]

Is this new? I thought nVidia have done this with each generation. The only new chips are with the top of the line, and then they fill out the lower parts of the "new" line with re-badged previous generations.

[John P. Myers]

Is this new? I thought nVidia have done this with each generation. The only new chips are with the top of the line, and then they fill out the lower parts of the "new" line with re-badged previous generations.

Yes usually the x50 (like a 650, for example) and higher GPUs in a new series use new chips while everything under x50 is something renumbered from the previous generation. This time though they're renumbering everything except the 780 and not giving us the usual performance tweaks that usually comes with a series refresh.

[pinhodecarlos]

But probably Nvidia will give us better energy consumption on their products. That's the way to go, make more with less energy. It's all about energy efficiency.

Carlos

[John P. Myers]

But probably Nvidia will give us better energy consumption on their products. That's the way to go, make more with less energy. It's all about energy efficiency.

Carlos

Nope nope nope. They're doing 100% absolutely *nothing* except renumbering. This is why the 770 BIOS works on the 680. Every last little piece of everything is exactly the same.

[Mumps]

But probably Nvidia will give us better energy consumption on their products. That's the way to go, make more with less energy. It's all about energy efficiency.

Carlos

But, as mentioned in the original quote

OEMs can flash current GTX680 inventory with the GTX770 BIOS, peel off the branding sticker, and slap a new one on.
there ain't much power savings that could possibly be associated with a sticker... :D

[John P. Myers]

If anyone has a 680 they'd like to flash to a 770, you can get the BIOS here: https://anonfiles.com/file/679a9d632b00d87ca24b5ecf8c965c2a

I'm sure Nvidia added 30MHz (or whatever) to the base clock so they can say it's faster, and probably changed the fan speed at various temps so it still appears to run at the same temp as it did without the extra 30MHz. But those 30MHz are coming out of the overclock you once had.

On the plus side, you can now make your own custom GTX 770 stickers :D

[Fire$torm]

.....On the plus side, you can now make your own custom GTX 770 stickers :D



Hardy har har :P

[DrPop]

Here's the really sad part. A GTX 580 was every bit as good as a GTX 680 for crunching. So now a GTX 580 is every bit the cruncher a GTX 770 is! :p

[Slicker]

nVidia gets away with it because the specs printed on the GPU boxes have so little info that the users have no idea what they are buying. On the other hand, AMD can't even get their drivers to crunch so nVidia doesn't have too much to worry about from the competition. BTW, AMD has some HD7xxx GPUs which are more or less re-branded HD 6xxx GPUs. I don't recall the exact ones but came across that fact when a few of the HD 7xxx GPUs could run the collatz 4.xx OpenCL apps when most couldn't.

[John P. Myers]

nVidia gets away with it because the specs printed on the GPU boxes have so little info that the users have no idea what they are buying. On the other hand, AMD can't even get their drivers to crunch so nVidia doesn't have too much to worry about from the competition. BTW, AMD has some HD7xxx GPUs which are more or less re-branded HD 6xxx GPUs. I don't recall the exact ones but came across that fact when a few of the HD 7xxx GPUs could run the collatz 4.xx OpenCL apps when most couldn't.

Yes. Nvidia normally rebrands everything from x05 to x45. AMD rebrands everything from x350 to x670. For AMD, using the 7000 series as an example, everything from the 7700 up is new tech. From the 7670 down is all rebrands. But what Nvidia is doing is the equivalent of AMD rebranding everything up to the 7970. Usually, Nvidia (and AMD) tweaks these GPUs. Take the 500 series for example. It's all tweaks of the 400 series. You can tell because the chips themselves have a different part number, such as the GF104 from the 400 series becomes the GF114 for the 500 series. BIOS from the the 500 series will not work on the 400 series.

But now Nvidia didn't do squat. The GK104 does not get optimized into a GK114. It's still a GK104 in the 700 series. The BIOS can be used interchangeably because it's the exact same thing. Not just that chip, but the VRAM, all the way down to the capacitors are exactly the same.

[Cruncher Pete]

Yes. Nvidia normally rebrands everything from x05 to x45. AMD rebrands everything from x350 to x670. For AMD, using the 7000 series as an example, everything from the 7700 up is new tech. From the 7670 down is all rebrands. But what Nvidia is doing is the equivalent of AMD rebranding everything up to the 7970. Usually, Nvidia (and AMD) tweaks these GPUs. Take the 500 series for example. It's all tweaks of the 400 series. You can tell because the chips themselves have a different part number, such as the GF104 from the 400 series becomes the GF114 for the 500 series. BIOS from the the 500 series will not work on the 400 series.

But now Nvidia didn't do squat. The GK104 does not get optimized into a GK114. It's still a GK104 in the 700 series. The BIOS can be used interchangeably because it's the exact same thing. Not just that chip, but the VRAM, all the way down to the capacitors are exactly the same.

I have to admit, this is getting more and more complicated. I am in a position that I have lost some GPU's that are no longer under warranty and I would like to replace them depending on future savings when enough money is left over after paying the bills. What brand/model would you guys recommend that would suit us crunchers. I do not play games...:confused:

[DrPop]

I have to admit, this is getting more and more complicated. I am in a position that I have lost some GPU's that are no longer under warranty and I would like to replace them depending on future savings when enough money is left over after paying the bills. What brand/model would you guys recommend that would suit us crunchers. I do not play games...:confused:

Man, I hear you, C.P. I still think the best nVidia crunching bang for the buck is GTX 570/580 or dual GPU 590 depending on your budget.
The best AMD GPU is hands down the 7970 if you can afford one. Very high credit output. The first dual GPU 7990 cards Zombie reported problems with, but now that AMD has an official design, they are probably good, it's two 7970s in one card- but pricy.

Not sure if that's any help? Maybe JPM and F$ and Zombie can add to this too they are into the GPU tech. ;)

[John P. Myers]

The GTX 780 was released today. The 770 is coming on the 30th. Both are crap, of course :p The 780 ended up with 2304 cores and Nvidia is back to their standard FP64 crippling tricks. Even though the 780 uses the GK110, same as the Titan, the 780 is intentionally limited to 1/24th FP64 performance, just like all of the 600 series. Price is $650. Whatever happened to the $500 x80 Nvidia GPUs?

[DrPop]

So basically for crunching only (gaming is different) there is no reason to pay more for anything above a 570 / 580 /590 yet?

[zombie67]

The GTX 780 was released today. The 770 is coming on the 30th. Both are crap, of course :p The 780 ended up with 2304 cores and Nvidia is back to their standard FP64 crippling tricks. Even though the 780 uses the GK110, same as the Titan, the 780 is intentionally limited to 1/24th FP64 performance, just like all of the 600 series. Price is $650. Whatever happened to the $500 x80 Nvidia GPUs?

I thought I read somewhere, that there was a way to un-cripple the FP64, at the expense of the OC speed? Do I mis-remember?

[John P. Myers]

I thought I read somewhere, that there was a way to un-cripple the FP64, at the expense of the OC speed? Do I mis-remember?

In the Nvidia control panel there's a box you can tic to allow full speed FP64, but only for the Titan. No other GPU allows that option.


Edit: @DrPop: Unless you're getting a Titan, stay with the 500 series. Or just buy AMD :)

The 780 will get 165.7 FP64 GFLOPS. The 580 gets 197.6 GFLOPS. The 680 gets 128.7 GFLOPS. The Titan gets 1310 GFLOPS.

There is 1 positive about the 780 though. Having the GK110, memory bandwidth is greatly increased and FP32 is actually about 25% faster than a 580. FP32 on a Titan is about 50% faster than a 580. 580's are cheaper (if you can find any), but are rated at the same power draw as the 780 or Titan.

FYI there is talk of a Titan +1 coming out later this year. Instead of using 14 of the 15 SMXs, it'll use all 15, giving an additional 192 cores and an additional 64 FP64 units. In comparison, the 780 only uses 12 of the 15 SMXs.

[John P. Myers]

There is 1 positive about the 780 though. Having the GK110, memory bandwidth is greatly increased and FP32 is actually about 25% faster than a 580.


There's another negative too though :p Earlier i gave a 30MHz speed boost as an example of what Nvidia might do to make the 770 appear faster than the 680. Well i was wrong. It's actually 40MHz lol *yawn*. They also jacked up the memory by 250MHz. Of course, all of this added 35W to the TDP which now sits at 230W for the 770.

[Gopher_FreeDC]

There's another negative too though :p Earlier i gave a 30MHz speed boost as an example of what Nvidia might do to make the 770 appear faster than the 680. Well i was wrong. It's actually 40MHz lol *yawn*. They also jacked up the memory by 250MHz. Of course, all of this added 35W to the TDP which now sits at 230W for the 770.

Does it come with a pop out or a thermal link so you can cook stuff on??